How many Megapixels is enough?

Have you ever wondered how many megapixels is enough?  Well the answer is….. it depends!  There are a few things to consider.  The photograph’s intended end result is one of the most important factors to consider.  If you are wanting to create your own computer desktops, virtually any camera including cellphone cameras will generate the 3.6MP required to fill even the largest computer monitor.  Printed photographs however up the ante a bit.   Generally speaking, a 4×6 photo only requires about 2.1MP, where as an 8×10 needs about 7.2 megapixels!  That’s a significant difference, and you may wonder, why the big change in the file size?  Printed photos require greater pixel density for the same percieved image quality as what you see on your average 19″ computer monitor.  Since most cameras are 10MP or greater, there’s no problem right?

There is another factor to consider – how your photo is composed when you take it.  Most photos end up being cropped to some degree before being printed.  The size that the subject of the photo, takes up in the photo…  is an important aspect to consider – confused?  Lets look at it another way.  Lets say you’ve just taken a photo of your kids, or your pet dog in the park.  When you go to print the photograph, you realise that there’s some random stranger, or something else distracting in your photo, or perhaps you think should have zoomed in more – no problem you’ll just crop out the distraction right?  Here’s where you can lose a lot of image quality or photo size.  If you crop out 30% of the photo, you also lose 30% of the megapixels in the file, that 10MP master image just became a 7MP cropped image.  You can quickly see how important it is to properly compose your photos.

So remember, you want to shoot wide enough to allow for some cropping, but not too wide or you’ll lose too much image quality when you edit that final image.

Happy Snapping!

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