What Megapixels ?

[Heeemz]

Hi,

Sorry to ask such a basic question.

I am kind of confused on what Mega Pixel to be used. I have 6.2 mega pixel camera, however I am not sure what megapixel to be used while I click pictures? My use is only for email & printing on 5X7", but the best quality?

Cheers,

Heeemz

[Sintares]

Generally you always want to shoot at the highest resolution and best quality and that will give you the greatest leeway in cropping and post processing to bring you the best image possible for printing.

You can always crop or resize the pictures later for emailing as a full size pic emailed will be over 2 1/2 megabytes , a pain for anyone you email if they are on dialup (10mins+ to download)

If you really never want to shoot that high a resolution to save memory or you just don't want to bother with a lot of resizing etc then for 5x7 you could get away with 1.5 mp.

Have a look at this chart for some ideas. Though just remember in years to come you may want to print larger or get a poster made, and that will not be possible shooting at a lower resolution.

[Heeemz]

Sintares: Thanks for reply. Definately it helps.

Based on this, can we say that I need to shoot at 6MP only if I require to print on 11X14 with Photo quality or 16X20" with excellant quality?

Cheers,

Himanshu

[Sintares]

Memory is so cheap these days there is no real problem shooting at as high a resolution as possible.

You nearly always need to crop to fit the paper and you can't always get as close to a subject as you like thus again you have to crop in, and in both cases the more pixels you shoot the more pixels are left in the crop thus the better the quality of the final print.

However if you really want to have less fine detail but are happy with this and only want smaller pics , then I suppose shooting at 3mp if available is a reasonable compromise.

Though really , it would be a pity to get a great shot and never be able to make the most of it due to a low resolution.

[wh0128]

Sintares, that is a very good table, and im really glad that you posted it. I have a D50 and I had no clue what its capability was with its 6.1 effective megapixels. Now I know I can print up to 11x14" photo quality prints. This is a real saver.

[sla]

Sintares, I totally agree.
I usually use max resolution, unless the picture is really not worth it (or the card memory is running out).
CDs and DVDs are cheap now, besides resolution can be decreased later. Degrading the quality is much easier than trying to upsample poor resolution photo.