Digital Camera Megapixels Explained
Most of the people out there commit the mistake of opting for a digital camera with high megapixels while compromising on the zoom factor, and there are significant chances that you are one of them. If you believe that the quality of your work is determined by digital camera megapixels, you are one of the millions of people out there who blindly follow this megapixel myth. In digital digital photography, megapixels are important indeed, but you don't need a 10 or 12 megapixel camera, unless you are going to make a large copy of your picture and put it on the billboard down the street. In order to get well-versed with the concept of megapixels, you need to understand what resolution is.
Digital Camera Resolution
In simple terms, the resolution of a camera can be defined as the amount of details which it can capture. In digital cameras, resolution is measured in form of pixels. More the pixels, better is the picture quality as it tends to capture great amount of details of the subject. More importantly, images captured by a camera with good megapixels seldom get distorted when enlarged. This is the reason why experts recommended buying a camera with high megapixels when you opt to take pictures which need to be enlarged. While a camera with 640 x 480 resolution will be sufficient for pictures in electronic format (e-mails and uploading on the Internet), you will require a camera with 1216 x 912 resolution (megapixel) for printing pictures. More importantly, capturing pictures with a high megapixel camera will give you the opportunity to enlarge them without distorting.
Megapixels Explained
Unless you are a professional photographer, armed with all the technical knowledge about the subject, you are likely to assume that a camera with 12 megapixels and 4x zoom is better than its counterpart with 8 megapixels and 8x zoom. This, however, is a myth which can make you waste your money on a camera with high megapixels when your actual requirements are different. If you want a camera to capture the memorable moments happening in your day-to-day life, a camera with 10 megapixels will be sufficient for you. On the other hand, if you are planning to pursue a career in photography, you will require a camera with higher megapixel count. More recently, 1, 2 and 3 megapixels are only restricted to camera phones. While these cameras can help you take decent pictures of your surroundings, the printed version of these pictures is more likely to look distorted. For an amateur photographers, cameras with 4, 6 or 8 megapixels is more than sufficient. In fact, the difference in picture quality of 6 megapixel camera and 8 megapixel camera is absolutely difficult to trace. If you are keen on making a career in photography, you can opt for a camera featuring 12 megapixels. At the end of the day, megapixels does play an important role when it comes to printing of these pictures. Digital cameras with 12 megapixels and more are also available, but you should go for them only if you need to take extraordinarily large pictures.
That was brief information about digital camera megapixels, and the role they play in digital photography. When buying a digital camera, you need to make sure that you go through the digital camera buying guide and cross check the technical specifications of the product with your requirements. At the end of the day, how many megapixels you require will by and large depend on your purpose of buying the camera. Lastly, make sure that you give due importance to zoom feature of the camera as this is the attribute of your digital camera which will help you to capture marvelous images, while megapixels will add to the picture quality.
