robinsongeoff
colour-resolution.twin
So, how many pixels do we need ?
Your 17-inch monitor has 1.7 million pixels on screen, so you cannot display an image with more than this number of pixels, without compressing it ( in other words, discarding all the excess pixels.)
Two or three million pixel images, produced by top-grade lenses, can be printed up to A4 size, so unless you intend to produce poster- prints, you don't need vast numbers of pixels. However, if you crop-out a small portion of such an image, and enlarge it several times, the pixels will be apparent.
In the image cropped from the 1-MP camera, (left), the blocky pixels are annoyingly evident ~ but they are well-disguised in the image from the 4-MP camera, (right). Yet both images of the entire stained-glass window looked fine, when printed at 7 x 5 inches.
This is the main reason why good cameras have 4, 6, 8, or even 10-MP sensors ~ although there is no point in having more than 2 million pixels in a cheap camera whose tiny lens is not capable of focussing a needle-sharp image in the first place !
However, my favourite digicam, the legendary HP-618, has only 2.4 million pixels, but it has a fantastic PENTAX lens . . . so it can produce excellent results, as long as you don't want poster-prints ! . . . Nearly all the photos on my Flickr-stream were taken with my HP-618 . . .
Judge for yourselves !!
colour-resolution.twin
So, how many pixels do we need ?
Your 17-inch monitor has 1.7 million pixels on screen, so you cannot display an image with more than this number of pixels, without compressing it ( in other words, discarding all the excess pixels.)
Two or three million pixel images, produced by top-grade lenses, can be printed up to A4 size, so unless you intend to produce poster- prints, you don't need vast numbers of pixels. However, if you crop-out a small portion of such an image, and enlarge it several times, the pixels will be apparent.
In the image cropped from the 1-MP camera, (left), the blocky pixels are annoyingly evident ~ but they are well-disguised in the image from the 4-MP camera, (right). Yet both images of the entire stained-glass window looked fine, when printed at 7 x 5 inches.
This is the main reason why good cameras have 4, 6, 8, or even 10-MP sensors ~ although there is no point in having more than 2 million pixels in a cheap camera whose tiny lens is not capable of focussing a needle-sharp image in the first place !
However, my favourite digicam, the legendary HP-618, has only 2.4 million pixels, but it has a fantastic PENTAX lens . . . so it can produce excellent results, as long as you don't want poster-prints ! . . . Nearly all the photos on my Flickr-stream were taken with my HP-618 . . .
Judge for yourselves !!