Taking shots or recording traditional art

Sounds pretty reasonable, I should get myself better lightnings soon.
I still have the second question. My wonder is, you don't determine how good the camera is based on how much MP it has, right? If that was the case, then my smartphone's camera would be as good as a Canon PowerShot N100.
So how do I determine that, any idea? Sorry for asking =c

It's a bit aged, but I've always used it at 5MP since that seemed sufficient for the quality I wanted while also allowing more images per GB. True higher definition would be determined by a larger CCD with a higher pixel count. Some cameras that advertise 12MP I think use a CCD with fewer pixels and then adjust to 12MP so they can claim that, but they don't really have a CCD with 12MP on it. Here's an example of such a lying camera.

Still, you can't go just by size of the CCD, some are just better than others, even if smaller, but with same pixel count. Lens size and focus, the CCD quality, the program that assembles the pixel info and writes to file, all that has to happen. Best is to take pictures with several cameras and then display on a high resolution monitor. If I was camera shopping today I'd take in my own SD card and snap some photos with several of the demo cameras at the store with annotation of which image was for which camera, then examine them later at home.

That's only 1920x1080 (1080p) so that's 2MP.

Even the new 4K HDTV is just under 9MP so for a time lapse 4K HDTV video, well, you can do the math.
Bob

Crop an area and resize to fit the entire screen. That's when you'll find out who's been cheating on quality. Fair comparison would need all cameras being compared to save to tiff file.

The thing here is that it's a common misconception about camera pixel counts. Lighting gets me the best bang when I think of effort and dollars. Next up is composition, subject matter and post production.
Bob

The budget digital cameras use small sensor assemblies and when they increase the megapixels they have to reduce the size of individual pixels. Tiny pixels put out less light.
That means they will have more noise and reduces the ability to take good pictures in low light.
Indoors you must use flash to get enough light.
Look here:
http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/cameras/digital_cameras

Look under High End, advanced digital cameras.
The S and G series of cameras have fewer megapixels and a larger sensor and a brighter lens
plus manual controls. The manual controls will let you adjust the "white balance" and get white to look white.
Any of the advanced digital cameras will let you adjust white balance.
About 10 to 12 megapixels is about optimal for small cameras.
Phone cameras have sensors smaller than budget digital cameras which means 13 megapixels is far too many megapixels for good noise free pictures in low light. I don't think phone cameras let you adjust white balance.

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