Nothing Really "Mega" on Camera Pixels

After reading a magazine article from September 2007's Speed magazine, I felt the urge to write and share this with everyone. Last 2006, I gave up my handy and slim 2-Megapixel Casio Exilim card-size camera. I bought it for the reason that I love mountain climbing and taking scenic pictures. I envy how good photographers have a very good eye on taking photographs with majestic results. This model used to be one of the latest and slimmest cameras I've seen in the market. As a "wise" techie consumer, I always scout a lot of brands and models for weeks before I finally buy the one I really like. Just as there is the-latest-model race for cellphones, there's the "Megapixel Race" for digital cameras; "the greater the megapixels, the better picture results that you will get" - so they say. Supposedly, just like my personal scientific thesis, better resolutions should mean better & clearer shots. So now, I have my Olympus FE-230 7MP camera at hand. Honestly, after months of taking pictures of my trips, there's little improvement on the quality of pictures. (Am I not a good photographer?) My Olympus camera has a better flash bulb, optical zoom, better memory storage and more scenic option settings; other than that, it didn't drastically made an impact of my photos in terms of Megapixels.

According to the article I read from Speed's Candy Villanueva, pictures taken from a digital camera are made out of tiny dots known as picture elements or pixels. When you refer to your options and settings for your digital camera, you may find your resolution setting like "2048 x 1536." The numbers refer to the number of dots arranged horizontally by the dots arranged vertically. Multiplying these 2 number will result to 3,145,728 square pixels; thus, we have 3.1 Megapixel as the rounded off figure. Comparing this to a 7MP camera, this will only compare 40% increase in linear resolution which is negligible to the naked eye unless you will use a microscope to view your pictures and count the dots. "It seems logical that more megapixels would mean sharper photo. In truth, though, it could just mean a terrible photo made of more dots," says New York Times' David Pogue. Read more about Candy Villanueva's article. She has photo comparisons from various digital resolutions. Just like what she wrote, when I was canvassing for a 7MP digital camera, the salespersons cited that you have the option to lower your resolution setting so that you have more photos to shoot. Testing the settings, I didn't find any difference at 4MP vs. 7MP; it defeats the purpose of getting a 7MP camera, don't you think?

So here's my recommendation: Don't get carried away with the megapixel race fad. If you are a professional photographer, megapixels do matter a lot especially when you edit and print them for wall-size presentation. If you are like me who is fond of taking nice, smiling & memorable pictures of your friends, family & other scenic places, who prints normal sizes for his personal photo print collection and uploads pictures for his Multiply, Facebook & Blogger sites, a simple digital camera would suffice. My general rule of thumb: As long as you like the pictures you take and have a good battery pack, you're good with your digital camera. Don't make the megapixel be the only deal breaker.


(First photo: Summit of Mt. Pulag, Benguet in Luzon, the Philippines using my Casio Exilim 2MP camera. Second photo: Tinago Falls, Lanao del Norte in Mindanao, the Philippines using my Olympus FE-230 7MP camera.)