Megapixel Myth

Digital camera marketing is all about the resolution. 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, now 12 megapixel cameras are pushed as a requirement for good photos and nice prints. Don't believe the hype.

The best article for technical depth on this subject is probably this one by photographer Ken Rockwell: The Megapixel Myth

Joe Holmes' limited-edition 13 x 19" prints of his American Museum of Natural History series sell at Manhattan's Jen Bekman Gallery for $650 each. They're made on a D70. [6.1 megapixel]

A little more entertaining is NY Times tech columnist David Pogue: Breaking the Myth of Megapixels

It goes like this: “The more megapixels a camera has, the better the pictures.”

It’s a big fat lie. The camera companies and camera stores all know it, but they continue to exploit our misunderstanding. Advertisements declare a camera’s megapixel rating as though it’s a letter grade, implying that a 7-megapixel model is necessarily better than a 5-megapixel model.

But what about when you want to print it really big? He runs a real world comparison test on that very issue:

...We blew up a photograph to 16 x 24 inches at a professional photo lab. One print had 13-megapixel resolution; one had 8; the third had 5. Same exact photo, down-rezzed twice, all three printed at the same poster size...

...Dozens of people stopped to take the test; a little crowd gathered. About 95 percent of the volunteers gave up, announcing that there was no possible way to tell the difference, even when mashing their faces right up against the prints. A handful of them attempted guesses—but were wrong. Only one person correctly ranked the prints in megapixel order, although (a) she was a photography professor, and (b) I believe she just got lucky.

I’m telling you, there was NO DIFFERENCE.

If you fall for the megapixel marketing you'll probably pay too much, may end up with worse noise in your photos as some cheaper cameras do high res poorly, and you'll be dealing with larger file sizes. There's plenty of pros that need high megapixel sensors for different reasons. Odds are you do not. I don't, I love my 6MP Nikon D40 and so does Ken. In fact, he likes it more than the 10MP D40x:

Nikon probably added these needless pixels to the D40x to compete with the Canon Rebel XTi on banner specifications that impress innocent people, but do nothing to improve the pictures or usability. Camera performance has little to nothing to do with megapixels. I also own a Canon Rebel XTi, and I hate using it compared to my D40.