How many megapixels is 'enough'?

[Soul Assassin]

The 8mp HP camera is the worst camera the world has ever produced. HP should be ashamed of themselves for even trying to sell such a horrible product.

[gkline]

If my wife could only find the battery charger for her Pentax

[hwmicre]

I got a 8MP Vivitar from Radio Shack for $179. Actually, it also had a nice LCD display. Thing is, I took a chance, not seeing any reviews. Luckily, though, I saw the same camera (brand Mustek) on Steve's, which basically went into what's being said here: Initial attractiveness for 8MP/LCD for a mediocre camera. Returned it (I love the 'generous' return policy before purchase then the hassle with the actual return...'What's wrong with it? You didn't give it a chance...) and got a A530 for $147 from Elect. Expo ($51 after tax with an Amex Gift Card).

Lucky me.

[idiotekniQues]

i vote for about 22mp on a Full frame camera. allowing me to still crop off 5mp of the shot and still print large 20x30 prints.

[ua549]

I purchased a Canon PowerShot S3 IS for a recent trip
to the Med. I am very pleased with its results. I took
about 2,000 pictures of which many were in low light,
no flash allowed conditions.

It is a 6 megapixel middle of the line camera (~$350) with
excellent optics, a 12x optical zoom that is extended to
48x with the digital zoom. The 35mm equivalent lens focal
lengths are from ~38mm to ~1850mm.

[glah youve been pwned]

miqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwev gfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriaw evfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyi ewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfe yqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiq wevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfr iawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevf pyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewq vfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqq miqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwev gfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriaw evfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyi ewqvfeyqqmiqwevgfriawevfpyiewqvfeyqq
srry my last spam ever

[ua549]

That's right. You sleep with the fishes forever.

[Hadsus]

Last week I cashed in my Sony points for a w100 compact digital camera.....8 megapixels. I guess itsa $300 camera. Anyway, never owned a digital camera but I felt I needed one. Quickly realized that I sure as h*ll don't need 8 mgpixels!

[kaliber]

9

[JPnyc]

There's a more important issue than how many megapixels is enough, and that is how many is too many? Particularly when dealing with a compact camera, cramming an excessive amount of the megapixels onto a small sensor camera does not give sharper pictures, it gives considerably more visual noise. Take a look at any of the high iso shots from any compact camera above six megapixels. Noise galore. Six is the cutoff point, for a compact camera, and even that could be called into question.

[soupnazi]

Agreed. The megapixel race has to stop at some point due to the increase noise and file sizes. At some point, it's all just about marketing. I like how Nikon has slowed this race with their D90 D300 D700 line. (kept it at a reasonable 12.3MP) Canon keeps bumping up the pixel race which kinda ticks the guys at Dpreview off. Eg. G10 (14mp), 50D (15mp), 5D II (21mp) Panasonic has "kinda" bucked the MP trend by releasing the LX3 with a larger sensor but still a pretty high 10MP sensor.

I went the SLR route since too many pixel on a tiny sensors (on point & shoots) make them quite bad for low light shots. (noise) 200ISO on a point and shoot looks like 1600ISO on an SLR. If they kept MP sizes the same, but improved low light performance & dynamic range, that would be awesome. High MP are only if you're printing posters and do a lot of cropping. These larger file sizes just eat up HDD space, take longer to transfer, and slow browsing/post processing.

[mikeysg]

Bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ2 early last year, quite happy with 6MP right now, so I don't think I'll be considering anything higher than this. Main reason is that I'm quite the casual photographer......basically an aim and shoot guy.

[ronopp007]

I think that you need to understand that 35mm film is about 10.something mega pixles thats enough...LOL

[ribonzz]

5 is enough, because 3 or 4 still creates a crap images !

[Soul Assassin]

5 is enough, because 3 or 4 still creates a crap images !

It's not the number of megapixels that creates crap images, it's shoddy equipment and poor photography skills.