Digital Camera? 12megapixel vs. 4megapixel?

Question

What is the difference between a 12MP and 4MP digital camera?

Is a higher optical zoom, or higher MP better?

ex. 12x optical zoom vs. 3x optical zoom. Or 12MP vs. 4MP

Thanks! : )

Answer 1

The difference is going to be how big you can make your picture. 4mp is good if you are an amatuer and dont plan on blowing up the pics or doing serious editing to them, 12 mp is great but probably too big for what you need. A 7 or 8 is better.

Answer 2

If there are too many megapixels, they each get less light and can be not as good as a more reasonable number of megapixels in a cheaper camera.  4 mp is a decent amount unless you want to be blowing the pictures up huge.  Optical zoom is really really useful and nice.

Answer 3

Well, I will answer the 12MP vs 4MP part. For the most part especially if you are a casual camera user (takes moderate numbers of pictures and posts them online or transfers them to PC) a 4MP camera is more than enough. It will be very clear already. The higher 12MP will be clearer but in a monitor, not by much, in fact, its not really dramatically noticeable. But the only big difference between the higher and lower MP is the limit it can be enlarged. a 4MP can be enlarged to probably just above 6x8 print sizes before the picture will start showing degration or distortion. A 12 MP picture on the other hand can be enlarged to a way bigger print size without losing any image quality (i.e. over 18x10 print sizes). That is basically the major difference between the two. So in conclusion, it all comes down to this. If you are going to take decent pictures for online, PC, or regular (4x6) album prints a 4MP camera is VERY much good for you and you also save some money cause these camera's tend to be cheaper than the 12MP ones. If you are going to take pictures and print them in BIG papers (15x20 and above) a 12MP camera is more suitable for you as to because it has enough pixels to retain excellent image quality even at high print sizes. I hope this little info helped you ^_^

Sincerly,

Gelo

Answer 4

Firstly; the most important thing to consider when buying a camera is the quality of the lens; it has by far and away the greatest impact on picture quality.  Secondly, digital zoom is pretty much irrelevant, it is nothing more than in-camera cropping - you can do this more accurately in any photo editing software; the first thing I do when buying a digital camera is switch off digital zoom. The problem with pixels is that the higher the MPs, the smaller each pixel has to be to fit onto the sensor. The smaller the pixel, the less information it can hold.  Think of the sensor as glasses filled with drink on a tray - the smaller the glasses, the less liquid (i.e. information - colour, luminosity) they can hold, so each pixel gives poorer quality information. So lens quality being equal - you would be far better relying on high optical zoom and lower pixels vs. digital zooming using low optical zoom and high number of pixels.

Answer 5

In my opinion you shouldn't pay for anything higher than about 4 MP.  That's good enough to look perfect on a 4by6 or even an 8by10 photo.   You only need more megapixels if you want to enlarge a picture to poster size or something like that.  If you have the option, I would pay for better zoom rather than higher MPs.

Good luck!