The Point of Megapixels

OFTEN WHEN people are shopping around for wedding photography, or for photography of any kind, they want to know about the megapixels. Often, this is the first question, and I certainly understand, as it’s the most understandable figure, and the one touted the highest in advertising for cameras.

Unfortunately, though, it is one of the most misleading figures in photography. A higher megapixel number will allow a particular digital image to be blown up farther (i.e. larger) than one with a smaller number. On wedding shoots, I use a Nikon D70 and a D70s, both of which shoot at 6.1 megapixels. This figure surprises some people, as some of the lower-end point and shoots advertise at 8 megapixels and up. They assume that the D70 must be a lousy camera because of the lower figure, or at least makes me suspect as a photographer.

Sigh. No. I do know what I’m doing.

I happen to love my D70, due to its easy of use, battery life, durability and Nikon name. I’ve been using Nikons since my mom gave me her old tank of a Nikonmat in the mid 80s. The megapixel number on the D70 pretty much limits me to enlargement size. I have blown up images to 12x18, and I presume that I could go up to 20x30, but I just wouldn’t want to try. For 99% of my customers, 12x18 is a great size, and there is no need to go any larger.

Then again, you probably wouldn’t want to blow up a traditional film 35mm negative much bigger than 12x18 anyhow. There’s just simply a limit to how big you can enlarge these images. For people that want the bigger photos or gallery photos, I drag out my medium format film camera. This is the camera that wedding photographers have used since, well, someone figured out that the bigger negatives these cameras produce (about 2.5 times the area of a 35mm negative) allow bigger prints.

San Diego Photographer Ken Rockwell has a great discussion on this topic, if you’re interested: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

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Wednesday, July 12, 2006