The Megapixel Myth: Do more Megapixels mean Better Image Quality?

Whenever you plan to buy a smartphone, you consider so many things like screen size, RAM, processor, Camera, etc. But when the salesman shows you the smartphones with different camera specifications, you usually go with a phone whose camera has more Megapixels just by assuming more megapixels mean better photo quality.

Megapixels are getting better every year. Camera makers and your local salesman are always talking about the next model with more megapixels. The new model makes your current model seem obsolete.

Are Megapixels are Everything?

Megapixels simply means one million pixels. Every camera has many components starting with the lens at the front and ends with an Image sensor at the back. This Image sensor contains tiny-sized pixels all around its surface which stores each & every detail of your picture like brightness, contrast, color, etc.

Suppose, your smartphone has 8 MP camera whose resolution is 3264 x 2448. It simply means that its Image sensor contains a total of 3264 x 2448 = 7990272 pixels which are almost equal to 80 lakh pixels or 8 million pixels. But not every 8-Megapixels’ camera takes photos of the same quality. There are many factors involved in the quality of a photo like an Image sensor, pixel size, aperture, etc.

Why DSLR’s 12MP camera takes better photos than smartphone’s 12MP camera?

DSLR cameras come with a big-sized Image sensor. So, the size of each pixel in DSLR is also bigger than the smartphone’s camera. These pixels can store details like brightness, contrast, color more accurately than your smartphone camera’s small-sized sensor.

So, Megapixels are not everything. There are many other things like sensor, sensor size, aperture, image processing software, etc on which the overall quality of your photo depends.

How many Megapixels do we need?

Actually, It depends on the how you are going to use your images.

Nowadays, we do a lot of things with the images like cropping, editing, large-sized printing of your images, etc for which more Megapixels are somewhat important. These tasks require detailed information about your image which your image can only provide when it is captured by a camera having more Megapixels.

Conclusion:

I am not saying that Megapixels doesn’t matter at all. But if you are selecting a camera just only considering its megapixel count, then there is a huge chance that you won’t get the right camera.