Digital Camera Technology Untangled
Anyone mention optics?
Just about all my best photos have come out of a 6mp Nikon D40. Yes, 6 megapixels is more than enough for great photos if they’re fat and happy pixels. You could double the pixel count and not see the difference. You might see one if you quadruple it – Sony’s new Alpha 900 has a 24mp sensor. Canon’s top model offers 21mp. Both cost thousands of dollars.
More pixels make more work
If the advantages of extra pixels are dubious, their drawbacks are obvious when loading photos on a PC: the files are very large and slow to process. If you’re a dead keen amateur, you may find a major PC hardware upgrade necessary. Big files also take up lots of space on hard drives, with 12mp .jpg shots generating 5-6 mb files. Hard drive capacity is cheap these days but keeping these files backed-up takes time.
Raw makes more work
Some amateur Digital SLR shooters take themselves so seriously that they shoot in Raw format, an option all DSLRs offer along with JPG. Camera Raw is the unprocessed file of the detail the electronic sensor captured. Professional shooters who pay close attention to every pixel on every photo have good reason to shoot Raw, but why would the rest of us go to the trouble?
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