"The Camera You Have with You"

ukantor said:

"First 1MP Camera!"

I had one of those! For general use 10MP is a good level. I have a Pentax Optio A30 that I bought about ten years ago (10MP). It still performs extremely well, and gives excellent results.

John Colter.

Click to expand...

I remember my first digital camera.
It was basically a 0.3 MP webcam that could be used without the computer. But with no screen, no flash, no nothing.

Yeah, for most purposes something like 10 MP is plenty.
My camera is 12 MP, and I rarely want to use the pictures in higher resolution than I get.
I usually scale most of my pictures down to a small fraction, as 12 MP is way more than you need for screen viewing.

UkingViking said:

I remember my first digital camera.
It was basically a 0.3 MP webcam that could be used without the computer. But with no screen, no flash, no nothing.

Yeah, for most purposes something like 10 MP is plenty.
My camera is 12 MP, and I rarely want to use the pictures in higher resolution than I get.
I usually scale most of my pictures down to a small fraction, as 12 MP is way more than you need for screen viewing.

Click to expand...

I'm recalling the first digital cameras we got at work in the 90's with a 3.5" floppy disk drive. 1MP, I think. For my personal camera I held out for 3MP to become affordable.

The nice thing about higher resolution is if you don't have enough zoom you can crop it and still have a decent picture. But if you never crop or zoom, 12MP is more than you need for screen viewing.

glennerd said:

I'm recalling the first digital cameras we got at work in the 90's with a 3.5" floppy disk drive. 1MP, I think. For my personal camera I held out for 3MP to become affordable.

The nice thing about higher resolution is if you don't have enough zoom you can crop it and still have a decent picture. But if you never crop or zoom, 12MP is more than you need for screen viewing.

Click to expand...

For screen viewing, you can even crop a bit on a 12 MP picture, depending on the resolution of your screen.

I remember when I used to look primarily on resolution and optical zoom ratio when shopping for a camera.
If I want to crop a photo, it is more important that it is sharp. Rather fewer pixels with better contents. Now I look mostly on sensor size and lowest aperture, so I can take better pictures in low light. I have to admit that super zoom can be fun to play with, and is good for pictures of animals etc, but I value the other factors more.