Megapixel Madness!

I recall the earliest digital cameras, and their 480 x 640 resolution (a buddy of mine had the one pictured to the left). For the PowerPoint presentations that we were making, the resolution was actually ok. They were really a great solution to the problem of taking images of procedures in the operating room.
We generally only need two or three images in most cases, and with traditional film, it was a waste of the rest of the roll. It was also great to be able to view the image on the screen, and confirm we got the shot, many of which involved unusual angles to see some structure, and after we "closed up shop" we wouldn't be able to recreate the shot again.

Years ago, the debate raged as to how many megapixels equal photography film. Usually the standard held up for for film was 35 mm, although larger formats would offer even more resolution. I heard estimates as low as 6 megpixels on up to a max of 16 megapixels. As film is a continuous emulsion, and not broken up into pixels, I'm not sure there really is an answer to this question. While we can scan a negative or a slide into 16 megapixels, for example, it may say more about our scanner than about the film itself.

Now that I'm shopping for cameras, I'm noticing that the resolutions have been way ramped up. It's getting hard to buy anything that's less than five megapixels currently. There are also plenty of cameras under $200 sporting 7 and 8 megapixel resolutions.

I'm not sure this is such a good thing. After all, the more pixels captured means that the memory card will have to store more. Also, this means more space on the hard drive. When we start scaling up the hundreds of images that folks capture throughout the year, you can start to appreciate the issue, as well as the challenge of backing it up.

Of course, hard drives keep growing, and should more than be able to keep up. Also realize that compressing the images further only degrades their quality, introduces artifacts, and pushes the appearance down to a lower resolution image- or worse.

I'm wondering what folks are doing with all of this resolution. Most of us really only print out stuff at 4 x 6 inches anyway. Occasionally, I do a 5 x 7 print. Both turn out fine from my 3.3 mp camera. When I was shooting film, I never printed anything larger than that either. I doubt that most users will print anything beyond that size. So what is this resolution getting us?

I think that the magic megapixel number is becoming an advertising ploy. It is like the processors a few years ago. Isn't it great, it runs at 3.8 GHz... even if the processor is running too hot, and offers only a marginal performance bump above something slower. The same has happened in the photo industry. While there are new technologies that will improve the experience, like antishake, it's too hard to sell that to the masses. So with each new crop of digital cameras, the formula is to simply add another megapixel to make it sound new and so much better.

I really don't know if or when this will end. Many of these cameras are limited by a plastic lens, and while the sensor's resolution grows, the image quality is no better. Personally, I think that anything beyond 5 or 6 megapixels, unless planning some serious cropping, or really large prints is kind of a waste. In the meantime, we still don't know how many megapixels equal 33 mm film.

--Jonas