It’s the first word you see when surveying the specs of a new camera: Megapixels.
Meaning "million pixels," referring to the tiny squares that make up a digital image, megapixels are a way to measure the amount of detail in a given photo.
So, by this logic, is a 10-megapixel digital camera twice as good as a 5-megapixel camera? The answer is both yes and no. It depends on what you’re going to do with that photo, plus there are many other important variables to consider when shopping for a digital camera.
When more megapixels matter
Simply put, there are two main advantages to having a camera with more megapixels:
If you're interested in turning a photo into a poster-sized print, the more megapixels that make up the image, the less grainy it will look. The human eye might not be able to discern the difference between a 5-megapixel image and a 10-megapixel image when staring at a 4x6 photo, but you might at 16x20.
The second advantage to more megapixels is if you want to digitally zoom into a photo on your PC and crop it. For example, you take a photo of seven kids, arm-in-arm, in a row. If you want to isolate your daughter's among the crowd – by cropping out everyone else in the photo – the more megapixels, the clearer that edited photo will be.
Ask the experts
"Think of megapixels as a way to explain how much information the camera can capture, the world as seen through the camera lens" clarifies John Kelleher, president and CEO of Black’s Photography, a 114-store national chain that specializes in film and digital image processing. "But yes, more megapixels matter only when it comes to enlarging or zooming in" Kelleher confirms.
Megapixels are not the be-all, end-all indicator of camera performance, says Carmi Levy, senior VP for strategic consulting at AR Communications, a Toronto-based technology communications firm.
"Just because one camera has more megapixels than another does not mean the pictures it takes will be of higher quality," explains Levy. "In fact, often the reverse is true: some less reputable manufacturers may sacrifice everything else for the sake of a high megapixel count, and when they do you end up with a camera that, on paper, looks great, but in fact takes mediocre pictures because all the other important components are cheaper than they should be" says Levy.
Other key features
As you can see, megapixels do matter somewhat, but there are other important features to look for in a digital camera.
This includes a quality lens (glass is better than plastic); processor (referring to start-up and shutter speeds); sensor (the larger the better); auto-focusing technologies (such as image stabilization and face detection); and optical zoom, battery life and simple buttons to navigate through the camera’s features.