Megapixel Myths and Purchasing Factors

After conducting a lot of research before purchasing my latest digital SLR I have come across several interesting facts that help determine a good vs. great SLR.

I found that even though a camera may be high in the mega pixel range it may be severely lacking in resolution. This may be old news to everyone but I hope some find this helpful.

A typical point and shoot camera at 8 mega pixels vs. a SLR at 8 mega pixels have some astonishing differences, wish I knew this a couple years ago. The size of the CCD in a camera is extremely important and should be one of the main deciding points in purchasing new equipment. A point and shoot camera uses a relatively small CCD and although the mega-pixels listed may be high for that camera it is impossible to obtain the clarity that a larger CCD would have in a SLR.

The effective pixels of a camera is also an important factor, many cameras will advertise 8 mega pixels which is the capacity of the CCD for that camera. If you look deeper into the specifications you will come across the "effective" mega pixels, this is how much of those 8 mega pixels the camera actually uses.

Now that I have educated myself on this, what are some of the other things you look for in purchasing new equipment?

Tags: camera, digital, mega, megapixel, myths, new, pixel, purchase, purchasing, slr

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Permalink Reply by Richard Schneider on December 10, 2007 at 11:51am

This is very true, just because a camera has a bunch of megapixels doesn't mean the images will look good at a large size. Thank you for sharing.

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Permalink Reply by pixel41 on December 20, 2007 at 10:08am

A newbie here...
I'd never heard of looking at the size of the images sensor...glad i read this article! So I hopped on some big box retailer sites and had a question or two.

I looked at that site and compared the sensors of regular point-and-shoot and SLRs and it looked like almost all the PaS cameras used CCD, but most ofthe SLRs used CMOS? So can you explain the difference between CMOS and CCD? It says on B#st B#y site that...
"Since CMOS sensors offer comparable image quality capabilities from a much smaller footprint, sensor size alone is no longer a good measure of image quality."

Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks

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Permalink Reply by Richard Schneider on December 20, 2007 at 4:26pm

I'm not sure how long ago this article was written, but it recommends CCD's over CMOS, this might not be the case anymore though. CCD and CMOS Sensors.

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Permalink Reply by Wendy on December 23, 2007 at 7:23am

Hmm, I rarely look at how many megapixels a camera has anymore. It's usually big bigger biggest anyway.
I look for things like image stability, the possibility to save images in raw format, the reviews on chromatic abberation and things like those.

Another thing that's important for me is the feel of the cam itself. I have fairly small hands and I shouldn't have the idea I can't wrap my hand around the thing or will drop it on my toes at any time. Lastly I also look at the sturdyness of the lens-attachment. Mine is made of steel, while there are cams that make em out of hard plastic. I change lenses pretty often, so I don't want anything that might break off or come loose ;)