Do I Need an 8MP Digital Camera?

By Ziv Haparnas

If you are on the market for a new digital camera then there is a good chance that you are asking yourself that exact question. Maybe the number of megapixels that you are considering is different. Do you really need a 16MP digital camera? 8MP? 6MP? This article tries to help you answering this question.

New digital camera models that are put on the market support more and more megapixels. This race for more megapixels is in part driven by manufacturers who want you to buy their newest and greatest digital camera and the easiest way for them to make you compare cameras is by using one simple number – megapixels – the higher the better or at least this is what they want you to think.

But reality is different. When it comes to megapixels more is not necessarily better. Since most of us have a limited budget that we are willing to spend on a digital camera spending more money to get more megapixels means spending less on other features or accessories – such as storage and lenses. The overall quality of your photography experience is dependent on such extra features.

When deciding on the number of megapixels that you need you should first consider what your expected usage is. You need more megapixels if you plan to print photos (especially big enlargements) or if you need to zoom in and grab fine details out of big digital photos. On the other hand – you do not need much if you plan to watch your digital photos on your computer screen and occasionally print a few 4X6 prints. In fact 2 megapixels are more than enough for such usage. Consider your computer screen resolution which is in most cases 1024X768 - even when viewing your digital photos in full screen mode you are only really watching 1024X768 <>

page 4X6 2MP

page 5X7 3MP

page 8X10 7MP

page 11X14 14MP

page 16X20 28MP

page 20X30 54MP

When considering spending more of your digital camera budget on getting more megapixels you should ask yourself questions like: should I instead get better lenses? Should I instead get an external flash unit? Should I instead get extra storage media?

Don’t be a victim of the megapixels race. In many ways the race for more megapixels is similar to the race for more megahertz on personal computers. In early days when computers speeds were slow – more megahertz was important. Today though – having a 4Ghz or 5Ghz computer does not make a difference and you are better off spending more money on more memory than more megahertz. The same is true with megapixels – in early digital cameras days the number of megapixels was low and it was important to get more. Today with most cameras having a high number of megapixels it is probably wiser to get better lenses or more storage than upgrading from 8MP to 10MP.

Ziv Haparnas is a technology veteran and writes about practical technology and science issues. This article can be reprinted and used as long as the resource box including the backlink is included. You can find more information about photo album printing and photography in general on http://www.printrates.com - a site dedicated to photo printing.

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Buy and sell new or used digital cameras on Yipeyay.Com: Australia | USA

Why I Won't Buy a Nikon D40

By Michael Huddleston

I have to admit the Nikon D40 is an impressive point-and-shoot digital SLR. Particularly if you compare it to it’s siblings the Nikon D80 and the Nikon D200. You get many of the features of the D80 for quite a bit less money and for this reason the D40 has literally replaced the D80. Reviewers have pointed out that one of the D40’s shortcoming is the D40 doesn’t autofocus with non-AF-S lenses, it does however work with old pro AF-I lenses.

That’s not the reason I’m not going to buy the Nikon D40 though. Nikon chose to leave out one feature that creates a bigger problem, at least for me…

There is an emerging frontier in digital photography known as High Dynamic Range (HDR). In HDR photography you take a minimum of three images with three different exposures, one that is normally exposed, one that is 1 stop underexposed, and one that is 1 stop overexposed. Because you are taking three separate photos and ultimately merging them into one photo, they must be perfectly aligned.

To be able to pull off HDR with any reasonable amount of success one needs a camera that has the ability to do auto exposure bracketing. Which means once set and you press the shutter and the camera fires three shots with the exposure compensation incorporated into each photo. With the Nikon D40 you do have exposure compensation but each time you want to compensate exposure you need to do it manually. What this means is that to do HDR photography with the Nikon D40 you would need to use a tripod each and every time and manually (fiddle with the camera) to achieve the minimum three images necessary to create an HDR image.

Nikon chose to leave auto bracketing off the D40 feature set. The absence of this feature immediately cancels the Nikon D40 as a serious HDR candidate.

Too bad!

I would have bought this camera in a heart beat if only Nikon had included auto bracketing.

Final Note:

At Digital Camera Tracker we monitor pretty much every single review for most cameras on the market. For the Nikon D40 we’ve tracked over 30 reviews and not one single review has even made mention of the missing auto bracketing. Perhaps it is not important to everyone else but to us it was a deal breaker.

http://www.digitalcameratracker.com/archives/2007/02/17/why-i-wont-buy-a-nikon-d40.html

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Buy and sell cameras on Yipeyay.Com: Australia | USA