Along with new cameras and features, digital photography brings a world of new lingo that we now must learn to be able to work effectively with digital photographs. Everything seems to be measured in megapixels, but what exactly is a megapixel? Let’s explore the world of megapixels while we try to gain an understanding.
Although I somewhat understand myself what it is and how it works, in order to delve deeper into the subject, I contacted my good friend Keith Randall with Ritz Camera for some more information. Basically he helped me understand and reword the knowledge I already have, so I plan to share with you what I learned.
It is somewhat difficult to define exactly what a megapixel is, simply because you have to look deeper. A Megapixel by definition is equal to one million pixels. So instead what you have to ask, is what is a pixel? That is a much easier thing to explain – a pixel is a single point in a graphic image.
Digital images are made up of thousands of pixels. When you zoom into an image, what you see that resembles a tile effect, are thousands of pixels which added together make up one large graphic image, a photograph.
So returning to a megapixel, a mega pixel is equal to one million of these tiny tiles. Obviously the greater the megapixels, the better the overall quality of the picture image is, or so you would think. More on that later.
Many consumers purchase a camera based on a high number of megapixels, but unfortunately megapixels are not the only item to be concerned about when purchasing a digital camera. There are many other factors, and Michele will be discussing many of them in upcoming articles.
Understanding the importance of a megapixel in the quality of your overall photograph is important. However, recently there has been a lot of debate over how important megapixels actually are in photographic images. Many tests have been done, and in theory one would think a camera with 8mp would far outweigh the results of a camera with 3mp. According to these people doing research, that is just not the case.
So I challenge you to do the research too, and try experiments out on your own. I for one, will stick to my thoughts that the higher megapixels result in the better quality images. Period.