Digital cameras forum: What is the advantage of higher MP camera for regular user?

For example, with my older camera I could frame the shot and get away with even 1 megapixel and get a good shot on paper or web. Today I find myself cropping the shot so it's a good thing I have all those pixels to throw away.

Bob

Megapixels is easy for a layperson to comprehend; more implies better. Sometimes it is, but what gets left out of the discussion is sensor size. I can think of one compact camera that has 20 MP: the Sony RX100. But that's actually not so much, relative to the camera's sensor size. The RX100 has a 1" type sensor, which has four times as much surface area as a typical compact with 14-16 MP.

More megapixels give you more room to crop, and the ability to print poster sized images. Beyond that, there is no benefit for the "regular user" who will only view images as snapshots or on a typical monitor.

Sony just came out with a 18MP camera (TX66).
Way too many pixels for such a small sensor.
Their 16MP sensors were already suffering from excessive noise and over aggressive noise reduction firmware.
The 18MP sensor is worse. They have removed so much noise and fine detail that objects like tree leaves and grass looks more like mush than objects. And there is still too much noise.

Then there is the 12MP Panasonic ZS15 that produces less noise than most point and shoot cameras.
Even at ISO 800 the noise level is acceptable.
The picture quality and fine detail is among the best you will find on a small sensor camera.
All that and a healthy optical zoom too. Priced around $200.

..

Less expensive compact digitals tend to use digital zoom (instead of optical zoom). You lose megapixels when you use digital zoom, as the camera is really just cropping your photo instead of zooming. In addition, lower priced cameras have less zoom, so you will be more likely to want to crop photos that are taken at a distance. An example of this would be when you are a sporting event, such as your child's soccer match, and you take a photo of the far end of the field. The players will look small in the photo with 3x or 5x zoom. So you will want to crop the photo to get a nice close-up shot of the players. Then, if you want to print that photo to a decent size (for a photo book or a poster), then you will need those extra megapixels.

But perhaps the best reason is that the consumer thinks megapixels means a better camera, so manufacturers are trying to outdo each other on megapixel count, while ignoring other features. Add in the loss of the view finder, so that photos may no longer be centered (especially in bright sunlight, where it is hard to see the LCD screen while framing the photo), and you will need the ability to significantly crop while maintaining a decent resolution.