How many mega pixels should a camera have if you want to be able to print at least a good quality 8x10 photo?

Answer 1

Pixels are tiny building blocks of color in an image; the more you pixels there are, the more detailed the image will be. A mega-pixel is a set of one million pixels; most DSLR cameras have a range of around 10 megapixels up to a mind-blowing 50 megapixels.

How many mega-pixels you have is not really the most important factor in getting good images, though. It sure is quite important in getting sharp images, but even more important is the lens, or "glass" that is used. For example, a camera with twelve megapixels paired with a very good quality lens will often have more detail than that of a 24 megapixel camera paired with a cheap lens. This all comes down to a factor called "Perceptual Megapixels," or "P-Mpix" for short.

Let's get this out of the way now- you will almost certainly never get all of the detail out of your camera sensor that it is capable of. A typical DSLR today has somewhere around a 24 megapixel sensor, but with the kit lenses that come with them, you only get about 9-13 perceptual megapixels of detail (Now you get it!). To get an image with a higher P-Mpix count, you have to use higher quality glass (lenses).

Sharpness can also be affected by factors like shutter speed, aperture, or ISO settings. If the shutter speed is not high enough on the camera, the image can be subject to motion blur. Aperture is also a very large factor in image sharpness. The aperture controls how much light enters the lens, and also the depth of field (the part of the image in focus). At apertures wider than about f/3.2, the image can become unsharp, and at apertures narrower than about f/7.1, the image can be subject to diffraction, which degrades sharpness.

Answer 2

That certainly depends on your definition of "good quality 8"x10" photo.

My suggestion is for about 10 Megapixels but you continue to see improvements i prints all the way up to 30 megapixels.

At the same time if I look at a computer monitor with fine dot pitch (my laptop has about 3 mega pixels and is slightly larger than an 8x10) I hardly see the pixels...

What bothers me are the jpeg artifacts that arise when snapshot cameras compress the images (to be able to store more pictures on the same memory card).

Answer 3

The common standard for HD television resolution is 1920 x 1080 pixels, requiring a little over 2 million pixels. If the red, green and blue pixels are counted separately then it will be a little over 6 megapixels.

Many still cameras have significantly higher resolutions than HD TV so the above is no more than one example.

Answer 4

It depends on what you plan on doing with the image. Ideally, you want a 1:1 relationship with the medium you intend to use. For a computer screen, that means the image should be the resolution of your screen (i.e. 1650x1024) if you wanted a full-screen image. For printing to paper, it is recommended that you have at least 240 dpi, so a 3x5 image would need to be 720 x 1200 at minimum to have a decent quality print. Obviously, the more pixels you can stuff into an area, the better, but keep in mind that the 1:1 ratio will provide the best resolution for whatever you are using the image for.

Answer 5

How many megapixels you get depends on big you plan on printing out your pictures. Digital cameras range from 3.2 pixels to 16 mega pixels. The bigger prints you plan on making the more mega pixels your camera should have.

Answer 6

For a Digital Camera, anything above 10MP is adequate but most new cameras have 20 to 24 or as much as 50