Tourist converge on the Digital Orca outside Vancouver's Convention centre July 26, 2010. The pixelated sculpture created by artist Douglas Coupleland breaks down a three-dimensional Orca whale into cubic pixels.JOHN LEHMANN
A pixel is the smallest point of colour that makes up a digital image. Imagine a grid of tiny coloured squares, with thousands of pixels on each side. A megapixel is one million pixels - a unit of measurement to describe the number of pixels in a digital image or camera.
The number of megapixels in your camera is only one contributing factor in producing quality photos. The more pixels that make up an image, the more technical information that image has. If you take a photo that you're not happy with because it is either blurry and/or over-exposed, the information in the pixels would be carrying that bad news. If you take a photo that you are happy with and it is sharp and has great colour, then the information in the image will be positive. Having more pixels in your camera either gives you more good information or it will give you more bad information, depending on how the photo was taken.
Here is a chart that gives you a sense of what you can expect if you are trying to print a technically successful image:
|
Resolution |
Avgerage quality |
Best quality |
|
0.5 megapixels |
3x5 in. |
N/A |
|
2 megapixels |
8x10 in |
3x5 in. |
|
4 megapixels |
11x14 in. |
5x7 in. |
|
6 megapixels |
16x20 in. |
8x10 in. |
|
8 megapixels |
20x30 in. |
11x14 in. |
|
10+ megapixels |
25x40 in. |
13x17 in. |
Other equally important factors in producing good quality prints are:
- Having clean, good quality lenses (this applies to both point and shoot and dSLR cameras)
- Your image is sharp where you want it to be and soft where you want it to be
- Your highlights are not overexposed
- Strong contrast from your shadows to highlights if you want a vibrant print
Tips to keep in mind:
- Cropping your image reduces the total number of pixels you are working with and can decrease the quality of your print
- Always have the quality/size in your camera settings set on the highest setting. This will use up more space on your memory card, but it is a small price to pay if you happen to capture that one priceless photo and want to produce a large print of it.
If you are looking to buy a new camera, don't be sold solely on the number of megapixels the camera has. Look for a camera that has a manual setting option, a quality lens and features that you will use.