If you increase the number of mega-pixels on a camera do you get a better picture?

Question

I know that you just cant increase them but is it true that the higher number of mega pixels the better the camera or is that complete and utter crap/

Answer 1

It's true up to a point. For normal size prints, it doesn't matter if you use 3 or 12 megapixles - the prints will look the same. But with more megapixels you can make better enlargements. For a full page print, you'd want 6+ megapixels. For a small poster, you'd want 10+ megapixels.
Then there's the lens. Most point & shoots have pretty average lenses. These lenses only send about 8 megapixels worth of information to the sensor - so if you have a 10 megapixel sensor, the rest is simply wasted. To take full advantage of a 10 megapixel sensor, you need professional quality lenses. You can only get professional quality lenses for digital SLR cameras however. (These are +$500 each. Often even +$1000.)
And finally, in low light situations, having more megapixels can actually reduce image quality!! Every pixel corresponds to a photosite on the sensor. The more megapixels, the smaller the photosites, and the more light they need to do their job. In low light sitiations, you'd want (fewer but) big photosites instead of tons of super tiny ones.
So megapixels just says something about how big you can print. Image quality is determined much more by the quality of the lens.

Answer 2

All of them are digital cameras, as opposed to cameras which use a film that has to be developed and printed using chemicals in a dark room. A VGA camera is one with a resolution of 640x480, this is 307200 pixels or about 0.3 megapixels. To take a good picture you need a camera with a minimum of 1.3Mpixels, many phones have cameras that can do 4Mpixels or more, mine is an 8Mpixel camera in my phone. If you were just buying a camera then you'd be looking for 12Mpixel or more. Obviously a camera in a phone isn't going to be as good as a device which is dedicated to the job of being a camera because it has to be miniaturised. The image is arranged as a grid, like with graph paper. The number of squares (pixels) along the top of the image multiplied by those down the side gives you the total number of pixels. Mega just means million so a 12Mpixel camera captures around twelve million pixels. The more the number of pixels the smaller that each pixel is, so the sharper the image. Don't forget that there's more to a camera than how many pixels it can distinguish. The quality of the lens is equally important, phone cameras are never as good as a device which is just a camera because they have to use a tiny lens.

Answer 3

If you always plan to compose your pictures perfectly, you don't need a whole lot of pixels. These days, I'd say that 5 MP or even 4 MP is fine for the average snapshooter and this can be obtained without unreasonable expense. 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.

Having said all that, though, pixels are not the only measure of image quality. The sensor size is important as well as the image processing softare inclluded in the camera. You need to read reviews if you want a critical understanding of image quality for particular cameras. Try http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ for more information on the cameras you are considering.

Answer 4

not neccesarily the better the camera, but the better the picture the camera will take. The mega pixels have something to do with how clear the picture is going to be. The more pixels the better because if you have very low pixels, if you need to zoom in on the picture you will notice it becoming more blurred. The only thing, the higher you have your pixels set on your camera , the less pictures the camera will hold. This can be sorted out by buying a memory card with more memory on it. Hope i helped!

Answer 5

Generally, the more mega-pixels, the better the picture quality from a given camera. However, other factors come into play in rendering a decent photo. Such as quality of the lens, software used to print the photos, the amount of enlargement, the firm doing the printing (if you send them out for processing) and a number of other factors.

Answer 6

It is true. But for 4 x 6 pictures...a good 4.0 mp camera is ok. The mega pixels really start to matter when you enlarge the pictures. The more mega pixels the less grainyness in the picture.

Answer 7

Forget the silly debate over pixel counts among digital cameras. There is little visible difference between cameras with seemingly different ratings. For instance, a 3 MP camera pretty much looks the same as a 6 MP camera, even when blown up to 12 x 18!"

Resolution has little to do with image quality. Color and tone are far more important technically. Even Consumer Reports in their November 2002 issue noted some lower resolution digital cameras made better images than some higher resolution ones.

Resolution is how many pixels you have counted horizontally or vertically when used to describe a stored image. Digital cameras today have between 2,048 and 4,500 pixels horizontally. 3 MP cameras have 2,048 pixels horizontally and 14 MP cameras have 4,500 pixels. They have fewer pixels vertically since the images aren't as tall as they are wide.

That's not much of a difference, is it?

Small differences in pixel count, between say 5 MP and 8MP, are unimportant because pixel counts are a square function. It's exactly like calculating area or square footage. It only takes a 40% increase in linear dimensions to double the pixel count! Doubling pixel count only increases the real, linear resolution by 40%, which is pretty much invisible.

The megapixel myth was started by camera makers and swallowed hook, line and sinker by camera measurebators. Camera makers use the number of megapixels a camera has to hoodwink you into thinking it has something to do with camera quality. They use it because even a tiny linear resolution increase results in a huge total pixel increase, since the total pixel count varies as the total area of the image, which varies as the square of the linear resolution. In other words, an almost invisible 40% increase in the number of pixels in any one direction results in a doubling of the total number of pixels in the image. Therefore camera makers can always brag about how much better this week's camera is, with even negligible improvements.

This gimmick is used by salespeople and manufacturers to you feel as if your current camera is inadequate and needs to be replaced even if the new cameras each year are only slightly better.

One needs about a doubling of linear resolution or film size to make an obvious improvement. This is the same as a quadrupling of megapixels. A simple doubling of megapixels, even if all else remained the same, is very subtle. The factors that matter, like color and sharpening algorithms, are far more significant.

Unfortunately, it's all a myth because the number of megapixels (MP) a camera has has very little to do with how the image looks. Even worse, plenty of lower MP cameras can make better images than poorer cameras with more MP.

Hope that is relevant. :P

Answer 8

The higher the megapixels the better the picture up to a limit. If you shoot at 10 megapixels and then display the picture on your computer screen you can just as well shoot it at 2 megapixels. For a small print you would probably see no difference after 5 megapixels. The only advantage of large number of megapixels is for a very large picture or for enlarging small portions of a picture.

Answer 9

Well, after you get up to around 5 mega pix, the pictures are going to look about the same unless you're printing poster size prints. If that's what you plan on doing, I'd say go with the highest you can get. It all depends on what you're using your camera for. If it's just home photos, anything 5 or above Will work awesome for you.

Answer 10

Yes..you get better pictures by raising the pixel value, but keep in mind that the more pixels your pictures are (which produces better qaulity pictures), the more memory you will use on the camera for saving your pictures on your camera or memory stick.