What do megapixels mean

But what if we use even more? Would it be better to have ten million pixels which is ten megapixels? This is because the human eye can hardly perceive a greater resolution, and most probably your monitor would not be able to display the image at such a great resolution… But, your browser would need to load about times more data, and that might be quite noticeable… Hence, I believe it is not a good idea to use more pixels for this image.

Is this enough or not? Depends on what you use the images for. This means that it displays pixels horizontally and pixels vertically. When displaying a larger resolution image on this monitor, I do not get a better quality, because the image size is reduced to fit on the monitor. One monitor pixel represents more than a single image pixel in this case.

This is more than the number of pixels produced by Nikon D1, both horizontally and vertically. To display a Nikon D1 photograph full-screen, the computer needs to up-sample the image. What happens is that new pixels are created, and their colors are guessed based on the surrounding pixels.

Significant up-sampling is never good, because it usually noticeably degrades the images quality. See an up-sampling example rather exaggerated to make the difference very visible , the 2. Is the up-sampled photo nearly as good as the original? Thus, the Nikon D1 resolution is sufficient for viewing the image on a inch MacBook Pro screen, but not on a inch Apple Cinema display. Assume we use the print resolution of pixels per inch, meaning that image pixels will fit in one inch of the printed image.

This is the highest widely used print resolution I have heard of, it is used in top magazines. Your printer is likely to use multiple dots to represent a single image pixel, thus dpi should be higher than ppi.

By selecting the print resolution of ppi, we push our print quality requirements to the maximum. In fact, we most probably can be very satisfied with a lower print resolution. How large will our print of a Nikon D1 photograph be? This is easy to calculate. The width of the Nikon D1 image is pixels, and we print it with pixels per inch. Is this what you want? As to me, if I ever print photos, I do on something closer to the A4 format 8.

This means that the Nikon D1 resolution is not sufficient for my printing needs. Again, note that we assume a very high print quality requirement. The print size we get at ppi is approximately twice smaller than A4. We use Mpx as an abbreviation because, in our experience, px is the most common abbreviation for pixels. Many camera manufacturers use megapixel resolution as the most important quality feature of their products, as it is the easiest quality feature to understand.

It is by far not the most important thing now that almost every camera has enough resolution for normal use 12Mpx and up. Megapixels only become important if you want to display images on a larger medium or enlarged sections posters, large posters, professional photo presentations. If we assume that the image should only be displayed on the Internet, we actually only need a very small number of megapixels, mainly because of the file size that should be as small as possible on the Internet.

The images on this blog are displayed with a maximum width of pixels. So I reduce a large picture so that it is exactly pixels wide. The following picture has a resolution of x pixels and would only require a 0. But if we want to display a section of the image from above in the same quality x pixels , the original image must be a lot larger.

The original above of the following picture should have a camera resolution of 12 Mpx:. The resolution is always calculated based on the image size and quality for the application.

The quality is the point density dpi, dots per inch. You can use the following guidelines:. A camera that has lots of megapixels will produce high-resolution images. The higher the resolution, the finer the detail of the images.

High-resolution photos can be printed in large sizes without worrying about pixelation. Pixelation is the result of taking an image and enlarging it beyond its maximum size.

The image does not look smooth and its pixels are very obvious to spot from a distance. The lower the megapixel count of an image, the smaller its physical size when printed or displayed at optimum quality.

To print or display a large version of it will require you to enlarge the image which will undoubtedly cause pixelation. On the other hand, you could get better picture quality from cameras with fewer megapixels, provided the pixels are big enough. Some of the determining factors of picture quality are sharpness, brightness, and minimal digital noise.

Images made from sensors with large pixels often tick these boxes are more. So, because bigger pixels capture more light, a camera with fewer megapixels may not produce a large photo but it will most likely perform better in low light conditions.

If you only need to print or display images on a smaller scale, for example when sharing on social media or using a small photo printer , then a phone camera with a modest megapixel count is more than perfect.

And speaking of small printers, in my opinion, the best portable printer is hands down the HP Sprocket Plus. You can even customize the shots in the app before you print them.

Check it out at Amazon. A big sensor generally means more resolution because you can fit more pixels onto it. Larger sensors also perform better in low lighting with less noise and high dynamic range. Because large sensors can fit larger pixels. Just like how a large bucket can catch more water in the rain, large pixels are able to capture more light. Obviously, the bigger the size of the pixels, the more space they occupy on the sensor. In other words, if two smartphones with identical sensors were compared, the phone with a 12MP camera could have better light sensitivity and therefore brighter pictures with less noise than a camera with 20MP.

However, the 20MP camera will have a larger more defined picture, albeit possibly somewhat noisier. So, how many megapixels are enough for a smartphone camera? This is similar to asking how many bricks are enough to build a house. The same applies to the megapixels on smartphone cameras. It all depends on the size of the sensor house , the size of the pixels bricks and what the manufacturer wants for the camera design. That means fewer pixels than on a camera with a higher resolution.

The number of megapixels that can be considered enough really depends on you and what you wish to do with your photos. All you need is a phone with a good camera and a home photo printer that can give you the best prints. By far, the best printer in this department is the Epson SureColor P , in my opinion.

However, there are some cheaper and pretty decent desktop photo printer options available. If smartphone photography is nothing more than just an occasional pastime for you and you keep the pictures to yourself or only share them with a few friends and family, you might find that even a decent 8MP phone camera might be all you need.

But these days primary phone cameras generally have more megapixels than that. In fact, some of the flagship smartphones from popular companies hardly go beyond 12 or 16 megapixels and yet they produce incredible photographs. Today, many high-end smartphone cameras have optical zoom and thanks to periscope cameras, some of them can reach up to 5x optical zoom.

However, they still do rely on high megapixels for hybrid zoom and digital zoom. The idea of having tons of megapixels on their mobile camera is exciting for some people. It gives them something to brag about.

Smartphone manufacturers use that to entice people into buying their product. As proof of this, most mobile cameras with high megapixel counts pixel bin by default. They are set to take pictures at a lower resolution automatically because there is really no need for anybody to take such large-resolution photos with their phones.

One would assume that despite having different lenses, the cameras on a phone would at least have the same sensor. Not always. The number of megapixels each camera has on a phone with multiple cameras depends on the manufacturer and the setup of the cameras on the phone.

There are smartphones that have dual cameras, both of which are 12MP. The main difference is one camera has a wide-angle lens and the other a telephoto lens. On other smartphones, there is a huge difference in megapixel count between the different rear cameras.

In most cases, the primary rear camera has more megapixels than the secondary cameras. Their resolution can be around 0. Learn about ToF cameras here. Smartphone cameras with monochrome sensors specifically dedicated to depth-sensing can be around 2MP on certain mobile phones.

An ordinary, dedicated camera with a 24MP resolution will produce better quality pictures than any smartphone of the same resolution. Mainly because of the much bigger sensor. A typical full-frame DSLR sensor is 36mm x 24mm in size, whereas an average smartphone sensor only measures more or less 5.

That means a full-frame DSLR camera sensor has an area that is about 40 times bigger than that of a smartphone sensor. If we look at the 24MP comparison between a digital camera and a smartphone camera, this means that both sensors have 24 pixels despite the size difference. The obvious deduction from this is that the larger sensor will have larger pixels to fill its surface area.