Don’t Believe the MegaPixel Hype!
Ok, today I want to briefly discuss something that is near and dear to my heart… Pocket size digital camera megapixel wars!
If all you’re doing is taking snapshots to upload to various websites to share with family and friends then you really DO NOT need more than a 6-7 Megapixel camera! One of the big things you will notice is your low light quality will go down if you have a small camera with a very high resolution sensor.
Q: But isn’t a 10 or 12 MP camera much newer and because it has more MP’s it’s better?
A: No!
The resolution expressed in Mega Pixels (millions of pixels) is the size of the image, and has little to do with image quality. If you take a quick snapshot and then need to crop it and blow up an image then yes you want higher resolution and 10+ would be great to work with. If you take mostly well framed shots that don’t need cropping, and don’t blow them up and print them out (who actually makes prints anymore anyways?) then you don’t need more than 6-7 MP.
Q: So why do camera companies keep making higher and higher resolution cameras?
A: To fool you into buying a new one all the time so they get your money.
If you’re happy with your current camera, it takes great pictures, you know how to work it and have no problems with it, then there is no need for you to get a new one! Yes new cameras keep getting faster and have all sorts of interesting features, but most of those features you won’t use or need, with some exceptions.
- Image Stabilization: Very good feature to have in a small point and shoot camera. Helps get rid of blurry pictures forever!
- Smile Shutter or Smile Capture: A gimmick in my opinion. If you want good photos of people, take several of them. If they are posing and not smiling then you’re not doing your job as a photographer.
- Touchscreen LCD: Cool, but be VERY CAREFUL because it can break very easily! LCD screens are very fragile; you can break it just by having the camera in your pocket.
- ISO 3200: Ugh… really? Just don’t even bother trying to use your pocket camera set to ISO 3200, your pictures will look terrible.
… There’s more, but what we want to talk about are the CCD (charge coupled device) which is the part of the camera that captures the image and turns it into a digital signal. It’s a whole long other discussion about HOW that happens, so lets just go this far:
1 megapixel = 1 million pixels, 1 pixel is one sensor on your CCD
Point and shoot cameras have very small CCD’s
A 12MP camera has twice as many sensors on the CCD but is the same size as a 6MP sensor
Would you rather have 12 million tiny little light sensors or half that many that are twice the size?
Take a look at this image of two different 6 megapixel sensors:
6MP Nikon D100 CMOS vs. 6MP Canon SD Series CCD
Which one of these two sensors would you rather have in your camera? Yes I understand you can’t have the Nikon CMOS in your pocket camera, but hopefully you get the idea.
Here is an awesome site showing the fantastic pictures you can get from a 7MP Canon A620 camera: http://photo.net/photodb/presentation?presentation_id=317651 Yes, he’s a professional photographer, but it just goes to show you don’t need a super expensive camera to take great pictures.
Yeah, sure I want you to –> buy your new camera online through us <– (hint hint, wink wink) but only if you really need one.
Don’t buy something just because it’s new or some kid at the store that only knows what’s written on the box tells you “This one’s better, it goes to 11″.
Thomas Drayton,
Owner Darntoothysam.com
