Unclutterer

1. Posted by Kate Davis - 08/12/2007

   I agree with you completely. We had a 4MP compact camera which we were very happy with. Unfortunately it got broken after a year (an accident with a rock) so it needed replacing. The same camera was no longer available, but it amazed me that no 4MP camera were available either, we had no choice but to go for 5MP.

   I find it difficult to accept that it is now standard to have 7MP in a compact, that is getting close to our digital SLR. Realistically you are never going to take as good pictures with a compact as with a SLR and therefore will not want to print a cropped portion of the picture or to print it very large and therefore need large megapixels.

   I think this is a case of manufacturers offering something that the consumer doesn’t really need.

2. Posted by Ian - 08/12/2007

   I completely agree with you.

   My wife and I just had a baby and were looking for a camera that would satisfy our need to take videos and shoot attractive pictures.

   Eventually we settled on the Canon G3, because it has the ability to use off-camera flash, attachable lenses and we found an inexpensive 4GB SD card which can take over 1 1/2 hours of video.

   We found everything on eBay and came shipped for less than $300, which is much less than we would have spent on any new camera, one without f-stop / apeture / ISO settings.

   Not to mention you can find fisheye lenses on eBay for less than $40! What bullsh*t point-and-shoot can offer that?!

3. Posted by RKB - 08/12/2007

   I’ll respectfully disagree on the megapixel issue — one thing I’ve learned over the years that some of the best photos are those that are ruthlessly cropped. And because we can’t all be great photographers in the heat of the moment, what better way to get that spot-on 4×67 print than to shoot with 8 or 10 MP and crop out half the scene afterward?

   Already this summer — since upgrading from a 3MP point-and-shoot to a 10 MP digital SLR — the handful of most memorable photos are those that were cropped from a much larger scene, but didn’t suffer from the resulting loss of pixel counts.

4. Posted by Matt Turner - 08/12/2007

   RKB. But not all megapixels are created equal. Your SLR has a much larger (presumably CMOS) image sensor which means the pixels themselves are also larger.

   So if you have a compact in the range of 10mp unless you’re shooting under perfect conditions it’s going to be difficult to crop quite so ruthlessly. (This is especially true at higher ISO with smaller sensors)

   On the other hand I would hazard to guess that most consumers with compacts don’t want to make prints as large as those as prosumers with SLRs.(So image quality isn’t quite as essential).

5. Posted by jehb - 08/12/2007

   It really depends on your application. My two main experiences with photography outside of being casual are doing newspaper photography (at a small paper with virtually no camera budget) about six years ago and doing occasional soccer and little league photography at work (nowadays, I moonlight for a company that does entertainment management). In both cases, speaking from the perspective of a relatively untrained photographer wishing to actually use the photos for something other than 3×5 prints, megapixel count really does matter, though there’s no point in getting a camera without a good sensor if you want to use it for ANY application.

   As RKB said, cropping is important. One of the advantages of digital photography is that it no longer takes a huge budget to take photographs like a professional, in the sense that you take a lot and worry later about which ones end up being worth keeping.

   The file size argument is completely irrelevant, and somewhat laughable. If you can afford a digital camera, you can afford a 500GB hard drive, which can be bought now with rebates for around $100 or less if you shop around. If you take more pictures between now and when hard drives double in size again than will fit on that 500GB drive, then either 1) you’re saving way too many pictures, as most of them are probably crap or 2) you’ve fallen out of the range of what would be considered consumer photography, and shouldn’t be looking at point-and-shoot models anyway.

   It makes me sad that I can’t use any of the pictures I took in my first several years with a digital camera as a desktop background at all. Even now, cropping a photo from my current 5MP HP point-and-shoot leaves me with very little room if I want it as a desktop background. LCDs are getting more and more pixels per inch, especially on laptops, and if you’re like many in the creative class, a dual monitor setup is becoming a necessity. 3200×1200 desktops aren’t that uncommon now, and if you want to still have photos that are useful in five or ten years (I assume you do?), you probably ought to plan and budget for expanses in computing technology.

6. Posted by jehb - 08/12/2007

   I think I came across a little bit negative. Take in all of that, and also consider that I agree completely with the statement “megapixels don’t matter at all unless you’ve got a sensor on your camera which produces good image quality at that resolution.”

7. Posted by Rich G. - 08/12/2007

   I agree with RKB. While it’s true my sensor may not be SLR quality with my point and shoot. If I’ve got sub-par sensor AND not enough pixels cropping isn’t an option. I’m an avid point and shooter and want as much flexibility as I can have. More pixels doesn’t always equal clearer crop, but less pixels always equals harder to crop well.

8. Posted by Claudius Coenen - 08/12/2007

   One thing that all of you completely overlook is the fact that your lens do not deliver (nearly!) 12 MPixel. Regular Zoom-Lenses for DSLRs go as high as 6-8 Mpixel in resolution. Veery expensive zooms and prime lenses are the only lenses that actually deliver 10+ MPixel.

   The tiny lenses on compact cameras don’t.

9. Posted by Claudius Coenen - 08/12/2007

   (if you don’t believe me, maybe the resolution-charts over at photozone may convince you)
   http://www.photozone.de/8Reviews/index.html

10. Posted by Aegir - 08/12/2007

    Best to go for the maximum you can afford – your memories will thank you. Contrary to a couple of comments above, many of the lenses on point-and-shoot cameras are actually often very good on ‘prosumer’ versions they are very, very good indeed. It is usually the sensor that isn’t so good in these cases.

    Going for a higher megapixel sensor and setting it to shoot at a lower resolution will often provide a higher quality image with less noise or artifacting. However, I agree with the basic tone of many people’s comments, and would advise against being caught in the megapixel trap.

11. Posted by jaz - 08/12/2007

    This camera has a 28mm lens and is very useful for indoor shots when you want to squeeze as many people into the frame as possible. Most cameras in this class are 38mm or 35mm

12. Posted by Anthony - 08/13/2007

    4×6 @ 600ppi is 8.6 million pixels; 8.5×11 @ 600ppi is 33.6 million. Even at 300ppi, 8.5×11 is 8.4 million pixels.

    Even my dektop wallpapers need to be 3.8 million pixels — with an aspect ratio of 8:3. To shoot that on a 4:3 camera it’d take 7.7 megapixel (3200×2400). On a 16:10, it’d be 6.4 megapixel (3200×2000).

    Wanting to do any cropping at all increases the pixel count substantially. Even a 100 pixel margin brings that 4:3 camera up to 8.7 megapixel.

    So what if the photos are 20MB; disk is cheap and capacity per dollar growing rapidly. Newegg says ?$100 for 500GB. That’d be around 0.4¢ per photo. (Backups, of course, raise the price somewhat)

    (I agree fully with the other points people have made. Pixels are worthless if filled with distortions and random noise.)

    All of this assuming, of course, that I typed into my calculator correctly

13. Posted by Brandie Kajino - 08/13/2007

    I recently purchased a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 and I love it! During my research, I found that unless you are printing out 20×30 prints, you don’t need anything over a 7 mega pixel camera. So yes, save space on your PC and get something that works for your needs – not keeping up with the Jones family.

14. Posted by Mary - 08/17/2007

    I scratched the lens on my trust old digital camera a few months ago and finally gave in and bought a new fancy one from the same manufacturer. I was happy with the pictures from my snazzy new camera, until I had to use them in a project for work and actually had to look at the pictures close up. Suddenly, I noticed that even pictures in bright sunlight had a lot of noise and grain. Even though there were more pixels, there were fewer good pixels. I sold the camera on eBay and did a more thorough search the second time around. Just because something has more megapixels doesn’t mean you’re getting a better camera.

15. Posted by Adrian - 08/20/2007

    Disk space is cheap and falling. There will be times when you want a high-resolution image, even if it’s only for 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 photos.

    Clutter is even thinking about issues like this.

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