School of Photography Newsletters

 

When you are shopping for a digital camera what is the most important feature you look for? Is it how many exposure functions the camera has? The type of memory card it uses? Is it compact or are you looking for a SLR camera? Whatever the answer to these three questions, the first question you may ask or more notably the first detail you will be told, either through advertising or the salesperson, is how many megapixels the camera is capable of producing. However is this the most important consideration for most amateur photographers?

Just a few years ago this was a very important consideration as digital cameras generally had a very low resolution. Every extra pixel available counted toward the ability to produce reasonably sized images and fine detail rendition. Now even the most basic of compact cameras that have recently hit the camera market has at least 4 megapixels of optical resolution. This is more than enough to produce a decent quality image of up to A4 (11″x8″ approx.) in size.

There are many compact digital cameras now using image sensors that can produce 5, 6 and 7 megapixel images. But is this really necessary, particularly for the occasional snapper who may only blow the dust off their camera at certain times of year? Not really, but there is an advantage to all these pixels for certain uses.

Even though cameras now seem to have more pixels than is needed, there still is the factor of choice in the size a person chooses to enlarge an image or how finely recorded their subject must be. For the serious enthusiast and for professional purposes, the more megapixels the better as this makes the image more versatile, though not necessarily of any better image quality.

So one fact has now changed regarding the image quality of a digital camera. No longer is the pixel resolution the main factor that it was when choosing a digital camera, as they nearly all have adequate resolution to produce a good quality image for most purposes.

We as consumers can now start looking at the other features in a digital camera and give them more consideration when buying. Most digital cameras are now packed with real photographic features that seemed to have been considered added bonuses rather than important features in the camera. Now that megapixels is no longer of too much significance, we can look past the usual advertising indicators and see what these cameras are really made of.