Look into the window of any camera shop and the labels on the cameras will scream out the number of megapixels on offer. 16 megapixels!!! Must be better than 12 megapixels!!
It’s mainly bollocks. Stuffing more pixels onto a usually tiny sensor doesn’t help, it just makes the resulting photos look more shit than they would have done with less pixels.
The camera I use for sports has a comparatively large sensor onto which have been placed a total of ten megapixels. My god, that’s less than the 14MP Pentax Optio Crappathon announced yesterday. But guess which take the best pictures….
The below was taken with my antiquated 10MP machine last weekend. I had to crop it so it is actually a 6MP image. Now click on it to see the full size image, (straight out of the camera, apart from the cropping).
Sometimes, less is better.
Comments 🔗
2011-03-04| Rayw saysYes agreed and the addendum “Sometimes less is better” is true. Sometimes is the operate word as it you want to print a bloody great wall A1 size poster then more pixels would be better. Of course with like for like technology on the same size sensors more pixels means also more noise and this can be important sometimes (that magic word again). With current modern day sensor technology though I would say 15 MP is about the optimum overall but remember folks that your storage space on your memory cards and hard disks will be much greater.
New ultra low noise technology rumoured for this year may mean higher pixel counts would be possible and practical but personally I would prefer to keep it to <15MP and have the new very low noise ability for those low light shots as rarely do I want big poster size prints.
2011-03-04| Rayw saysOh meant to add, nice photo and a nice bum too :-)
2011-03-04| Spike saysI’ll put my 10MP at A1 against a 14MP Pentax Optio Crappathon any time. More pixels are no use if they are capturing garbage.