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ubermex
January 19, 2010 1:24 PM
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This is great advice. Anything higher than 6 or 7 should be a professional or prosumer DSLR, if you even need it at all.

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TVGenius
January 19, 2010 9:04 PM
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Or at least shy away from the tiny 1/2\" thick cameras that are getting more common. Stick with something thicker and larger like the Canon SX120 (I have the predecessor, the 110 and it's AWESOME).

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gStein_*|bringing starpipe back|*
January 19, 2010 4:59 PM
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although even 6mp is overkill for posting to facebook

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Oranges w/ Cheese hates what Christmas has become
January 19, 2010 1:24 PM
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This would probably explain why my 10MP kodak takes some shitty pictures. I really don't need 3000x2000 rez images though, so I normally tune it down to 7 or 8 mp and get better results.

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FilthyHarry
January 19, 2010 2:19 PM
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Same here, my new 10mp takes crappier pics than my old 5mp. Wish I'd paid more attn.

Question is: What metric am I looking at for a PaS digital cam that is going to indicate better quality of pic?

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Noir
January 19, 2010 2:33 PM
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A good lens (try to stick with canon, sony cameras with carl zeiss and panasonic ones with leica lenses. although they're cheap and crappy, they're better than lenses in samsung, casio or fuji cameras) a not-so-high megapixel sensor and manual controls, since that indicates that the camera is aimed at people who understand more about photography.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q209waterproofgroup/page15.asp

real world tests showing how the low MPix sensor camera beats the pricier model

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FilthyHarry
January 19, 2010 2:57 PM
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That must explain it. my old one was canon powershot A5 (i think. A something or other) my new one was an 80 dollar olympus.

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Chmeeee
January 19, 2010 2:26 PM
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Sensor size and the quality of the glass are the biggies. Of course the former isn't usually quantified and the latter really can't be, so it's not that easy. That's why DSLRs usually have such better image quality than point & shoots, there is a lot more room for a larger sensor inside the (comparatively) large camera body.

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Binaryslyder
January 19, 2010 1:26 PM
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That, and the fact that Kodak never put a lot of stock into churning out quality glass. Back in the late 90's I think some of their lenses were actually plastic (in the sub $249 price point).

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satoru
January 19, 2010 2:02 PM
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I have to agree there. The OP is referring to more of a plateau in terms of the sharpness or quality of the pixels. However just BAD pictures in general is usually caused by whatever cheap optics they put into the camera, and no amount of pixels can fix that.

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Oranges w/ Cheese hates what Christmas has become
January 19, 2010 3:10 PM
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Its a newer cam, I think 2007 or 2006 model, and besides the general fuzziness of the pictures (as described in this article really hits it on the head) its a pretty good cam. Just not any sharper then my old 4mp-er which is a real let down.

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Binaryslyder
January 19, 2010 1:24 PM
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Coming from someone who used to work at Ritz Camera(back when sales people had to actually know their products), I concur 100%. Another issue with the space cramming done in smaller cameras is the shocking amount of noise that you get. Ken Rockwell has been writing about this for at least a decade, so I'll defer to him on the subject. In the broad sense, if you are printing 20x30inch pictures or smaller, 5/6mp cameras are just fine. I've had a 4mp point and shoot and a 6mp SLR for years. The pictures they take today look just as good as what they did five years ago.

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Platypi {Redacted}
January 19, 2010 1:28 PM
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I find the resolution to be secondary or tertiary to other key criteria: speed to shutter (push the button and just keep begging it to shoot the damn picture on these cheap 12 MP monsters), lens quality as discussed, optical zoom (if you even turn on the digital zoom, you are just asking for crap pictures!).

I love the speed of my Canon DSLR, but being able to put a camera in your pocket is definitely attractive too!

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sirwired
January 19, 2010 1:29 PM
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Sensor technology in dedicated cameras is as good as it ever needs to be, resolution-wise. All the action now is in lenses. Too bad Joe Consumer has no way of evaluating lens quality just by looking at the box.

I'm using a five-year-old Panasonic FZ5, through which I've taken thousands of pics. I have yet to see a compelling replacement.

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Binaryslyder
January 19, 2010 1:33 PM
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The z5 is a great camera, in part because it's got optics from Leica in there. The specifics on how much of it is made by Leica depends on who you talk to. Years ago, our Panasonic vendor rep claimed that the lenses were made in Japan at \"the Leica factory.\" Then again, he probably knew as much about Panasonic as anyone with access to \"the internet.\" Still, they always seemed to do a great job on high contrast and high saturation pictures (never very murky or mucky). They have my vote.

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Mr_D
January 19, 2010 1:29 PM
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I don't know if it's possible to avoid 10-12MP cameras - that seems to just be what they make these days. And seriously, file sizes? When a 1TB hard drive costs $99, who cares if poorly lit pictures of your cat are 10MB? That said, he is right - megapixels don't make a camera. My experience is that after 3MP, optics become far more important than resolution. And the brand-spanking newest 14MP camera will probably have better optics than the 6MP from a few years ago.

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cerbie_the_orphan
January 19, 2010 7:19 PM
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I don't care about pictures of my cat. Pictures of circuit boards, car damage, etc., though, I'd like to have some good detail.

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Laura Northrup
January 19, 2010 2:40 PM
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I find it problematic when my elderly aunt sends me 4,000 pixel-wide, poorly-lit photos of her cat. People (friends, colleagues, family members, Consumerist tipsters) think it's fine to just embed those nice 12 MP images in an email and call it a day. Fun fact: if you embed a photo in Gmail just right, it doesn't scale.

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2 replies
January 19, 2010 2:04 PM
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\"And seriously, file sizes? When a 1TB hard drive costs $99, who cares if poorly lit pictures of your cat are 10MB?\"

I agree, but only to the extent that no one cares about your cat, or what you do with your file space.
Where I TOTALLY disagree is the implication that we should all just ignore the trend to waste the space just because media size is increasing.

Constantly increasing storage media size is no excuse to waste the space.
At 10MB each, all you'd need was 103 pictures and you've consumed over a full gig.
As a developer I was taught that the fact that processor speeds are(were) increasing every six months, is no excuse for inefficient code. Always use the proper algorithm for the situation and beat your code into submission until you can get it as efficient as possible.
The same goes for hard-disk space.

But if you honestly feel that way, can I ask... do you also buy super-size just for a couple of fries and throw the rest of the food away, ...just because it's a relatively cheap meal?

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nautox
January 22, 2010 6:27 PM
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I agree, I'm not buying a Lincoln just because it fits in my parking spot :)

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Binaryslyder
January 19, 2010 1:35 PM
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Case in point: I have a 6mp Nikon d70 with a $1,500 17-55 Nikkor pro grade glass. It runs circles around my brother-in laws new snappy Nikon D300 with a $100 kit lens. Circles!

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satoru
January 19, 2010 2:29 PM
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The KIT LENS?! God that's not a very fair comparison. That's like complaining your Kia got beat out by a Bugatti Veryon. They grind the kit lenses from dirt they find in the Nikon parking lots, of course they suck. :)

Lenses were always the crack of the camera industry. All real photographers will end up spending easily 50-100x more on lenses than they ever did on the camera.

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MauriceCallidice
January 19, 2010 6:59 PM
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Actually, I'm pretty sure the Nikon kit lenses are ground from the dirt in the Tamron parking lot.

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The Cheat
January 19, 2010 1:42 PM
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This is all fine and good until you start needing to crop photos and your 6mp photos start looking really blocky quick.

I have a 7 megapixel compact P&S and a 6 megapixel DSLR, my photos look great until I start cropping.

A lot of this hinges on the overall quality of the camera. Canon and Nikon make very good cameras regardless of the megapixel rating but are usually more expensive. The $75 Olympus camera mentioned in the link above isn't going to produce anything worthwhile.

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sirwired
January 19, 2010 2:50 PM
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You can fix \"blocky\" photos from a low-res camera relatively easily with any photo editing program. But if the resolution of the camera is higher than what the lens can support, all those space-sucking pixels just take up space if they can't actually resolve additional detail. They'll either be blurry (cheap lens), or noisy (slow lens.)

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Howie411
January 19, 2010 1:46 PM
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I always wondered what those annoying spots during pictures were I always figured they were dust particles. If you buy a 12 megapixel camera and set it to like 7 megapixel will it fix this issue or do you just gotta buy a lower end camera. I don't think most companies sell under 10 these days.

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satoru
January 19, 2010 2:09 PM
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Setting it to 7MP might make them less obvious, as the JPEG algorithm might smooth out those spots and make them not as noticable.

Spots or if you're into the paranormal 'orbs', in your photos are dust particles in the air. If these spots appear in random places in your photos, then it's air dust. If they appear in the same place, its either dust in the lens or on the sensor.

If you have dust on the sensor or lens, then you are in a world of hurt. It is however possible to crack open the camera, VERY VERY CAREFULLY, and dust spray it off. I had an old Sony camera that was great, but had some annoying dust inside. I found some instructions with pictures and a step by step on how to take it apart online. Do some research first before you crack it open to attempt to clean the dust off, and be prepared for the possibility that it might end up looking worse.

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PsiCop
January 19, 2010 1:47 PM
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It's getting harder these days to find any camera worth buying ... even a point-&-shoot that the camera buffs always say not to buy anyway ... that's not 10MP or more. Right now, using Newegg as a sample vendor, they have only 5 models that are 6.0 - 6.9 MP, and only 1 in the 7.0-7.9 range. That's a total of 6 this guy would recommend ... out of a total of some 200 point-&-shoots available.

That said, I agree there's a \"megapixel myth\" out there and that a lot of naive camera-buyers are going to end up taking substandard pictures. But this particular advice appears impractical at best, and if the trend toward higher MPs continues, may soon be impossible to abide by.

What is the camera buyer to do, then?

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JonStewartMill
January 19, 2010 2:37 PM
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I looked at one camera after another on dpreview.com before I finally settled on the Panasonic Lumix LX-3. I bought it about a year ago and I can't say enough good things about it. From dpreview's conclusion:

The LX3 is an example of a species so endangered that we were beginning to worry it had become extinct - a compact camera that photographers can get excited about. Panasonic has included a large degree of direct control, classy styling and, more importantly, a specification that goes beyond the unthinking 'larger screen and more megapixels' trend.

I've owned several digital cameras since giving up film along with my beloved Nikon FM, but this is the first one that makes me feel like I'm taking photographs not snapshots.

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satoru
January 19, 2010 2:15 PM
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You can try to look at which cameras have the largest sensor size. This is usually measured in 1/x. The smaller the x number, the larger the sensor. For the Canon's at least, most of them are 1/2.5\". The highest end Point and shoot, the IS990 has a 1/1.7\"

So that's one way you can mitigate the megapixels

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jamar0303
January 19, 2010 11:25 PM
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1/2.5? I think I've seen that on some cellphones. Really expensive ones (Sharp SH-06A, I think, if you're looking for it), but still, cellphones. I'm surprised most P&S cameras aren't better.

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Binaryslyder
January 19, 2010 1:56 PM
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Above all, don't allow the pixel count to drive your camera purchase. Let things like lens quality and buffer/shutter times (how many pictures can you take per second) drive your purchase. Let's be clear, buying a 10 or 12mp camera isn't bad; it just runs counter to most peoples opinions. It won't make your pictures better.

You don't buy a car based solely on horsepower. In most cases, horsepower is a consequence of the car you end up with (after size, features, price, and gas mileage drive the sale)

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satoru
January 19, 2010 2:00 PM
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Optics are important as well to the quality of the picture.

But to be honest my old Canon Powershot S30 with 3MP, takes much better pictures than any of the new ones I've bought despite their 10 or 12 MP sensor.

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Binaryslyder
January 19, 2010 2:40 PM
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My s45 trumps your s30 : ) Amazing cameras. I still have mine.

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satoru
January 19, 2010 2:57 PM
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Hahaha :)

I'd use it more but it's just so 'fussy' these days. Seems to have problems with the AF and such.

On a completely side note, my brother in law asked me this \"How do I take non-blurry pictures of my baby son (who is fussy as hell) without using the flash, in low light\". He had a high end Canon point and shoot, but even high ISO and IS doesn't work miracles! :P I just told him to use the flash and get over it. His son isn't going to go blind from camera flashes.

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yankinwaoz
January 20, 2010 1:32 AM
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Have him buy a DSLR and flash unit on top. Point the flash up the ceiling to bounce the light. That way he doesn't have it go off in the kid's eyes.

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shanelee24
January 19, 2010 2:03 PM
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This isn't exactly true. I do a lot of photography as reference for my artwork, I've got a canon g10 and an Olympus dslr. The g10 has 14.7 mp and the Olympus is a 10. I use the dslr for anything I want to process in Photoshop, and the g10 for everything else. The megapixel amount really only has one consideration if your shopping for one, and that is picture size post processing. If you stick to 5 by 8 pics, then a 7 to 10 is fine. If you want to blow your pics up, I suggest looking into a camera with a higher pixel count, otherwise you get distorted pics. A quick google search will tell you what pixel count is appropriate for what size picture you hope to get out of a shot.

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vesper
January 19, 2010 4:18 PM
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My first cam was a Pentax K1000 (made in Japan). I am sure that you realize that back then, we had to know what we were doing with our camera's. But even mistakes could come out \"cool\". I miss the smell of film and I especially miss the smell of darkrooms and the time spent develping pictures.

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baquwards
January 19, 2010 10:32 PM
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I still have one of those in working order. I use the 50mm pentax lens from that camera on my Samsung (made by pentax) DSLR. It gives crazy bokah and shoots really well in low light, I love that lens for taking food pictures! The lens ends up cropping a bit since the sensor isn't full frame like a 35mm, but it does the job well.

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Noir
January 19, 2010 2:46 PM
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if you're trying to make huge prints with a small sensor camera... YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

Yes, every print size has its own recommended resolution, but every format (35mm, medium format, 1/2.3\" sensor, 1.5 crop, full frame) will work out well up to X size and Y distance from the spectator.

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shanelee24
January 19, 2010 7:08 PM
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Very true. But the product being discussed here are point and shoots, and if you do wish to attempt large prints with a pas, you need a higher megapixel count. Especially if you intend to crop. The author of this post is insulting consumer's intelligence by stating that anything above 6 or 7 mp is pointless. This is not always the case.

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YouDidWhatNow?
January 19, 2010 2:08 PM
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The bigger issue that I think should just be a common-sense concern, which people never think about, is what you're going to do with those photos.

...you say you're going to load them on your computer to look at them there? OK, what's your screen resolution? 1280x1024? K, so what's the point of buying a camera that shoots photos at 8000x6000 or bigger?

Oh, and stop sending me 30Mb emails with 3 pictures in them because you're taking 10Mp photos and don't have the slightest clue how to cut them down to a useful size. And while you're at it, stop whining about how long it takes to email 3 pictures from your camera - because the problem is you don't have the slightest clue how to cut them down to a useful size.

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satoru
January 19, 2010 2:24 PM
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Looking at the OP the picture shown is terrible beyond hope. While yes, there is truth to the fact that megapixels are going out of control, but to be honest I think the author overstates the issue with this picture. This camera in particular must be spectacularly bad in every aspect, megapixels being just one part of whatever is wrong with this camera. Other cameras in this range do not nearly have the kinds of disastrous image quality that this one does.

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shanelee24
January 19, 2010 7:13 PM
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I agree, and I would venture a guess by the content of the article that he knows very little about digital cameras in the first place, or he is just insulting everyones intelligence with comments like all your getting is bloated file size. You can crop, and still retain great pic quality, but you may need those buffed up pixel counts for large pictures. A 7 mp camera isn't going to do a 20 by 30 inch picture any justice, and I like having the ability to print these if I wish.

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karan1003
January 19, 2010 2:30 PM
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Does anyone know of any fairly cheap large sensor point+shoots?

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Geekybiker
January 19, 2010 8:11 PM
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Check out Fujifilm's Super CCD cameras. They have an entirely different type of CCD, tend to use large CCD's for compact cameras, and typically have at least a 1 stop advantage over the competition.

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sirwired
January 19, 2010 2:57 PM
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You can usually find the sensor size either buried in the technical specifications, or in quality, in-depth reviews.

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satoru
January 19, 2010 2:35 PM
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This is unfortunately very difficult. Larger sensors are by definition more expensive. Basically, just like LCD screens, the bigger it is the more expensive it is. Bigger sensors are generally reserved for the higher end point and shoot cameras, or the D-SLR range simply because it's difficult to justify the increased cost in the sensor in a low end camera.

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satoru
January 19, 2010 2:38 PM
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I've been eyeing the S90 for quite awhile now. It's a 10MP camera with a 1/1.7\" CCD. Seems to be a good compromise between sensor size and MP bloat. I'm a bit partial to the series only because my old S30 took awesome pictures and was a great 'pro-sumer' camera that was pretty portable. Admittedly it's been difficult to really tease out which cameras to get these days without going to a full blown DSLR

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sp00nix
January 19, 2010 2:52 PM
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I have a 4.2MP cannon, and a new 12MP cannon, the 4.2 beats it in most cases. Even with decent light the 12mp camera appears grainy and only a slight improvement over my cell phone. my 7MP Cyber Shot (one of the bigger ones) Takes the best out of them both with its big *** lense and decent sensors.

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katstermonster
January 19, 2010 3:02 PM
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Spherical aberration....the bane of my existence.

/does graduate work in optics, currently with spherical mirrors.

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brianguyy
January 19, 2010 3:38 PM
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time to switch to cubes? just saying...

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El_Fez
January 19, 2010 3:11 PM
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One easy way around the whole megapixel problem? Shoot film! My new 35mm Canon Rebel K2 camera (with even a moderate lens) is delivering some awesome shots - and for the fraction of the price of bigger, \"sexier\" models of digital cameras.

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JonStewartMill
January 19, 2010 4:30 PM
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But film costs money and processing costs even more. I'd rather pay more up front and know that I can make a thousand photos for the same price as making one.

I was about to type \"I do miss film though\", then I remembered the myriad hassles of using film: buying a roll and then having to shoot the whole roll before being able to change to a different film type (speed, B&W or whatever); forgetting to get the film processed and finding the exposed roll a year later; having the lab ruin the image when they printed it; making a mistake in taking a photo but still having to pay for the print to find out it's garbage...

Nope, I don't miss film even a little bit.


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El_Fez
January 22, 2010 3:48 PM
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But film costs money and processing costs even more. I'd rather pay more up front and know that I can make a thousand photos for the same price as making one.

Lets see, my Canon Rebel XSI and a couple of good lenses has run me - oh, we'll call it a touch shy of roughly two grand overall. The Canon Rebel K2 and a good Tameron lens ran 90 bucks. And the Epson V500 dedicated film scanner ran 140 bucks.

Film - and I mean some nice quality Kodak film - runs 8 bucks a roll (this is putting aside that you can find some solid film for much cheaper, but we';ll highball for the purposes of addition) and developing - that's just the negatives, no prints, mind you - costs about 3 bucks.

So at about 10 bucks a roll, I have to shoot 177 rolls before I spend what I spent on my digital gear. Assuming 24 shots a roll, that's 4,248 pictures. I shoot a LOT of pictures and I'd be *hard* pressed to take four thousand pictures in a year.

I was about to type \"I do miss film though\", then I remembered the myriad hassles of using film: buying a roll and then having to shoot the whole roll before being able to change to a different film type (speed, B&W or whatever); forgetting to get the film processed and finding the exposed roll a year later; having the lab ruin the image when they printed it; making a mistake in taking a photo but still having to pay for the print to find out it's garbage...

Nope, I don't miss film even a little bit.

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SagarikaLumos
January 19, 2010 4:02 PM
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Bingo. I doubt that I shot a frame of film during 2006 or 2007. In late 2008, knowing it was probably dying, I shot a roll of Kodachrome. I've since been shooting very little digital, and I've bought the stuff to load and develop B&W at home. I bought a film scanner, and I can have excellent 13mp or good 3.5mp images if I need to spare space.

I've bought cameras for $10 or less that would put any current digital P&S to shame, resolution wise. My price/performance champion so far was a Yashica T4 that I got at Goodwill on half price day. $1.98.

More importantly, I've been having more fun, too. Trying different films is a lot cheaper than trying different sensors.

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bigd73
January 19, 2010 3:12 PM
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Actually good advice. We have a 8 MP Cannon and it's pictures are better than 12 MP and up pictures that we have been comparing them to. This is the kind of information that needs a sticky for any future camera buyers. We did alot of research when buying our camera and was ready for Best Buy and the likes with their \"Mega Pixels is the only true gauge of a camera's worth\" speech.

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brianguyy
January 19, 2010 3:32 PM
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phenomenal advice. personally I never saw the need for a P&S camera over 6MP anyway. most camera manufacturers these days are like, hey here's 10 megapixels! 12! (who cares? what am I, wallpapering my house with it?)

so this only helps confirm my suspicions.

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My keyboard has a typo key
January 19, 2010 3:51 PM
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I still take way better images, yeah not pictures, since film is sort of dead now. With my 3MP Konica Minolta. Than most of them newer fancier automajic image makining devices with so so overwide sensors do.

A camera is like a lady. She can be obese or thin. Does not mean she is good at cooking and subtle details. If you pick right, she will take care of you for a long time and do stuff for you automagically. If you ask for specific terms, she is on it. Add some fun bobbles and she shines like a star.
A lot of cameras are like dudes. Turn a dial and hope for the best.... Once you get used to them. You find out they are just fat and not worth the investment. Get good one you like. It produces more than you expected.

[satire]

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ModernTenshi04
January 19, 2010 4:08 PM
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I've got a Canon PowerShot A590, which is an 8MP camera. Takes surprisingly good pictures, but I also use it at lower resolutions, typically the 2MP range which would be good enough to display on my HDTV.

If anything I'm just glad I have vindication that the 12MP Nikon Coolpix my sister got for Christmas really isn't as good as I tell her, compared to my camera.

Pays to do your research, and take a friend with you who used to sell digital cameras.

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Bohemian
January 19, 2010 4:29 PM
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All of this nonsense led to me not buying a new camera over the holidays. I need one, my Kodak digital finally broke. I just could not wade through all the garbage to figure out what was going to give me the picture quality and options I want. Wading through consumer reviews on the millions of camera models on the market is a big enough task to be considered a hobby and still may not tell me what I need to know. I just need something with a decent zoom feature, a response that is quick enough to actually take a picture sometime the same week you hit the button and a decent quality image for up to a 8x10 print or maybe a high res digital image.

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Winteridge2
January 19, 2010 4:49 PM
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A bad picture is a bad picture, no matter how large it is.

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HogwartsProfessor
January 19, 2010 5:25 PM
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I got a Kodak Easyshare a while back, 6 pixels. It works fine and I've never had issues. They're actually pretty cheap and take decent pics and even video. For no more than I use it, I really don't need something fancier anyway.

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JamieSueAustin
January 19, 2010 5:45 PM
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I know that my old 5mp camera performs better than the new 10mp I bought and returned.

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carefreeamit
January 19, 2010 5:54 PM
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Now I love my Nikon D40 even more.

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cerbie_the_orphan
January 19, 2010 7:13 PM
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I figured on avoiding huge MPs just because of lack of need. With an old 2.1, I tend to me more capped by focus and lighting than pixels. More is good and all, but it's like stereo specs--the ones advertised have been too good to hear since before I was born, and the ones that you can hear aren't given.

Now there's even more to worry about--ugh!

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Rocket
January 19, 2010 7:48 PM
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I am happy with my Olympus E-1. It is only 5MP, but it is a DSLR and takes amazing photos.

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Geekybiker
January 19, 2010 7:58 PM
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The airy disc is only a minor part of the problem.

First off there is the problem of the diffraction limit. 12mp is approaching it for most compacts. Beyond a certain point you simply can't capture any more detail no matter if you have a perfect lens. On a larger 2/3\" compact sensor it starts showing up about f4. Fortunately compact cameras tend to use very wide apertures so this is less of a problem than you might think. Cheaper cameras use smaller sensors and will show up sooner.

Second, the higher the MP, the lower the sensitivity. This is really the big culprit. It means that instead of using bigger pixels they chose more resolution, and boost the signal from the sensor to make up for it. Check out the noise in dark areas shooting from iso 400 to iso 100. That's the extra added noise you're going to get on the trad off by choosing high MP over high sensitivity.

Third- Your resolution doesn't matter if its not in focus. This isn't just bad contrast focus algorithms. This is camera shake and motion blur. Its why photos in darker area without flash often come out so blurry. Problem number two really compounds here as the lower sensitivity forces the camera to select higher iso (more noise) or slower shutter speeds (lots of motion blur and camera shake.)

So you see high resolution on small cameras is really a lose-lose proposition. Though unless you're shooting with a tripod on a timer, it probably has more to do with the loss of sensitivity than the diffraction limit.

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nautox
January 19, 2010 8:54 PM
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I agree. I have a Sony T90 12.1 MP and the lens is so tiny that it can't let enough light in and that's where you can get a lot of noise. Especially indoors. Outside daytime the pics are amazing though.

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Razor512
January 19, 2010 9:04 PM
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the higher the megapixels go, the larger the sensor must be, if the pixels get smaller image quality goes down while resolution goes up.

On sites like dpreview if you look at the higher megapixel cameras that are point and shoot, compared to the 7 and 8 megapixel cameras, the 12 megapixel cameras that are much more expensive give less image quality, when printed or resized to fit a standard monitor, they still look good but at their 100% crop size, there more blurry compared to a 7 or 8 megapixel camera at 100% crop.

another problem is that the higher megapixel point and shoots tend to have more image noise and rely heavy use of noise reduction at all ISO levels while many lower megapixel cameras will start using noise reduction after ISO 400

while there some point and shoot cameras that offer good 12 megapixel shots there often very expensive for the point and shoot level especially since there often close to $400 while for the same price range you can get a digital SLR with a much larger sensor, while the megapixels will be lower (around 10MP, the color quality and noise levels are like 100 times better, especially since most DSLR's can offer a sharp image even at 100% crop)

Also why do older point and shoot cameras have less lens fringing than newer ones?

PS it is best to have a camera that does no noise reduction at lower ISO's or better yet have a option to enable or disable noise reduction, using a program like photoshop to reduce image noise will offer better results than the cameras built in noise reduction thats more designed to do a low quality noise reduction pass over the image (since a proper noise reduction will take too long for the cameras slow processor.

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summeroflove
January 19, 2010 9:58 PM
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Having recently done some research on cameras, I decided I wanted a DSLR instead of a point-and-shoot one for that reason. As mentioned, the imaging area of the DSLR is larger to begin with so that the camera doesn't have to fill in so many pixel and thus, reduces noise.

As for file bloat, one good guide that I made up for myself while deciding on a camera is trying to imagine the size of picture I'm going to print most. Even professional printers do not print higher than 300 dpi, so if you can scale your picture down to a smaller size but at 300 dpi, that will take care of most of your printing needs.

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ElizabethD
January 19, 2010 10:40 PM
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This might explain why my Canon G10 images are often disappointing, especially when I zoom in with the built-in telephoto. :-( Live and learn.

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jamar0303
January 19, 2010 11:40 PM
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These days, if you look around enough you can find cellphones with decent optics and sensor size about the same as cheaper point-and-shoots (Sharp, usually; the 902SH/903SH if you're on a budget or the SH-06A/934SH if you want more control over your photography experience at the cost of the optical zoom found on the older models, or the SH-08A which has a built-in solar panel at the cost of the flip+twist screen on the others). Two birds with one stone.

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Norsehawk
January 20, 2010 12:13 AM
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While I have some issues with what he is saying in some regards, it is true that just cramming more megapixels into a already bad camera isn't going to help things one bit.

The only real issue I have with that may or may not be an issue. I know that on my Canon point and shoot (bought it in 2006, 6.3 mp) when I half depress the trigger, it shows me the focus areas that the camera is working on. If I am taking a picture of something in the foreground, the background is typically fuzzed out a bit to make the foreground pop more. The whole depth of field deal. In his example picture, the photograph is of a ship, where he focuses in on some distant trees that are on the far edge of the shot.

I have blown one of my shots with my 6.3 up to 20x30 for a poster of Osaka castle after I went there in 2006. I could tell at that resolution, it was at the edge of turning to crud (and it wasn't a perfect shot anyway, but I really loved it)

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Crovie
January 20, 2010 1:25 AM
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I've got a four-year-old Canon Powershot SD300. It's 5 megapixels, and even pictures taken on the largest setting look sharp all over. That camera almost made me want to be a photographer since it was so easy to get incredibly large and detailed shots of mundane objects. Yet all my friends have newer, fancier, shinier cameras that claim to shoot at 10 or 12 megapixels, but any pictures taken above 1280x1024 (slightly over 1MP for those keeping track) are so blurry you'd think it was just a smaller picture blown up a lot. And then they ask how much I spent for my camera.

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Unstupid
January 20, 2010 1:14 PM
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There is a solution out there for all of you looking for a new camera. Google \"Micro Four Thirds\". Basically these cameras use the sensor from a DSLR but they don't have the Mirror so the bodies can be much thinner and smaller. There are only a few out there right now, so lens selection is limited, but they produce images far superior than ANY point and shoot while still being relatively portable. You will pay more than you would for an entry level DSLR, but it's worth a look if you are in the market.

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Benito
January 21, 2010 2:52 PM
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I really don't know how you can say that from the content of the original article the author knows very little about digital photography - from the article and his replies to comments on it, the exact opposite is apparent. He is only saying what plenty of other people (many of whom are indisputable experts in digital photography - e.g. dpreview.com) have been (rightly) saying for a long time: that it is a real shame that manufacturers are forced to slavishly chase the clueless mass market's insatiable desire for higher and higher pixel counts - when it undoubtedly comes at the expense of image quality - because said mass market doesn't have a better understanding that pixel counts are only one factor in image quality. I can recall reading numerous reviews where the latest model in a particular range boasted an increased pixel count but measurably poorer image quality.

As for him insulting people's intelligence by over-simplifying the issue, it's fair to say that it is people's poor understanding of the topic that causes this problem in the first place.

OK, so some people need more than 6-7MP for large prints - although I would hazard a guess that it is only a *tiny* minority of images that get used in this way - but it would be nice if the rest of us could have a decent choice of compacts with more sensible sensors. I'd rather have a clean, sharp 6MP image than a noisy, soft 12MP one. If I want to blow one up big once in a while, I'll upscale it with a suitable algorithm in a decent image editor, and it will probably look almost as good as the noisy, soft 12MP image would have done.

And that's the essence of what this guy is saying with \"needlessly bloated file sizes\" - not just that the vast majority never get printed at a size that utilises their high resolution, but that, due to the increased noise and diffraction softness you get, increasing pixel counts leads to ever-diminishing returns in actual image detail.

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