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Friday, February 09, 2007

The Megapixel Hoax

Jackfruit TreeDon't go for megapixels I tell everyone and even had written about it in a tech column that I used to pen for a youth magazine. But given all the guru gyaan and the advertising blitzkrieg that digicam companies have embarked upon, very few people had taken my advice seriously.

About a year later I find a voice of support, from New York Times columnist David Pogue.

"But one myth is so deeply ingrained, millions of people waste money on it every year. I’m referring, of course, to the Megapixel Myth.

It goes like this: “The more megapixels a camera has, the better the pictures.”

It’s a big fat lie. The camera companies and camera stores all know it, but they continue to exploit our misunderstanding. Advertisements declare a camera’s megapixel rating as though it’s a letter grade, implying that a 7-megapixel model is necessarily better than a 5-megapixel model.
"

I own a 4.1 megapixel camera, but I hardly shoot any photos using the highest resolution, most of my photos are shot at 1 megapixel, and the results are as good. In fact a few of my best photographs have been shot at VGA resolution (640X480) and the prints are as clear as the rest. Unless I need a humongous print of my pics (which is a 1 in 100,000 possibility), what would I do with a 10 megapixel camera?

Most of us hardly get prints of our pics and when we do we get at most a postcard-sized print. That's many thousands of rupees of worthless megapixels down the drain. I would suggest that you put your money where it matters - the lens. And no digital zoom please. That's another hoax.

[The accompanying pic was shot at VGA resolution (640X480)]

4 Comments:

dwaipayan said...

exactly!!! the online time I took a print out of A4 size, I needed the highest megapixel images. but otherwise i'm quite happy with the low resolution images. in fact most of my pics are of low resolution. but who cares?


but I do care about this annoying word verification. and if you don't care me caring that, then I will stop caring about commenting in this tea shop.

Soumyadip said...

There has been a surge of spam comments on this blog of late and I wanted only humans, not automated programs to post messages here. Maybe I'll remove it in some time. But then it remains solely my wish.

In The Shadows said...

Higher megapixel gives you larger size of the image. Which when compressed to view on a normal sized monitor, gives a good image. Maybe it works well on computers, as far as I have seen. I suppose its the megapixel + dots per Inch which will give you a good indication of camera image quality.

dwaipayan said...

soumyadip,
:P to ur wish