New York Times Confirms "Megapixel" Column
Last week I blogged my own Computerworld column, "The Myth of Maximum Megapixels," which makes the point that "Megapixels don't matter anymore" -- that most amateur consumers would take *better* pictures if they bought, for example, a 5-megapixel camera instead of a 10-megapixel camera, everything else being equal. Yesterday, The New York Times' writer David Pogue blogged about a Discovery Channel TV show he taped recently (which will air in February), in which he had a professional photo lab print out 13-, 8-, and 5-megapixel photos at 16" by 24". Then they posted the photos in Times Square in New York, and asked passersby to say which was best -- a kind of megapixel taste test. NOBODY COULD TELL THE DIFFERENCE.
8:01 AM * PERMALINK * 6 comments
Comments:
Although it is quite clear that many other factors affect picture quality other than megapixels; the author's experiment is invalid for the argument presented.
You simply cannot down-rez a 13mp image to 5mp in Photoshop and expect that the image quallity would be in any way comparable to having taken the same shot with a 5mp camera then blow bot images up to the same dimentions.
There is a world of difference and a professional tech writer should know that.
How much were these pictures zoomed in from the original size? It doesn't matter if people don't notice the difference between 16x24 pictures (with 5mp the quality at that size is still pretty good). How far could you zoom in, crop and blow up the photos without people noticing? That's the real advantage of going to a higher resolution camera.
Except that I am seeing so many 12 megapixel and higher unknown brand cameras hitting the auction scene and I can guarantee you that at the price of around $100 they don't give a fraction of the quality of a branded 5Mb camera since (as the original article stated), it's about optics, CCD, etc. etc. Ask any long term photographer on the importance of good optics (for example). And as for zooming a higher MP image - we're going back to the old days where dye and paper were a big factor in addition to optics - as with CCD, whitebalance, etc. I agree with the point that the consumer will never be able to benefit from the sales hype that is thrown their way - it's much the same in the computer world - confirmed by the many notebook PC users who still think that a P4 model is better than a mobile CPU model cos the numbers are bigger.
Of course it is true that higher res gives you the freedom to zoom and crop better quality photos.
But I see this more proving that an everyday user does not need that many megapixels. Most of shots are never edited, and printed 10"x15", so a 5MP camera is more than enough for homeuse cameras.
Indeed, if you are going more pro, printing on larger scale, editing etc, more detail you have to work with the better.
Asking passers by which is the "best" is asking them the wrong question. It is open to misinterpretation by the viewer. Is he being asked to comment on the artistic worth of each picture or the technical expression? Had they been asked which is sharper and given an idea of what to look for most would probably have been able to tell. --mrstock
IMHO it's at least true for consumers cameras
there are factors beside megapixels count, limiting resolution - finite resolution of optics, motion blur to name a few.
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