The King is dead, long live the King . . .

[Steve Burke]

It's not just the lens and the number of pixels that's important but other components, particularly the software. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and so weakness in any one area can let the camera down. That's why looking at field tests of cameras is useful, rather than just going by the specs.

 

Let's face it, most of us don't do big blow-ups of our shots, even after cropping, and so won't notice the slightest difference between say 4 mexapixels and 8 pegapixels. Even on the rare occasions we do make big enlargements, they're probably hung on the wall and so viewed from a distance where any tiny imperfections won't be noticeable.

 

So most of us don't need masses of megapixels, even if the ultra keen and professionals do.

 

One of the few times I do need a lot of pixels is when I crop a picture of some bird or animal taken at long range. Rather than spending a lot of money on a camera with masses of megapixels I opted instead for a 12x superzoom. My Canon S2 has 5 megapixels and goes out to the 35mm equivalent of 432mm focal length. Barring a very slight fall-off in image quality with such a versatile zoom, for this sort of shot it's like having a normal 3x zoom and 20 megapixels!

Edited January 12, 2006 by Steve Burke