Pixel and resolution are words we hear often, but how many of us really understand the meaning of these words? Without getting overly technical, the word pixel stands for Picture Element, a tiny dot on a screen. Many millions of these pixels, or megapixels, make up the words and images we see on our computer screens, and the more megapixels imply a higher resolution and thus a clearer image. When it comes to digital and smart phone cameras, manufacturers advertise the resolution based the number of megapixels (or MP), from a low of 8 MP to a high of 30 MP – but what does that really mean? Manufactures would have you believe that more megapixels are always better, but that is not completely true.
Cameras are more than just a computer with a lens, and a digital camera is not all that different from a traditional film camera, except that instead of using film, the camera captures images on a digital sensor. The size of sensor is relative to the size of the camera, and the larger the sensor, the more megapixels receptors it contains.
Most of you are familiar with the term DSLR, which stands for digital single lens reflex camera. Again, without getting too technical, these cameras, built with the same design as film cameras, use a mirror and lens system to capture images. Professional, full-frame DSLR cameras have a sensor that is the same size as a frame of 35mm film. Smaller DSLR cameras, point and shoot cameras and smart phone cameras have smaller sensors. Until recently the quality of images produced by cameras with these smaller sensors was inferior to images from full frame cameras, but that has changed. Now what is more important than the number of megapixels is the quality of both the actual sensor and the camera lens.
In the dawn of digital photography, low-end cameras featured from one to three megapixels. Over the years sensors improved, and the megapixel count increased. A similar progression occurred when mobile phones began to feature built in cameras. While early models produced poor images, today even the tiny sensors in a mobile phone camera can rival the quality of larger sensors in some DSLR cameras.
Image quality is dependent on several factors – quality of the digital sensor, the size of the digital sensor, the number of megapixels that can fit on the sensor, and most importantly, the ratio of pixels to the size of the sensor. It is also important for a photographer to determine how they plan to use their images. Are the photos going to be printed, and if so how large, or are they primarily for on-screen display?
Most DSLR cameras feature sensors with 24–30 MP; the sensors on point and shoot cameras contain 12–20 MP; and high-end smart phones feature cameras with 8–12 MP. While the print from a 30 MP, full-frame DSLR can be blown up as large as a billboard, an 8 MP cameras is more than adequate for and 8 x 10 inch print. Photographs taken by most of us will never even be printed on paper. Instead they will remain in the photo gallery on our cameras or computers, and shared on Facebook or Instagram.
Finally, it is worth noting one advantage to higher resolution, larger megapixel count images is their ability to capture images in low-light situations. But ever this advantage is disappearing. Just this month the techradar.com website published an article praising the low-light capabilities of the cameras in the Google Pixel 3, iPhone XS and Samsung Galaxy S9 phones.
Which type of camera you ultimately choose to use depends on not only on how you intend to use your photos, but on the type of subjects you chose to shoot. If you are a wildlife photographer like TR’s own Bradley Teets, the only way to shoot is with a DSLR and a long-telephoto lens. I consider myself a fine art photographer, and my photographs have been exhibited in juried art shows on Long Island and in Manhattan. I still use my Nikon DSLR, but recently I have relied more on the iPhone as my primary camera, and several prints selected for recent exhibits were taken with my iPhone and printed as large as 13 x 19 inches.
No comments:
Post a Comment