Megapixels?

Question

How many megapixels would be too many for just a simple home camera to take pictures of family?

Answer 1

10 MP is too much for family pictures. the quality is just too much, you might see the hair on your face in the with a camera with 10 MP!

Answer 2

If you have a lot of people in a picture, you want to have at least 5 megapixels, or the highest on your digital camera for all of the details of the faces, or it will look too pixellated.

Answer 3

If you have a higher mega pixels in your camera, when you increase the size of your picture it will look better. But, since you are using it for family portratis 5 will be fine.

Answer 4

It depends on what size pictures you want to print.

Really, if you're just going to be making the average prints of 4"x6", to print one of those at 300dpi (very good quality), you only need 3.2 megapixels. Yeah.

Megapixels are a unit of area though, and area is a square function, so you're really not getting too much more. For example, an 8 megapixel images is NOT twice as wide as a 4 megapixel image. A 16 megapixel image is twice as wide.

If you get about 7 or 8 megapixels, that should be fine. That gives you room to crop and still make nice 8x10 prints.

All this just goes to show you how much people are concerned with megapixels. You do not need that many to make the average print. You should be much more concerned with the optics of a camera. Stick with a camera company, like Nikon or Canon, and stay away from electronics companies, like Panasonic, and you'll be happy.