Digital Photography - What Are Megapixels?
The dawn of the digital age ushered in new concepts, ideas and words. It wasn't so long ago when people outside of the imaging industry began to deal with the new era of digital photography and were amazed by the simplest of things. How digital pictures were formed was a mystery to a lot of us. Not anymore, ask any child, they can give you the basics of how digital imaging devices actually work. They know all about pixels and megapixels.
In the simplest of terms, a pixel is the smallest bit of information you can find for an image. There is no height or depth, only information. One million of these tiny pixels make a single megapixel. Why are these important? Having more pixels means you have a higher image resolution. Resolution relates to how well an image can be rendered. If there is not enough resolution an image can be splotchy and incoherent. There are even times when there are holes in the image because of the lack of pixels. All digital imagery relies on these tiny bits of pulsing light to transmit color. If you have trouble viewing an image or it is distorted at 100% on a computer does not necessarily mean you will not get a good print either. The size of the print will be the deciding factor.
The amount of megapixels you begin with determines how large of a print you can make and still present a quality photograph. A camera that has six (6) megapixels the largest recommended print would be an eight by ten (8X10 inches). There are however decent prints at twenty by thirty (20X30 inches) from 6MP cameras but it depends on the distance from which you view the print.
The higher the megapixels the larger the file size will be. For a camera that has only a 6MP range you will get roughly a 1.6-megabyte sized file (jpeg). The same image taken with a camera having double the pixels would increase your file size a little less than twice as much. Remember, pixels are just bits of data and like anything else you add the larger the file size. Detail (also referred to as compression) will also affect file size. You can snap the same megapixel size image with less compression it will save more intricate details than shooting it with more compression; you will find that the file sizes will also be significantly different.
Without pixels we would not have any digital images. If you are an amateur photographer or starting a home based business the more you know about how these bits of data work the better your pictures will be.
About the Author
Pat Lindle is a digital camera repair specialist at C.R.I.S. Camera Services in Chandler, Arizona ( http://www.criscam.com ). When Pat isn't blogging for his company's camera repair blog ( http://www.camerarepair.org ), he is committed to his desire to travel the world, listen to good music, and experience life through art.
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