Digital Cameras

October 30, 2003

Basics: A Shutterbug's Guide to Meting Out the Megapixels

How many megapixels you will need depends on how you plan to use your pictures. For e-mail, an image size of 640 by 480 pixels (0.3 megapixel) is usually best: large enough to look sharp on a computer screen but small enough to upload or download quickly. For prints, more resolution is required, and the bigger the print, the greater the difference the pixel count makes.

For prints measuring up to 8 by 10 inches, the difference between shots with two megapixels and five megapixels can be hard to discern. This was not always true, but current digital cameras do a better job of processing the raw data from their image sensors into image files on their memory cards. ("Most people will never, ever need something above three megapixels," said Jon Sienkiewicz, the vice president for marketing at Minolta. "I'll make 8-by-10's all day long from that.")

Z - Other entry by mjh at 10:08 AM | email this

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