What is an acceptable Megapixel for a digi camera just for personal use?

Question

I just need a camera to take on vacation with me - nothing fancy. I know that the bigger the MP the better - but I can't afford just anything. So is something as low as 3 MP really all that poor, if it's just for personal use? What else should I look for in shopping for a digi camera?

Answer 1

Pixels - How many are enough?

If you always plan to compose your pictures perfectly, you don't need a whole lot of pixels. If you want to allow for cropping, which means enlarging only a portion of your image, the more pixels the better.

Imagine taking a scenic view and then noticing that the middle 20% of the photo would make an even better picture. Suppose you take a picture of a whole group of people and Aunt Clara really, really looks great in the picture, but everyone else looks lousy. If you have the pixels to work with, you can still make a decent print of Aunt Clara that she would be happy to have.

If you buy an 8-to-10 MP camera and don't want to TAKE large photos, you can always set the camera to a lower file size. You can never go the other direction, though. Unless the cost is a major issue, buy the camera with more pixels. You will never be sorry that you did, but you might one day be sorry that you didn't.

Answer 2

For the main area, megapixels are purely megapixels inspite of producer- Kodak, Canon, Nikon, Olympus etc. the reason that Nikon & Canon DSLRs yield extra useful photographs isn't via form in the electronics, however the more advantageous high quality of their lenses! That mentioned, there are a pair of marvelous exceptions in the megapixel pastime: Fuji and Foveon. Fuji handles pixels in a diverse way via arranging them in a honeycomb development as a replace of a well-recognized grid, which they call a SuperCCD. the tip consequence is that a 6 megapixel Fuji S2 creates photographs of 9 megapixel high quality. additionally whilst Fuji presented their S3 professional digicam, they desperate to devote some megapixels to the particular purpose of recording shadow element which general sensors could desire to miss, as a replace of purely increasing the call, which led to more advantageous dynamic variety. So their 12 megapixel digicam is basically 10 megapixels with 2 megapixels used strictly for recuperating low-mild element. The Foveon chip represents a in fact diverse attitude to a digital sensor- regrettably it rather is in basic terms recent in Sigma (sure, Sigma- good success looking somebody who makes use of those) cameras to my understanding... listed under are 2 articles which clarify the transformations- once you're somewhat into the underlying technologies, it rather is exciting analyzing...

Answer 3

I just bought a little 5 mega-pixel poket size Kodak for $125 it has digital zoom and their free editing program does cropping and red eye in a second... They recommend 4 meg for regular 4X6 size pix and mine come out great. P.S. the Kodak program wants to convert all of your jpegs to Kodak but you can simply tell your computer to open everything in Windows Picture Viewer by going into File View and making it default again after you have the Kodak program installed.. best of both worlds.

Answer 4

3 isn't bad. I'd go for at least 5 though. Nowadays you can get a 5 for pretty cheap.

Answer 5

5 Megapixels it is a decent resolution if you intend to print mostly 4x6" size and good enough for 8x10" too.