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September 18, 2006

photography

When will the megapixels stop?

Posted Sep. 18, ’06, 1:46 PM PT by Scott Silverman
Category | Photography

Canon PowerShot A640Canon has been busy doing a little bit of pre-photokina work. If you cruise over to the Canon Powershot website, you will notice several cameras with a bright red NEW banner pasted over their top. These new cameras are most certainly cool, but I begin to question the necessity and practicality of their features.

As of today, seven of Canon’s consumer digital cameras have over 7 megapixels of resolution. (A few have 10 megapixels, and one has 8.) Where is the digital camera market going with all these megapixels? When will the madness come to an end? Seven (or ten) megapixels of resolution is just not necessary. No average consumer needs that much resolution, as most people don’t even print their photos (and if they do, 4 megapixels is plenty to crop and print). Not to mention the often forgotten characteristic that the more megapixels your camera has the bigger your photos will be. Hard disk space is rapidly becoming more and more scarce as laptop hard drives struggle to keep up with today’s digital media.

So Canon has left me confused today: when will consumers catch up and realize that they don’t need 8, or even 6, megapixels on their digital camera. It’s only hurting them in the end. And to Canon: why not try developing some other features of your cameras, such as better lens technology, smaller sizes, and more manual features?


7 Comments

Henry said:

Being able to zoom a lot after the picture is quite nice. I use a 6 MP camera (prosumer), and am upgrading to a 10MP (consumer) and with the 6MP camera I still sometimes end up with insufficient resolution to do everything I'd like.

Better lenses would be nice, but cameras are small enough already. Some people will like manual features, but other people will be distracted or confused by them.

September 18, 2006 2:33 PM
kdo Author Profile Page said:

bravo!!! thank you scott for saying this because not enough people are. but the simple answer to your question, is that consumers are naive and simply don't know better. want to know the most popular point and shoot camera amongst pro photographers? (and yes, pro photogs do use point and shoot cameras). its the Fuji F30. why? because it has the best low light (high ISO) capabilities of any little camera out there. but consumers don't care about it because its only a measly 6 megapixels. megapixels have little to nothing to do with actual image quality. unfortunately though, that doesn't sell cameras. BIG NUMBERS sell cameras because its all about marketing when it comes to making money in the business. its also because a lot of digital cameras are bought by men and its the same old penis game of whose is bigger (zoom and megapixel wise). but does it take great photos under a variety of conditions?? who cares!! its got 10 freakin' megapixels!!! whatever....

September 18, 2006 3:45 PM
Michael Long said:

Just because you have no need for them doesn't mean they're not needed by someone, or that you're not going to need them yourself in a particular situation.

I'd also call attention to the fact that just because 10MP is the maximum resolution there's not need for you to always shoot at that resolution. I often use my 11MP camera at 3MP for snapshots and non-critical work.

September 18, 2006 3:58 PM
Andrew Robulack Author Profile Page said:

That's rather a simplistic view of what an increased megapixel rating is good for, actually. For example, one terrifically great use of more megapixels is the redunction of noise at high ISO settings in low lighting conditions, which would really define one of the most common uses of consumer-grade cameras.

September 18, 2006 4:44 PM
Chris_B said:

I'm reminded of the quote "640KB should be enough for anyone".

September 18, 2006 6:55 PM
Juha Haataja said:

The real problem with the increasing resolution is that the lenses are not getting better at the same rate. Having 10 MP in a consumer camera is waste, because the lens doesn't resolve enough details for the sensor.

But having a good lens with a 10 MP sensor would be great - every now and then I wish I could magnify a part of a photo to be printed separately.

September 19, 2006 4:52 AM
Martin said:

I totally agree! I'd personally wish more built-in features like better lenses and - this is my ultimate wish - GPS tagging. Higher resolution doesn't necessarily mean better pictures. Besides that plenty of us compress the images before publishing them or sending them via e-mail to our buddies, which might make higher resolution obsolete anyway.

September 19, 2006 11:40 PM

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