Megapixels

[EhJsNe]

I totaly agree with Jaszek.

I have like 5 people on a daily basis that bug me to get a digital camera(and another 3 that get mad at me becasue I dont bring lunches or money who yell at me to stop starving myself and eat instead of getting a camera.) because film is stupid. They use stupid things like saying "well, what if you take a bad picture how do you delete it?" and I get em back with "I dont take bad pictures." so I dont need to delete them (even though I get more bad pictures than good...but all of my pictures are worthy of at least being in a photo album unless i have it out of focus or am trying something new and ruin a picture) with bad refering to not amazing, and good refering to get it enlarged to 8x10, fame it and put it on the wall.

And explain, to an extent megapixxels matter, but once you get to 6-10, you really dont get significant amounts of quality difference (well im using 6-10 as an average amount in cameras. obviously a .3 megapixel camera that uses software to interpolate it up to 1 megapixel so you can get 4x6 prints wont have the same image quality as a 6 megapixel camera) unless your willing to fork out 12,000 for a 36 MP Hasselblad or 30 something thousand for a 50megapixel camera. Which youd be better off using medium format film or large format film.

 

[AlexColeman]

Or just lie.............

 

[Dubious Drewski]

I give this speech almost daily at work. Just explain as simply as you can that it's quality of pixels, not quantity that make a good photo. Mention how a 6Mp DSLR will make a better, possibly sharper large print than a 15MP point and shoot. Explain that Megapixels are (were) only pushed so heavily by marketers because it's much easier to market that single Megapixel number to a layman than it is to try to explain the things that actually matter, like sensor size, ISO capability, lens quality, etc.

 

[tsaraleksi]

The real reason for this myth is that megapixels have been used as a kind of code to understand other qualities of cameras, because up until recently, generally, as the cameras improved they also raised the megapixel count, hence, saying, I want the one with more MPix would be an easy shorthand for getting the newest, best, point and shoot.