The Nest

Tuesday, October 16, 2007 1:00 PM

What’s a “megapixel” and how many do I need in my digital camera?

The resolution or sharp quality of your photos depends on how many megapixels your camera has. A megapixel is 1 million pixels or little points that make up an image, or in the case of a digital camera, the capacity to produce quality photos.

These days, cameras usually come with no less than 5 megapixels, but even 4 is adequate for general use such as emailing photos or making prints up to 8x10. 

6 to 8 megapixels are needed to make larger images, say 11x14 or to do cropping and other detailed altering of your images (you will be making the image larger if you crop and close in on one point so you’ll need better resolution).

Any higher than 8 megapixels is really getting in to professional usage. Keep in mind, the higher number of megapixels and the greater the resolution, the more space the images files will take up on your memory card and your computer hard drive. Do you want to eat up a 1GB card in an hour or use it for days? For most of us, having greater storage and less time spent uploading photos is a better choice than more megapixels.

Nest-pert: Perello, course advisor and associate editor at BetterPhoto.com