Confusion over digital camera megapixels

Most offer you the option to choose the Megapixel size. So if a 10 meg is way beyond what you need, choose to take your photos at 2 or 3 megapixels.
Check the camers specs to be sure it is an option.

Back in the summer of 2005 , I traveled all the way to Deadhorse, Alaska where the famous Alaskan pipeline originated near the Prudhoe Bay all the way in the North in the Arctic Ocean. I didnt see the Arctic Ocean because the coast is owned by the oil companies . I was told that I had to pay $40 for the privilege to ride in a bus for just 8 miles from Deadhorse to the beaches of the Arctic Ocean, sheesh! I turned down the offer and turned back home . Anyway, The famous 400 mile long Dalton highway linking Fairbanks to Dead horse is fascinating as well as serene. I passed an unique mountain-cliff that is rather colorful for a granite face , I was so inspired by the scenery that I took pixes of it with my 3.2 mp camera. I know that I can get up to 8x10 prints with 3.2 mp, but I ordered a 12x18 print , anyway. The print came and it is pretty satisfactory even though I can see a little pixeling all over it, but you doesnt notice it five feet away. I want a big print not a handheld print so I can put it in a cheap frame and nailed it on the wall. It is still there for my daily inspiration. I am more than happy to send it to you if you want to see it and print it in 12x18 too.

I dont understand why LCD manufacturers can not squeeze more pixels in LCD monitors to match digital cameras. 1080 or 720 line HDTV or 1600x1200 LCD monitors are just jokes!! Never mind HDTVs, but I want a computer monitor that can swallow all the megapixels from my digital camera without having to fake it and squeeze it into one full screen with fake picture viewing apps. Go and make 50 inch LCD monitors (not HDTV) so I can blow out my mind looking at my picture shots from my recent vacations or inside the crawlspace of my home... Be sure to include power saving features like dimming the large LCD monitor at the press of a button or touch screen whatever. (pounding on desk) "I wannt 50 inch LCD monitors (4000x3000) now!!! "

I do not believe that i have every read so many erronous, misleading, illogical, and just plain wrong posts in the entire time that I've spent reading CNET. I do not even know where to begin, so I will not even try. Perhaps the editor can find the time to correct the over 25 completely wrong statements contained in these posts; it really WILL take that much time to explain everything. Furthermore it fascinates me to hear amateurs state that "I could not tell any difference.." or "...and it came out great" when it has been my entire professional experience to find that MOST people couldn't tell a properly exposed, composed, and executed Photograph with good color balance, contrast, s/n ratio, etc. if their life depended on it. I cannot begin to tell of the number of prints I've seen with terrible color balance, faces saturated with magenta or cyan, or people/places/things clipped off, etc. or WHATEVER that has been shown to me and I?ve been asked ?Great shot huh??. So hold your tongue unless you have a clue. Photography is an art, a science, and takes years, if not decades, to master. Being a salesman or taking "pictures" at Thanksgiving doesn't cut it. The fact that people actually use their camera phones for "Photography" says it all. That's like driving a Chrysler "K" car your whole life and discussing racing car air dynamics, engine design, etc., or shooting bottle rockets on July fourth and thinking you could work at NASA. No one would even attempt it, yet for some reason "everyone is a photographer".
I am not being a know it all jerk critic here either. Just don?t talk about what you basically know little about and think that you are an expert, or post answers to complex questions that you do not have the knowledge base, experience, etc. to answer correctly; it does everyone a disservice. I also am not saying that ?smart-phone cameras? or ?point and shoots? don?t have a perfectly valid place in our lives. They are fine, and most likely the proper choice, for a lot of people given what these individuals use them for, or want to do with them. On the other hand, just because ?A? can have the endpoint of a visual reproduction/experience and so does ?B?, that does not mean both are agents of ?photography?. Perhaps we should be using the phrase ?pictures?. The same goes for driving to work versus racing at Daytona; just because an automobile is involved in both does not make them even remotely the same experience. For each his/her own, to have fun and fulfill a purpose, and the question was about megapixels, which is like asking about ?horsepower? in an automobile to extend the analogy. Horsepower doesn?t mean much if chassis design, transmission, tires, suspension, and on and on are also simultaneous discussed, and also if the intent of use is also discussed as to whether horsepower is being analyzed from a race car perspective or from a drive to the local store perspective.
So essentially the base question was inappropriate; no answer would suffice without getting into sensors, lenses, and on and on. Perhaps better if it was asked ?I need a camera for the purpose of _____. What should I look for? Then because the question was well thought out and logical all the answers contemplated would probably have made more sense. For example it is far easier to answer what is good for snapshots of one?s friends partying or what is good for a once in a life time vacation, with additional knowledge of that persons experience, ability to acquire more knowledge and apply it appropriately, etc. If we do not know what the original questioner wished to use their camera for then it is impossible to give them a qualified, dignified, intelligent answer.
Sincerely,
radwjw

radwjw

You are obviously a highly skilled proffesional photographer.

In your post you said "Just don?t talk about what you basically know little about and think that you are an expert, or post answers to complex questions that you do not have the knowledge base, experience, etc. to answer correctly; it does everyone a disservice."

Where were you when the question was first posed?

I see nothing wrong with a teenager taking advice on driving from a 30 something person who has driven 300,000 miles; even though some people believe that a person has to drive at least 750,000 miles in cities, mountains, hurricanes, and blizzards, to be truly qualified to know about driving.

I see nothing wrong with the newlywed taking advice on cooking from a 30 something house wife who has only been cooking for her husband for 12 years; even though some people believe that a person has to have cooked for at least 100 people a few thousand times before they are truly qualified to know about cooking.

I see nothing wrong with a person taking advice from a person who has grown a vegetable garden for 25 years, even though some people believe that a person must have managed a 10,000 acre farm to truly be qualified to know about growing vegetables.

There probably were some errors I saw some points that I questioned, and one of my definitions of a megapixel was questioned, however the possibility of some less than perfect information in this forum is still better than the void of information which gets filled through this forum.

I am sure that some of the people who are reading the posts (many read but never post)may have been wondering if a 10 megapixel camera was worth paying 8 times as much or just 2 times as much as a 5 Megapixel camera to replace their first digital camera which was 320 X 240 or 1 megapixel.

NOW IF YOU CAN CORRECT some of the incorrect statements you might be able to help some people who desire a higher level of knowledge about photography.

You said in your post. "Photography is an art, a science, and takes years, if not decades, to master." Do you believe that a 27 year old mother of a 2 year old child has no business taking photograps of her child, or do you mean that taking such pictures is something other than photography?

The original question was merely regarding an adequate definition of "mega-pixels".

People have added OPINIONS regarding lens, light quality and other facilities or options that may be available on certain cameras.

I do not class myself as a "professional", although I can go through six rolls of film very quickly, and even the "professionals" will admit that it can take dozens of shots to get the desired result--this is where "art and science" come into it.

There is a photo of Ian Thorpe (Australian Olympic Swimmer) taken from underwater showing the bubble of air surrounding him as he dives into the water. In the end a high-speed movie camera was used, and of thousands of frames, ONE was selected to become the photo.

Perhaps the realms of photography are diverging like other art forms. I wouldn't hang a Picasso on my wall if it were given to me free.

I have attended many weddings and taken photos (just as another guest) and then been told by the couple that my photos were better than the employed "professional". I have one particular photo taken with a "happy snap" camera, so the color isn't great, but the actual image has people gasping in awe, "How the hell did you take that?" to which the answer is, "I was within six inches of being run-over by the train."

While at University in 2003, I did some video work on a Canon DS-1, the first Mini-DV that they released in Australia. The person wanted about ten minutes of footage to which he was to add some digital animation. The shooting ratio was about 3:1 (i.e., only 2/3 was discarded--if the sound had mattered, this would have been much higher). Hollywood productions can have a shooting ratio that exceeds 20:1. The student was happy with the product because it was only "background" as far as he was concerned, (brag) but the tutor was so complimentary of the "cinematography" that he had to track me down and congratulate me personally. (/brag)

So in the end, it is only OPINION.

Mega-pixels is a technical component of the equipment. Whether the final product is a "photo" or a piece of "art" is dependent on the user's knowledge, experience and EYES.

radwjw, photography is subjective. Taking pictures is like wax fruit ~ they are merely life-like!

I do understand where radwjw may be coming from. He has obviously spent a lot of time in photography and knows what he is saying and doing. One possible answer to all this is that he may have forgotten how confusing this photography is to some people. For example, I have a daughter who is a whiz in math. She can do stuff in her head that we have to do with a calculator. Sometimes she has a hard time understanding people who struggle with lower math. I say this might, I say might, be part of the struggle we are having here.
As one person has suggested I would approve that he take perphaps 3-4 of the 25 things he says is wrong and describe those issues. If other people are interested then they can contact him personally if they is what he wants. It know this may take up a lot of his time which he may not have so that would be a decision he would have to make

Relax a little. If you see some obvious mistakes, then correct them and give some constructive comments. Putting someone down is never good criticism. "Not knowing where to begin" is not a good excuse for not helping someone, it just means you don't even want to try. A lay person may not know how to ask a question but a good knowledgeable professional can always find some way to teach and guide that person.

Photography is more an art than science but it has become more technical with digital photography. I think most visitors for CNET forums/blogs are lay people who struggle to understand the basic technical info and jargons. There are a lot of info in internet, some good ones but certainly a lot of junk, and they can be confusing. Most of us are using the camera to make a family memory book or archive, not really to sell photos as an art work. Reading a review about a slightly better performance in one camera compared to another brand may mean something to a professional who needs that slight edge, but may not be a wise way for a lay person to spend the hard earned money. So having a forum like this can sometimes help to address some of the issues that matters to a lay person, ie. a lay person may understand what another lay person is going through better than an advanced pro.

Most people spent too much time getting hung up on these technical trivia instead of learning the right techniques. In the end most of these technical trivia, whether accurate or not, do not really matter or change one's photography much. This is because the camera merely records the image. It is the photographer who takes the photo. A meticulous photographer will continue to have brilliant photos whereas a careless photographers continues to have bad photos no matter which camera they use. Fortunately most bad photographers don't care or know about their photographic mistakes. For those who care and know quality will continue to learn and explore their techniques. I think most people who come to this forum at least want to be better, so be nice.

radjw, I see you have made one post in this whole thread to tell us we are all wrong, or something to that effect.

Raading that, I was looking forward to some enlightenment. But no, just complaints from the answers down to the original question being somehow wrong. Only complaints.

So let me get you started. Way back on page 2 of this thread, I made a minor correction to a statement regarding Depth of field, with an added explanation of DOF. How exactly was I wrong, and please provide the correct explanation of DOF.

One does not delve into photography based questions
with a simple answer - I believe you are correct in that regard. But there are ways to clarify and discuss the issues. That's what we are doing here. If you cannot give an answer to a question that will make it clear to the asker, then it might be good to look elsewhere for who is at fault.

That is the ultimate odd thing about your post. You come in at this late point, and the short paraphrase of your post is:

Most or all the posts have bad information.

Most people are too simple to appreciate a good photographh.

If you're not an expert, keep your mouth closed.

The original question was bad.


But you offer no help,only criticism. As a Photography pro since 1979, and happily embedded in the digital world now, I have some advice. You don't want to look like the know it all photographer who sets themselves up as some sort of lord over the plebes. And you're kinda sounding like that now.

So why don't we back up and give a try at correcting some of the errors given in these pages. Identify them and correct them.

Way back in my first post, I suggested the OP should get max-res shots from each camera of interest while in the store and then view them at home on the computer to get the actual pixel dimensions and see which gave the preferred result.

At the last wedding I attended, I only had one 16MiB card, so I was shooting at 640 * 480. They look great on the computer, but when you zoom, they turn into @#$%. I now have several 1GiB cards so I'm shooting at "4 megapixels" which yields an image of 2272 * 1704.

There was also much discussion about chip size and someone suggested a full 35mm size chip to fit into the back of a standard film SLR--the earliest prototypes actually did this, but reading the data was so slow that you could only take photos of static items.

Astronomers use very large chip arrays on their telescopes, but the chip has to be liquid-cooled--and that is the drawback to larger chips being more light sensitive: they use more power.

When it comes to the average 35mm SLR film camera, most people do not realize that exposure time is NOT full frame, but governed by the distance between TWO shutters that act like blinds. The exposure knob governs the distance. The opening shutter is released then followed by the closing shutter. So a high-speed is actually a "slit" passing across the film, e.g., 1/250 sec might be like this:
||
||
||
||
1/100 sec:
| |
| |
| |
| |
1/25 sec: (flash)
| |
| |
| |
| |
Flash is slow enough so that the full frame is open at the time the flash goes off.

And if you're really stable (or using a tripod) and go for 1 or 2 sec exposure, you will hear the two shutters "click" seperately. I have done this hand-held with a nice solid and heavy film SLR in low light conditions where flash was not permitted and achieved "acceptable" results for the purposes they were taken. Unfortunately that camera has been stolen. So when I'm ready to go out and buy a Digital SLR, I'll be making sure it has a MANUAL IRIS, not an electronic impersonation of one.

So for those who have a film SLR, set it to medium speed (say 1/100 sec), point it at the ground and swing it up to the sky. During the vertical swing, operate the shutter. You will get a very interesting result. I have a photo of a house taken from a moving train. The house is perfectly sharp and clear. Foreground and background show the rotation of the camera as it stayed aimed at the house.

This is where chip size matters, the larger the chip the longer it takes to read out the data WHICH MAY HAVE CHANGED during the read-out process. I reasonably believe that digital SLRs send a lock-pulse through the chip so that data remains unchanged until readout is complete. If I'm wrong, then they should have this feature--as should any decent digital video camera.

Seeing that my displayed post has extra spaces deleted:

1/250 sec might be like this:
||
||
||
||
1/100 sec:
|__|
|__|
|__|
|__|
1/25 sec: (flash)
|________|
|________|
|________|
|________|
Flash is slow enough so that the full frame is open at the time the flash goes off.

Hopefully that is more helpful!

I come to this forum to learn. Yes I do filter some information in my attempt to resolve conflicts.

Before I read this topic, I knew that other factors effected photo quality (not picture quality but photo quality) but believed that the resolution (or megapixels) had by far the most effect. in the same manner that a 1200 DPI scanner will give a clearer image than a 150 DPI scanner will, especially under magnification.

I now know better. It seems thaty you can help us ( I appreciate the value of a pro.)

Okay, one of the first things, some have noted that Megapixels could be misleading. And How!

While Megapixel count is one of the measurements of potential image quality, it isn't everything. As important is the sensitivity of the sensors, the color linearity, and the noise level.

Why do we hear about megapixels? Because it's a quick number, and higher is kinda better.

Here's a little known bit of info. In there early days of digital cameras, there were a few cameras that took a picture , then doubled it within the camera so they could say they had a larger MP count. If I can find which one that was, I'll post it.

The lens is always important.lenses.depending on the lens in use. A small sensor will need a correspondingly short focal length lens in order to have a so called "normal" image. Very roughly speaking that normal image would be what the eye sees normally. On a 35 mm camera, 50 mm is called normal. In real life, that 50 mm is a little short. My eyes match the image between 65-70 mm, which is pretty normal.

This means that the tiny sensor on say cell phones will need a very short focal length lens. It is very difficult and expensive to make quality lenses at this length both optically and mechanically. Optically, very short fl lenses tend to distortions, and mechanically, it is hard to make Iris control. This leads to electronic control in many cases, and the resultant images tend to have the same "snapshot" look.

Color linearity. This one has a lot of symptoms, but I'll give my experience.

My original Professional Digital camera was a Nikon D1. It was a poor buy at 2.5 MP, and had some color issues, and a fair amount of sensor noise. We're talking a 5K fully professional camera that was hopelessly obsolete within a year. Anyhow, it's color issue was that under most circumstances it was pretty fair, but with people it had an issue. For portraits, and only some, skin tones were awful. While dark skinned folks would photograph just fine, some light skinned people would show an odd magenta/bluish cast. Problem was, fixing it was not just removing blue and magenta, because the rest of the picture would go kablooey. you had to use Photoshop, and work only on the red channel to increase red, and add a little green.

Noise was an issue. I used to make multiple long duration shutter with short duration flash "Pops" with gels in the studio with film cameras. Couldn't do this with that D1, because the longer you let the shutter open, the more noise you would get on the final image. You could in principle make a second "dark" exposure where you kept the shutter open with no light on it, and use that to remove the noise by subtracting it in Photoshop, but it was a real pain, and didn't work all that well.

My latest digital camera is a Nikon D200. A major improvement. It is a "prosumer" model, but I'm not putting any more money into a titanium frame and all the other professional accouterments until the digital camera market stabilizes. It's a good strong camera otherwise.

So, what does this mean for most folks?

Cell phones are going to be hard pressed to make a good controllable image, regardless of MP size.

Megapixel differences are more pronounced at the lower range. The difference between 2 megapixels and 3 is much greater than the difference between 10 and 11 Megapixels. It's a math thing, where filling up the space takes a lot more pixels as the pixel sizes increase.

The point and shoot type cameras are much better, but they do suffer some from that short focal length lens issue. But in general, they are not too bad. I do own one.

And just to make sure about that focal length issue, it's a problem of distortion and image control, not depth of field. Despite what we've been told, if we take two lenses, a long fl lense, say a 100 mm lens and a short one, say 10mm, and take two pictures at the same F-stop (iris opening) and if the main subject is the same size in each picture, the Depth of field will be the same. The pictures will have a different "look" but DOF will be the same.

Depth of field and it's control is probably the least well understood factor for most folks.