digital camera megapixel's??

Question

how many megapixel's dose a person realy need ??

I am looking at buying a new camera, I don't plan to print photos larger than 11"x12" but even if I consider poster size prints how many megapixel's are to much

Answer 1

between 6 and 8

Answer 2

I'm glad someone finally asked this question. It reminds me of the years when stereo hi-fi was catching on, and systems were being produced by consumer electronics companies at cheap prices -instead of the major hi-fi brands at high prices.

And back in those days, it was all about "watts." Powerful units were considered to be 100 watts per channel or more. And the prices were usually $500 or more which was a LOT of money back then. That's when the cheapo consumer companies jumped in, claiming 75, 100, or even 500 watt units. Problem is, they were often quoting how much power the system used (from the wall) as opposed to power that went to the speakers; or else they were citing maximum watts that might be output momentarily during a loud passage -not ALL THE TIME output (known as watts RMS).

And so here we are with digital cameras, now at consumer prices and -not unexpectedly- its all about megapixels! Yopu're on the right track when you refer to the output size of the printed photo, because, in general, more pixels will make a large printed image look better (sharper, more detailed) than the same size picture made with fewer pixels. Here's a table showing the accepted "norms" for pixels required to make decent output of various sizes:

2.0 MP= 4 x 6 [standard]
3.0 MP= 5 x 7
4.0 MP= 8 x 10
5.0 MP= 9 x 12
6.0 MP=11 x 14
8.0 MP=12 x 16
10.0 MP= 16 x 20

But that's not the whole story. Really, it is not even CLOSE to the whole story. The table above -and all the arguments about "more is better" (to justify a higher price, of course) ignore several key factors, for example:

How good are the camera's optics and other specifications? If you can't focus easily and accurately, more megapixels will just deliver a very accurate blurry picture. Note that some cameras claim a 10X zoom capability, but that the zoom factor after the first 3X may be "interpolated." In other words, you're not getting an optically magnified image (as you would through a telescope) but rather, the camera manipulates the pixels itself to create the appearance of zoom -with a concurrent loss of quality. Hmmmmm.

Light gathering and color balance is also important; that is, how accurately does the camera see whats around it?

The point is this: the camera should be optically as close to a good quality film camera as you can get for the money. That will have an enormous impact on final output -more so than just "megapixels."

The other key element is digital processing of the image after it has been taken -the "dark room" side, as it were. Decent photo-editing software can add pixels for you by "re-sampling" the image to make it bigger. Will there be a loss of quality? Not really, because if the original image is clean, clear and sharp, then so will the "blow up." However, the larger image will lose some accuracy, because the formulas applied to blow it up may not exactly duplicate what would happen if the actual subject matter of the image was made proportionately bigger (blew itself up, so to say).

Rarely is a picture sent from stored image directly to paper. Even the camera manufacturers themselves include some kind of software with the product, for "retouching," creating albums, etc. But mostly, that stuff's pretty lame. Unless you are already a pro with Photoshop, get a copy of Serif PhotoPlus (www.serif.com) which does just about everything Photoshop does. There's a free version at www.freeserif.com so you can try it out. This stuff will not only do the usual color balancing, contrast, etc., but also will convert to various file formats, so you can output commercial quality work.

If I were going to buy a new digital camera, the way I would do it is to select FIRST on camera optical quality and features without regard to megapixels. THEN I would look at pixels and THEN a target price.

Good luck!

Answer 3

You should figure on at least 180 dots per inch when printing. Anything less and you'll notice the pictures start looking grainy. A 6 mp picture is 2000 X 3000 dots, and will give you reasonable 11"X17" pictures. An 8 mp camera will give you prints at that size that are slightly better in quality.
Printing at more than 300 dpi is waste: assuming the printer can handle more than 300 dpi, you won't see the difference.
On poster size prints, you can drop the dpi standard to 150 dpi or even as low as 100 dpi since people don't scrutinize pictures that closely, and besides, your ability to focus the camera properly at that magnification starts to have more influence than the camera's resolution.
Since you may want to crop a picture before printing it, some extra megapixels on the camera is not a bad idea, but anything over 10 to 12 mp is rather ridiculous.

Answer 4

Higher the mega-pixels the better. A pixel is a very small square or rectangle. This is pixel. 1 pixel is a million dots/pixels per inch. So, 2mp is two million. And 7 is seven million. So the more pixels in an inch the smaller they are, making better quality. See, if you take a picture of a ball. If you look at the pix it looks round. But, if you got real real close you would see little boxes all the way around the outside. Therefore, it can't be exact to the size of the ball either. With, seven mega-pixels the pixels are smaller creating a more exact picture. And better quality. If you edit your pixs alot your going to definetly want a 7 or more mp camera. The edit will look more real, with the photo, but this also depends on wether it's a good program or not. Then, you have the quality of the pixs. Which is the quality of each pixel. And the size, like 1280 x 960. That's how many pixels long and wide it is.

Answer 5

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.

I have a few photos on Flickr to include in a discussion on how many pixels are enough. Go to my page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/ Near the top, click on "tags." In the "Jump to" box, enter the word "Pixels" and then press the "GO" button. Some of the pictures are from a 4 MP or even 3 MP camera, showing you what you might expect without any cropping. I think they are quite acceptable. Some of the pictures are from a 10 MP camera (the swan and the pansies), showing the value of having those large images so that you can crop a smaller image out of the original picture and still end up with a satisfactory image. There is one VGA picture, just to show what you could expect from 640 x 480 pixels - not much.

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 included in the camera. (See http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04/476181751/
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.

You can go there and click on "Buying Guide" and then "Features Search" to specify how many pixels you want to look at.

You can also go to http://www.steves-digicams.com/default.htm and click on "Our reviews," where you will find catagories of cameras arranged by pixel count.

Answer 6

Megapixels aren't as important as the physical size of the sensor.

A 3-megapixel DSLR will give you a better image than a 10-megapixel ultracompact, especially in low light.

This is because the larger sensor has a much higher signal-to-noise ratio.

The images are cleaner to start with and require less postprocessing noise removal, which robs images of detail.

To see this demonstrated graphically, go over to www.dpreview.com and look at the camera tests.

Hope this helps.

Answer 7

6 megapixels would be sufficient. Go to Website dpreview.com for camera reviews. Or Steve's digicams. A testing organization for you would be helpful such as Consumer Reports where they showed back in Nov'06 that SOME cameras with 4 megapixels produced a better image than ones with 6 and 7 megapixels when enlarging 8X10. A bunch of MPs is not the whole story.

Answer 8

If money is no problem, I would go for a higher megapixel camera with good optical zoom, maybe 10x.

Answer 9

Mathematically, here are the required megapixels for each print size and the pixel quality desired. !50dpi is a very acceptable print, whereas 300dpi is a high quality print.

Megapixels for each resolution
Size (in)_150 dpi__200 dpi__300 dpi
4x6_____0.5_____1.0_____2.2
5x7_____0.8_____1.4_____3.2
8x10____1.8_____3.2_____7.2
9x12____2.4_____4.3_____9.7
11x14___3.5_____6.2_____13.9
12x16___4.3_____7.7_____17.3
13x20___5.9_____10.4____23.4

Answer 10

I AGREE WITH TOMTOM!