How do megapixels affect image quality

So, this is one area where I feel like more megapixels really do pay off. Now, whether or not that payoff is worth it to you is a matter of opinion. It also happened to have been shot with a To be fair, sharpness is not the defining characteristic of this particular image, but of all the responses I got during the shows, no one ever commented on the image not being sharp enough.

I just made two prints for a fairly prestigious show here in Los Angeles in April. The other was shot with an APS-C-sized Both were printed at 16x Laid side by side, both prints look pretty darn good. So, is it worth it to invest in more megapixels? I would say yes if my primary business objective was to regularly exhibit and sell large prints, especially if I was a landscape photographer, for example, and wanted to show every detail of a wide expanse.

The one area where almost everything I shoot has a shot at being printed is in my print portfolio. This is one of my main sales tools and absolutely has to be at its best. My own print portfolio contains prints that are 11x17 inches. Among those prints are images that were created with everything from MP cameras to 24 MP cameras. They all live together in relative harmony. There are differences in the images. If one were to look really hard, you might notice subtle differences in sharpness between images.

But, as I learned during my period of re-education, most of that would be due to technique as opposed to megapixels.

So, what is the perfect megapixel count to invest in? From a business standpoint, you also will save money on upfront costs for the camera body as well as backend costs related to storage. You may print everything and print it all at much larger sizes. Personally, despite my growing affection for 24 MP, I still continue to shoot most of my images at around 50 MP.

Largely, this is because I like to crop and create multiple versions of each of my images for use across various platforms. The more I consider the question, the more I wonder if, from a business standpoint, it might make even more sense to limit investment to 24 MP or 50 MP cameras and only rent larger systems on a job-by-job basis.

Furthermore, when a client comes around that does need to print in a larger format, you can always rent the necessary camera for that job, bill it to the client, and come out the other side even without ever needing to make a big investment. You can reduce upfront costs and financial risks while still delivering the high-quality photography your clients deserve.

The only thing you miss out on is the fun of endlessly zooming into your images in Capture One to marvel at the fine detail. I'll admit that is fun. But, is it the best investment? So, what are your thoughts? What do you feel is the ideal megapixel count for the type of work that you do? Christopher Malcolm is a Los Angeles-based lifestyle, fitness, and advertising photographer shooting for clients such as Nike, lululemon, Nordstrom, and Penguin Random House.

Check out the Fstoppers Store for in-depth tutorials from some of the best instructors in the business. Still rocking my original Canon 5D for personal work. I was surprised with how large you can print with That camera was and still is a classic. I remember the excitement of shooting with one of those for the first time.

How many actuations you have on that thing? I got mine used and I've never checked the shutter count on it or really, any of my cameras because I've always figured that when it dies it dies.

I'll have to see if I can get a shutter count on it, because now I'm curious! I think a new shutter idk if you can find mk1 5d shutters anymore only cost a couple hundred bucks to replace. This is a nicely thought out post. It does beg the question of what techniques you improved that changed your mindset. Have you written about this elsewhere? I saw a Lamborghini the other day.

Very nice, shiny black. Top speed, humungous. Parked against the inner city kerb. I suspect that people who buy a Lamborghini do't buy it to drive it at high speed. I suspect that parking it outside their house has more to do with it. Great post.

For the first half I kept hoping you'd elaborate on the specific technical knowledge you'd picked up that helped you apply it to lower MP cameras. Care to elaborate? Perhaps in a future post?

Doesn't author state obvious? There times you need high MP camera and there times you don't. And at times I like to take pictures with 24MP A and small lens for portability.

I hate taking pictures with cell phone , so I have Hasselblad true zoom attachment to my Moto Z4 cell phone that converts it to 12MP zoom camera. Any resolution has it's place. Great a article and great points about print size and cropping. One thing I would say is resolution requirement also comes down to content and viewing distance. A simple portrait can be upscaled significantly as hair and fabric can be sharpened in the process, how landscapes don't fair so well.

I would also say higher resolutions are easier to retouch. Dynamic range is also key, newer sensors give much better colour across the tonal range and can be pulled around more with less noise. There is a great point about the shooting process and how the camera effects this. Note the lack of detail in the bright areas on the left wall of the house and also under the verandah near the front door.

Contrast these areas with a similar shot taken with a DSLR camera, which can capture a full range of tones in both brightly-lit and shadowed areas because of its larger photosites. Five megapixels is probably the limit of resolving power for most point-and-shoot camera lenses.

Beyond a certain point, diffraction will begin to reduce the resolving power of the lens-plus-sensor system, as we have discovered from Imatest tests on many 8- and megapixel digicams. In many digicams, the image processor automatically sharpens the image by default. Subject lighting will also play a role in image quality, especially with small-sensor digicams. In dim conditions, photographers are forced to increase ISO speeds. However, with a small-sensor digicam, this will increase image noise, thereby reducing image quality.

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At ppi, a 5 megapixel image can create a maximum print size of 8. However, the mathematical requirements for a large print may be completely irrelevant as the differences in print quality may not even be noticeable to the untrained eye. One image was the full 13 megapixels, one was 8 megapixels, and one was 5 megapixels. He put up the posters in Times Square and asked people walking by if they could figure out which print was which. One person correctly figured it out, but she was a photography professor.

You can read more about it on his blog. In addition to producing more image data than you need for your uses, higher-megapixel sensors are not always of better quality. Typically, within a camera product line, the physical dimensions of the sensor stay the same from model to model.