What’s in a pixel
The terms pixel and megapixel pop everywhere when talking about digital photography. Surely you know by now about the direct relationship between megapixels and price – the more megapixels, the higher the price – and camera manufacturers seem particularly keen on giving you more megapixels for the price. So what is in a pixel?
A pixel is a picture element. Each pixel contains a unit of information about the picture. A single pixel does not say much, but put many pixels together and you will have and image. It takes millions of pixels to produce a picture. The more pixels a photo has, the more detail the final picture will have. On the other hand, the more pixels a photography has, the more memory it will use.
Consider pixels as building blocks. A single pixel is not worth much, but many of them together – millions, in fact – make a picture.
Megapixels
Put one million of pixels together and you make a megapixel. The most simple camera will have at least 1 megapixel – probably a basic camera phone – and professional cameras will have more than 8 megapixels. if you see the figure 6 megapixels know it is equivalent to 6,000,000 pixels.
The number of effective megapixels is what matters. Why? Because those effective megapixels are the ones used to record the image – that number should be printed on the box and in the specifications.
The fact that a camera has a top range of 8 megapixels does not mean you need to shoot with that resolution all the time. You will be able to set the number of megapixels and take pictures using less of them. You will be wanting to use less megapixels for a picture when your batteries are running our, there is little free space in the memory or just want to take a picture to send via email. If you reduce the number of megapixels per image, you will be able to take more pictures than when shooting at high.
The number of pixels in the picture is of importance only if you have the intention to print or enlarge your photo. The best way to understand this point is to shoot a subject at low resolution then repeat the shoot at high resolution. Print both takes and compare. You will see the difference by yourself.
