Monday, January 3, 2011

A Beginner Guide : Pixel Count

One of the main ways that manufacturers categorize their digital cameras is in terms of pixel count. What this is is the number of individual pixels that go into making each image. Today this number varies between 1 million (1 Megapixel) to around 14 million (14 Megapixels). A million pixels is abbreviated to MP, so a 1MP camera has 1 million pixels and a 3MP camera has 3 million pixels. Currently most popular consumer digital cameras have between 2MP and 5MP. A 3MP camera can make excellent 4"x6" prints and very good 5"x7" prints. If you intend to make lots of 8"x10" prints, then perhaps a 4MP or 5MP camera would be a better choice. Sometimes two numbers are given, total pixels and effective pixels. Total pixels count every pixel on the sensor surface. Usually the very edge pixels aren't used in the final image. Effective pixels are the number of pixels actually used in the image after the edge pixels have been dropped.
 3MP4MP5MP
Largest Image (typical)2048 x 15362272 x 17122592 x 1944
Print size at 320dpi6.5" x 4.8"7.1" x 5.4"8.1" x 6.1"
Print size at 240dpi8.5" x 6.4"9.5" x 7.1"10.8" x 8.1"
Typical maximum image size vs. nominal Pixel Count. See below for comments on dpi and print size

Credit by photo.net

No comments:

Post a Comment