MP (Mega Pixels)

[jelderkin]

I would love to hear the opinions of others as to what they think the minimum acceptable level of mp's is when they purchase a camera.

As most will know you can only notice quality difference with the human eye at the lower end of the scale but as you get above 8-10 mp's it is very hard to tell the difference in quality with the naked eye.

I personally believe 10mp is the lowest acceptable level I would accept what about you???

I look forward to hearing all your comments

[GeoffWessex]

10Mp sounds about right...... as long as you're thinking of printing, up to around 20"x14", perhaps more. If that's never going to happen, less than 10 is fine..... even 4Mp or less still makes a good enough image on-screen - bearing in mind you'll only need 72ppi and about 1400pixels on longer sides at the most (which is actually only around 1.5 Megapixels)

[rbarry]

Technical advances in digital camera component design has allowed high density pixel imaging sensors to deliver increases in picture quality. Nobody wants to buy a high tech piece of equipment and be informed next year that it's not as good as another brand's newly released model. But that's life!

Advances in photographic technology is in the most part driven by competition. My current DSLR now has nearly twice as many light collecting pixels on the same size image sensor as my previous DSLR, and the ability to shoot in less light thanks to three times the ISO sensitivity. Combined with good glass, I find the greatest advantage this gives me is the ability to crop images without losing the quality I would have lost with my previous camera. I can also make much larger prints from uncropped images and still retain great quality.

Rick.

[messyhead]

I think it really comes down to what you're going to do with the final image. If it's only ever get printed on 6x4, or 10x8 then 6-8MPs will be fine. The quality of the lens will have more of an effect on the final image than the amount of MPs, unless you're going to have large prints.

[jelderkin]

I have carried out survey on various of my sites and always found that most people never print off their photos at home and mostly seem to use digital photo frames or pop into Tesco and use there state of the art pop your memory card in and choose your size machines.

By researching I have also found out that the human eye cannot notice the difference in mp's at the higher end of the scale and the only time it comes into play is when printing larger images the more mp your camera has to offer the better quality your photo print will be.

I guess at the end of the day it all comes down to personal opinions.

[rbarry]

I still contend the ability to crop an image from a high mp resolution exposure is a great asset in maintaining final quality.

[jelderkin]

Thank you all for your response I'm sure this post will help people in the future and be useful as a good reference.

[jet_kit]

Don't fall into the trap of MegaPixel hype. The total pixel count on a sensor is measured by the number of pixels in a row across the sensor times the number of rows, you can increase the megapixel rating by a seemingly large amount with a relatively small increase in the actual resolution. For example; the sensor is approximately 2:3 ratio, so if it's 3,000 pixels per row it'll have 2,000 rows which equals 6 megapixels. You've only got to squeeze another 400 pixels in and the count shoots up to 8 megapixels. Taking the count up to 4,300 gives you 12 Megapixels. This means that for a modest resolution increase of 40% the megapixel count has doubled - Sold to the bloke with more money than sense!
You will achieve more with good glass, a steady hand and careful focusing than you will with a paltry few extra MP.
Think in terms of what you're doing with the images. If you print them at 16" x 20" you're going to stand a metre back to look at it. If you blow it up to a billboard, you're standing 50 metres back. One of my images ended up on a billboard and that was from my old 6MP Fuji S2Pro.

[rbarry]

Fair point Chris, I'm sure your figures are right but I don't quite understand your maths.

As I understand it if you double the amount of pixels you quadruple the MP total. Is that correct?

Following your example, if you were to add an extra 400 rows of pixels to the longer side of the imaging device, you would have to add an extra 266 pixels to the other axis (maintaining the 3:2 ratio) giving a total of 3,400 across by 2,266 high, which adds up to a grand total of 7.7044 MP.

[Cathus]

The required megapixels is roughly equivalent to the amount in the next camera I want to buy (otherwise I'd still be using my 1.2MP Casio QV-8000SX which was my first digital camera, and still works fine as I discovered just this week)