What is your minimum acceptable megapixel count ?

[Guy Parsons]

Started out with a 3MP camera (2002) and competing in camera club print competitions, that really teaches a person about what 3MP can do and what the print limits are.

At the time (early 2000s) on a couple of committees in the camera club world in my State (in Oz) I did get to see possibly many thousands of prints in various local up to International competitions, that gave me a good idea of what was possible. The era was going from scanned film to digital images.

The commonest largest print size in club competitions was A3 size and as the then usual 6MP DSLR camera prints rolled in it was clear something a bit better was needed.

Then one day at a State competition I saw examples of A3 prints that really looked good, the author was there so the obvious question was "which camera?" and it turned out to be some Minolta bridge style camera of 8MP (maybe the A2?), so that decided me to look at buying my first digital system camera, thus the 8MP Olympus E-300 camera into my life.

I guess from that then 8MP suits me but my current 16MP and 20MP suits me a little better.

 

[gary0319]

I’m surprised, with today’s hi resolution cameras, at how many folks are in the 12mpx or less camp. Maybe there is difference between buying a camera and actually using it for the required results…… marketing perhaps?

 

[tonybelding]

Back in the Good Old Days, if you had your negatives professionally scanned by Kodak onto a Photo CD, they came back with 6 MP images—which seemed enormous at the time, and most computers had difficulty working with those images. Kodak helpfully provided several smaller versions of each photo on the disk!

The scans have held up well. And today, if I send my negatives to The Darkroom and get the "Enhanced Scan" they come back with… 6 MP. I could pay more for the Super Scan, but then it seems like I get more pixels but not much more image detail. (That was with 35mm color negative film, BTW. Your mileage may vary.)

My first DSLR (which I still have) was a Pentax K100D with… you guessed it, 6 MP sensor. And although it's a pain to work with by today's standards, the photos still come out looking good.

My little Pentax Q7 has a 12 MP sensor, and I used it for a few years as my primary camera. It always punches above its weight in image quality. The lack of any viewfinder was a much bigger concern to me than its image quality.

Shooting with higher resolution allows lots of leeway for cropping, which is sometimes nice. My highest resolution camera presently is a Lumix S1R with 47 MP. I got it to be my digital XPan, because I can shoot in 65:24 aspect ratio and still have 25.8 MP remaining! It puts out the best IQ I've ever gotten from any camera, with crystalline purity and amazing to pixel-peep, but in real practical terms that's of little consequence.

 

[Wingsfan]

I shoot purely for enjoyment and as a hobby. 10mp is sufficient for probably 95% of my needs. I don't think I've ever regretted taking anything at 16mp, although I have cameras that go up to 26 MP.

For me anything more than that takes up too much space. Again I'm not a pro and I'm not a pixel peeper and I commit the greatest sin of all to many DPR forum commenters, I primarily shoot jpeg, and only occasionally shoot raw when I'm in conditions where I think I might need to do some post-processing work afterwards to the shot.

And even then a lot of times I just lift or drop Shadows or highlights in camera slightly, as opposed to working with software on a computer.

 

[Michael Benveniste]

I plan to shoot a cartridge of 110 film this summer. ‘Nuff said?

 

[Boris_The_Spider]

How many MP is your minimum requiremant ? for me its 5mp as I am able to produce images I really like with that count, added to that, cameras in that catagory are super cheap, I might even find 4mp OK too but I dont own one

For me this would depend on what I'm photographing and trying to achieve.

As a general comment I've gotten used to 40MP+ so given a choice it would be that or above. With less of a choice I'd say 20mp+ still gives lots of flexibility and post-processing options so this is probably the lower limit for me.

Part of what makes this hobby fun for me is being able to work with the images and I like larger, very detailed prints.

 

[shineofleo]

I have been using Nikon D3s for many years, so 12MP will do.

 

[tbcass]

6mp is the lowest resolution I will crop to, but I prefer 8. This despite the fact I own a 42mp Full Frame camera. If you are talking about the minimum sensor resolution I will accept in a camera it's 20mp.

--
Tom

 

[tbcass]

I’m surprised, with today’s hi resolution cameras, at how many folks are in the 12mpx or less camp. Maybe there is difference between buying a camera and actually using it for the required results…… marketing perhaps?

I use high mp for the ability to crop.

 

[Fujiuseruk]

6mp or above , think Fuji xs1 Nikon D40 but I must say I like 20mp on m4/3 and 24mp on apsc .

 

[AstigmaticOwl]

When I first got a digital camera, we were active in genealogy. My first digital camera was a Kodak DC120 rated at 1.5MP (interpolated). Tried taking pictures of letter-sized documents (8.5 x 11 inches). It wasn't good enough.

By the time I got my second digital camera, the Nikon Coolpix 990 at 3.34MP, we had reached "good enough" to copy documents. That was 2000.

We took that camera with us on a trip to a small courthouse in Alabama with a lot of family records. There was a sign over the copy machine saying that state law required them to charge $1 per copy. We decided that was the time to start testing the Nikon. It did well and came close to paying for itself that trip.

 

[Reilly Diefenbach]

How sweet it is!

 

[Dick Dastardly]

I look at the images from my 2005 Olympus E500 camera and they look great. Plenty of detail, plenty of resolution. The only limitation is how much you can crop. I do like cropping and digital zoom and that's the reason i use more resolution today, bit for prints, 8 megapixels are absolutely enough for A3 and larger.

PS. I recently did a 60% crop on a 10 megapixel image shot through a window with the kit lens and printed the result on A3 paper, looks way better than expected. Not perfectly sharp because of the optics, but not pixelated or anything. You would never know how the image was produced just by looking at it.

 

[Guy Parsons]

I’m surprised, with today’s hi resolution cameras, at how many folks are in the 12mpx or less camp. Maybe there is difference between buying a camera and actually using it for the required results…… marketing perhaps?

Not really surprised because Olympus long told us that "about 10-12MP replaces 35mm film quality" and personally I found that 8MP was about the turning point. More is better of course as then some cropping can change lens buying or lens changing habits.

It all depends of course on how the image is to be used, if everyone was printing wall sized images and needing to stick their nose up against it (maybe 100MP or more) then that is entirely different to the needs of images for TV slide shows (about 2MP).

 

[Guy Parsons]

I look at the images from my 2005 Olympus E500 camera and they look great. Plenty of detail, plenty of resolution. The only limitation is how much you can crop. I do like cropping and digital zoom and that's the reason i use more resolution today, bit for prints, 8 megapixels are absolutely enough for A3 and larger.

PS. I recently did a 60% crop on a 10 megapixel image shot through a window with the kit lens and printed the result on A3 paper, looks way better than expected. Not perfectly sharp because of the optics, but not pixelated or anything. You would never know how the image was produced just by looking at it.

Any reasonable printing program or print driver smooths out the low MP result to get rid of any hint of pixellation, it would deliver a smooth but soft result if the MP is too low.

Day One of my digital printing started with using a 3MP camera and that sure teaches someone about what print needs are. I was using Qimage which auto interpolates any file up (or down) to the requirements of the print engine. In Canon's case it is to 600 ppi and Epson to 720ppi.

The conclusion for me was that you need to figure out the final Original Camera Pixels Count per inch of print to know how it will look. Fancy upsizing software doesn't add fine detail that should be there, it just makes the result smoother.

Everyone talks of needing 300 camera pixels per inch or more and yes that's fine, it provides a print that when say in postcard size it can handle someone using a magnifying glass to look for faces and signs. Most photo labs (like Fuji Frontier machines) seemed to print at 300ppi anyway so more than that was "lost".

My limits when using that 3MP camera were set at 200 camera pixels per inch of print, even for a postcard size where it could be examined closely. If the file was really good and I was really desperate then I would dip down as low as 185 camera pixels per inch and it still looked good in a size a bit smaller than an A4 sheet. If I took it to 150 camera pixels per inch then that really would be looking soft, so never used that low in any camera club competitions. No camera club judge ever told me that any of my 3MP prints were soft. I would print the size that suited the pixel count.

My 16MP cameras deliver 4608 pixels wide, divide by 200 and that means I could confidently print 23 inch wide prints from it. I don't need that size so I have freedom to crop if I only want A4 sized (11.7 inch) prints or to look at on a screen.

 

[gary0319]

I’m surprised, with today’s hi resolution cameras, at how many folks are in the 12mpx or less camp. Maybe there is difference between buying a camera and actually using it for the required results…… marketing perhaps?

Not really surprised because Olympus long told us that "about 10-12MP replaces 35mm film quality" and personally I found that 8MP was about the turning point. More is better of course as then some cropping can change lens buying or lens changing habits.

It all depends of course on how the image is to be used, if everyone was printing wall sized images and needing to stick their nose up against it (maybe 100MP or more) then that is entirely different to the needs of images for TV slide shows (about 2MP).

Actually, my surprise is that so many folks recognize your reality in this forum where it seems to me the mpx race sometimes seem paramount and smaller pixel counts are looked upon as a negative, by comparison.

 

[Ainisru]

I’m surprised, with today’s hi resolution cameras, at how many folks are in the 12mpx or less camp. Maybe there is difference between buying a camera and actually using it for the required results…… marketing perhaps?

My highest resolution camera right now has a 42MP full frame sensor. I'm extremely happy i'm born in the digital era of photography as I can do lots of crops when needed without carrying extra heft that would have occurred. One of the fun things I like to do for example is a 2:1 or a XPAN ratio crop.

That said, I share my photos online, JPEGs around 2-4MB to keep it reasonable. For me that ends up around downsampling to a little more than 4K resolution. So, honestly a good portion of the time I do not need it.

When I was trying out my Nikon D3, yes, it was a bit of a small adjustment. All those small things that are easier to ignore with a modern setup becomes more difficult, such as for example making sure the size of the subject is as you would have wanted to capture in the first place. For example it is about to be summer, so i've been capturing a lot of birds, insects, and flowers.

No, modern technology hasn't made me lazy, it's just a lot more accessible and forgiving- something I appreciate a lot. I'm not aspiring to be the next photographic star lol, am just a casual person. I appreciate the amazing shots on film (I personally love seeing Velvia) and the setups people had to do back then- but that's not for me.

 

[Bob Smart]

How many MP is your minimum requiremant ? for me its 5mp as I am able to produce images I really like with that count, added to that, cameras in that catagory are super cheap, I might even find 4mp OK too but I dont own one

I always enjoyed my 4.1mp Nikon D2h.....

 

[RubenJ]

About 10. Be it 8 or 12.

 

[RubenJ]

Interesting that there are two schools of thought here, both fairly well defined. My current cameras are 8, 12 and 16 MP so You can probably guess which side I am on.

I would say 8MP is my minimum, though up to 12 doesn't hurt.

Those wanting 45MP and upwards are often basing their choice on not framing properly and discarding a lot of the megapixels that they captured. Not saying it's wrong, but as someone who shot slide film for a long time, getting the framing right was one of the basics for me.

Seems like many lost that "basic". Shoot now and frame later. Unless you're into wildlife or so needing endless tele power. I hate framing afterwards, I just don't get it as right as when im standing there and framing the view though my optical vf. My main camera had 16mp and I don't even use half of it, only cropping some unfortunate corner or so.