Digital cameras forum: Confusion over digital camera megapixels

Most offer you the option to choose the Megapixel size. So if a 10 meg is way beyond what you need, choose to take your photos at 2 or 3 megapixels.
Check the camers specs to be sure it is an option.

Megapixels are not what make great pixels. The issue is how many pixels did you squeeze into a sensor. That is why proffessional cameras are so big, so that they can have big sensors and have less pixels per square inch. This is a very exciting season for cameras because the "big" players are finally fessing up to this. Some of the best digital cameras like the Cannon g11 have LESS megapixels than their predicessor! Great cameras include the Cannon g11, the Cannon s90 and the Panasonic lx3 all are 10 megapixel cameras with relatively large sensors.

I have a Sony v1, 5MP, loaded with all sorts of goodies, kind of semi pro pocket cam. Tho frustrating at times is an excellent camera, great results in good light, has an infra-red fnxion. When taking images always at 5mp, I compose, get lighting right, then shoot at little to no zoom, then I edit in cam before loading to comp. This is where the mp plays its part...edit in camera before transfer using the camera's, not the computers zoom. Camera has facilty to save as is or at lower resolution. Go on, try that and see if works for you. Higher MP do have a funtion, and that is it.

Digital cameras have not reached their limit on the number of pixels they can pack onto a sensor chip. Hasselblad has the new H4D-60, the first model in this new series, features a 60 Megapixel medium format sensor! It is film camera quality at any size format, but of course it will cost you. The "old" Hasselblad CF-39 MS Multi-shot 39 Megapixels Digital Camera is a steal at $42,995.00! But Canon makes some great DSLR cameras with fantastic senors that are 12 mega + pixels that will do a wonderful job for anyone professional or amateur. Sensor, lens quality, and ease of use should be your considerations. Fuji makes fantastic 10 and 12 mega pixel DSLR-like cameras that do a wonderful job without packing around all those lenes! Olympus, which I use, makes some great DSLRs that are way cheaper than Nikons or Canons but they use what is called a four-thirds sensor for less distortion, weight of lenses, and better pricing. The newer models do not suffer from the noise problems the older ones did and the anti-shake is built into the camera and not the lenses like Canon. Whereby Canon lenses can cost a lot more for the anti-shake higher grade lens. The Nikon D40 6.1 or the D60 10.2 megapixel camera takes absolutely fantastic shots and they are both very inexpensive and easy to use. You can still get them in "kits" with several lenses for under $500.00!

You are obviously a highly skilled proffesional photographer.

In your post you said "Just dont talk about what you basically know little about and think that you are an expert, or post answers to complex questions that you do not have the knowledge base, experience, etc. to answer correctly; it does everyone a disservice."

Where were you when the question was first posed?

I see nothing wrong with a teenager taking advice on driving from a 30 something person who has driven 300,000 miles; even though some people believe that a person has to drive at least 750,000 miles in cities, mountains, hurricanes, and blizzards, to be truly qualified to know about driving.

I see nothing wrong with the newlywed taking advice on cooking from a 30 something house wife who has only been cooking for her husband for 12 years; even though some people believe that a person has to have cooked for at least 100 people a few thousand times before they are truly qualified to know about cooking.

I see nothing wrong with a person taking advice from a person who has grown a vegetable garden for 25 years, even though some people believe that a person must have managed a 10,000 acre farm to truly be qualified to know about growing vegetables.

There probably were some errors I saw some points that I questioned, and one of my definitions of a megapixel was questioned, however the possibility of some less than perfect information in this forum is still better than the void of information which gets filled through this forum.

I am sure that some of the people who are reading the posts (many read but never post)may have been wondering if a 10 megapixel camera was worth paying 8 times as much or just 2 times as much as a 5 Megapixel camera to replace their first digital camera which was 320 X 240 or 1 megapixel.

NOW IF YOU CAN CORRECT some of the incorrect statements you might be able to help some people who desire a higher level of knowledge about photography.

You said in your post. "Photography is an art, a science, and takes years, if not decades, to master." Do you believe that a 27 year old mother of a 2 year old child has no business taking photograps of her child, or do you mean that taking such pictures is something other than photography?

radwjw, photography is subjective. Taking pictures is like wax fruit ~ they are merely life-like!

Relax a little. If you see some obvious mistakes, then correct them and give some constructive comments. Putting someone down is never good criticism. "Not knowing where to begin" is not a good excuse for not helping someone, it just means you don't even want to try. A lay person may not know how to ask a question but a good knowledgeable professional can always find some way to teach and guide that person.

Photography is more an art than science but it has become more technical with digital photography. I think most visitors for CNET forums/blogs are lay people who struggle to understand the basic technical info and jargons. There are a lot of info in internet, some good ones but certainly a lot of junk, and they can be confusing. Most of us are using the camera to make a family memory book or archive, not really to sell photos as an art work. Reading a review about a slightly better performance in one camera compared to another brand may mean something to a professional who needs that slight edge, but may not be a wise way for a lay person to spend the hard earned money. So having a forum like this can sometimes help to address some of the issues that matters to a lay person, ie. a lay person may understand what another lay person is going through better than an advanced pro.

Most people spent too much time getting hung up on these technical trivia instead of learning the right techniques. In the end most of these technical trivia, whether accurate or not, do not really matter or change one's photography much. This is because the camera merely records the image. It is the photographer who takes the photo. A meticulous photographer will continue to have brilliant photos whereas a careless photographers continues to have bad photos no matter which camera they use. Fortunately most bad photographers don't care or know about their photographic mistakes. For those who care and know quality will continue to learn and explore their techniques. I think most people who come to this forum at least want to be better, so be nice.

radjw, I see you have made one post in this whole thread to tell us we are all wrong, or something to that effect.

Raading that, I was looking forward to some enlightenment. But no, just complaints from the answers down to the original question being somehow wrong. Only complaints.

So let me get you started. Way back on page 2 of this thread, I made a minor correction to a statement regarding Depth of field, with an added explanation of DOF. How exactly was I wrong, and please provide the correct explanation of DOF.

One does not delve into photography based questions
with a simple answer - I believe you are correct in that regard. But there are ways to clarify and discuss the issues. That's what we are doing here. If you cannot give an answer to a question that will make it clear to the asker, then it might be good to look elsewhere for who is at fault.

That is the ultimate odd thing about your post. You come in at this late point, and the short paraphrase of your post is:

Most or all the posts have bad information.

Most people are too simple to appreciate a good photographh.

If you're not an expert, keep your mouth closed.

The original question was bad.


But you offer no help,only criticism. As a Photography pro since 1979, and happily embedded in the digital world now, I have some advice. You don't want to look like the know it all photographer who sets themselves up as some sort of lord over the plebes. And you're kinda sounding like that now.

So why don't we back up and give a try at correcting some of the errors given in these pages. Identify them and correct them.

Seeing that my displayed post has extra spaces deleted:

1/250 sec might be like this:
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1/100 sec:
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1/25 sec: (flash)
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Flash is slow enough so that the full frame is open at the time the flash goes off.

Hopefully that is more helpful!

Okay, one of the first things, some have noted that Megapixels could be misleading. And How!

While Megapixel count is one of the measurements of potential image quality, it isn't everything. As important is the sensitivity of the sensors, the color linearity, and the noise level.

Why do we hear about megapixels? Because it's a quick number, and higher is kinda better.

Here's a little known bit of info. In there early days of digital cameras, there were a few cameras that took a picture , then doubled it within the camera so they could say they had a larger MP count. If I can find which one that was, I'll post it.

The lens is always important.lenses.depending on the lens in use. A small sensor will need a correspondingly short focal length lens in order to have a so called "normal" image. Very roughly speaking that normal image would be what the eye sees normally. On a 35 mm camera, 50 mm is called normal. In real life, that 50 mm is a little short. My eyes match the image between 65-70 mm, which is pretty normal.

This means that the tiny sensor on say cell phones will need a very short focal length lens. It is very difficult and expensive to make quality lenses at this length both optically and mechanically. Optically, very short fl lenses tend to distortions, and mechanically, it is hard to make Iris control. This leads to electronic control in many cases, and the resultant images tend to have the same "snapshot" look.

Color linearity. This one has a lot of symptoms, but I'll give my experience.

My original Professional Digital camera was a Nikon D1. It was a poor buy at 2.5 MP, and had some color issues, and a fair amount of sensor noise. We're talking a 5K fully professional camera that was hopelessly obsolete within a year. Anyhow, it's color issue was that under most circumstances it was pretty fair, but with people it had an issue. For portraits, and only some, skin tones were awful. While dark skinned folks would photograph just fine, some light skinned people would show an odd magenta/bluish cast. Problem was, fixing it was not just removing blue and magenta, because the rest of the picture would go kablooey. you had to use Photoshop, and work only on the red channel to increase red, and add a little green.

Noise was an issue. I used to make multiple long duration shutter with short duration flash "Pops" with gels in the studio with film cameras. Couldn't do this with that D1, because the longer you let the shutter open, the more noise you would get on the final image. You could in principle make a second "dark" exposure where you kept the shutter open with no light on it, and use that to remove the noise by subtracting it in Photoshop, but it was a real pain, and didn't work all that well.

My latest digital camera is a Nikon D200. A major improvement. It is a "prosumer" model, but I'm not putting any more money into a titanium frame and all the other professional accouterments until the digital camera market stabilizes. It's a good strong camera otherwise.

So, what does this mean for most folks?

Cell phones are going to be hard pressed to make a good controllable image, regardless of MP size.

Megapixel differences are more pronounced at the lower range. The difference between 2 megapixels and 3 is much greater than the difference between 10 and 11 Megapixels. It's a math thing, where filling up the space takes a lot more pixels as the pixel sizes increase.

The point and shoot type cameras are much better, but they do suffer some from that short focal length lens issue. But in general, they are not too bad. I do own one.

And just to make sure about that focal length issue, it's a problem of distortion and image control, not depth of field. Despite what we've been told, if we take two lenses, a long fl lense, say a 100 mm lens and a short one, say 10mm, and take two pictures at the same F-stop (iris opening) and if the main subject is the same size in each picture, the Depth of field will be the same. The pictures will have a different "look" but DOF will be the same.

Depth of field and it's control is probably the least well understood factor for most folks.