What's the lowest megapixel count on a digital camera that you would recommend?

Forget all the junk you've been told and ask yourself what you want to do with the pictures.

If the only thing you want to do is email them to friends and put them online, ANY of the modern cameras will do fine. The output will actually be more than you need and you'll find yourself shrinking the pictures constantly. So if this is what you want, get what's most affordable.

The megapixel count comes into play when you want to print your pictures out. If this is what you'll be doing the majority of the time, then next ask yourself how big do you want to print them? IF YOU DON"T WANT THE TECHNICAL EXPLANATION, SKIP DOWN TO THE **.

Print resolution is the amount of pixels you fit into an inch when you output your photos to the printer. Most of the time you want to hit around 300dpi (300 dots per inch) at final print size. This is the industry standard for graphic designers and works beautifully for inkjet printers. Anything more and you're just wasting time and processing power - you're eye won't notice a difference.

The digital cameras default on screen to 72dpi pictures but the higher the megapixel, the bigger the file dimension. Let's say you have a 6.3 megapixel camera, that means the files produced by the camera will be something like 3072 pixels by 2048 pixels (or 3072 x 2048). Just do the math (height times width equals area) : 3072 times 2048 = 6,291,456 total pixels in your picture. A megapixel is a million pixels, so we get 6.29 megapixels, which is close enough to 6.3 for the marketing people.

Remember: The camera defaults to 72 dpi. So if you wanted to print that 3072 x 2048 image at default resolution, you'd end up with a print roughly 42.6 inches by 26.4 inches. And it would be a large pixelated MESS.

Now, when you increase the amount of pixels in an inch from 72 to 300, the output size shrinks (you are shrinking each pixel down to fit more into a one inch square), you end up with a 10.2 x 6.8 print that will be crisp and clear. You can fudge it to 10 x 7 so it will fit into a standard frame.

So, if you generally want to print bigger than 7 x 10, you should probably get more Mega Pixels. (But I'd bet your printer can only go up to 8.5 x 11 so you'd be wasting your money.) If you only want a 5 x 7 print, you can get away with a 4MP camera (or even 3MP if you can find one).

**So in summary,

7+MP = "bigger than you can probably print on your printer"
5MP - 6MP = roughly 7 x 10 prints at 300dpi
3MP - 4MP = roughly 5 x 7 prints at 300dpi
1MP - 2MP = "good luck finding one anymore"

I'm not even gonna touch on lens types and brand differences. Hope that helps...

The lowest pixel count I would recommend is 3MP. It prints 4x6 and 5x7 pictures with no problem. Fuzziness has to do with focus and motion burr. It is not directly related to resolution, unless you try to make a very large print with small pixel counts.

3 MP is about the lower limit, but 4 MP costs pretty much the same, so why not go for 4? The sensor size and quality as well at the lens quality are especially important down in the 3-4 MP range.

Pixels - How many are enough?

If you always plan to compose your pictures perfectly, you don't need a whole lot of pixels. If you want to allow for cropping, which means enlarging only a portion of your image, the more pixels the better.

Imagine taking a scenic view and then noticing that the middle 20% of the photo would make an even better picture. Suppose you take a picture of a whole group of people and Aunt Clara really, really looks great in the picture, but everyone else looks lousy. If you have the pixels to work with, you can still make a decent print of Aunt Clara that she would be happy to have. If you buy an 8-to-10 MP camera and don't want to TAKE large photos, you can always set the camera to a lower file size. You can never go the other direction, though.

Unless the cost is a major issue, buy the camera with more pixels. You will never be sorry that you did, but you might one day be sorry that you didn't.

Having said all that, though, pixels are not the only measure of image quality. The sensor size is important as well as the image processing softare inclluded in the camera. You need to read reviews if you want a critical understanding of image quality for particular cameras. Try http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ for more information on the cameras you are considering.

You might be hard pressed to find a "real" digicam with fewer than 4 or 5 mega pixels now. A lot also depends on the lens and the sensor as well as the photographer's technique.

BTW, to Dontblame, Your dead pixel was on the sensor, which has nothing to to with the LCD view screen. I find the swivel screen can be handy at times, but certainly you can do without it. The screen has nothing whatsoever to do with the image, though.

Just stay with a brand name camera manufacturer, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Kodak. It'd be hard to go wrong with any of their mid-level offerings.

The most important thing is to read the manual!!!!

Good luck!

I would say 3.0When you get into the high range like 8.0 and up, taking any close up pictures sometimes takes a while to get use to. Because of it being such a clear image, a tripod or monopod is must for non-blurry pictures.
If it were for a kid, I’d go with 3.0. I have a Sony that I bought back in 1999 for 800 bucks. It now is probably only worth 100 new, but well it is something that I have become use to and other high pixel camera's of friends that I try and take photo's with I blur all the time! The key with digital photography is to take a large picture, and then on your computer downsize it 50%, and that makes it crisper, but keep both sizes saved on your computer for later editing, or what not. If you try and blow up a smaller picture, you will regret taking such a small picture to begin with or downsizing it and not keeping the larger scale on hand. Hope this helps.

Also, I wouldn’t get one with a flip screen, or rotating screen. These are nice and cool features, but the Sony I had at first had this function, great for those shots that you need to be taller or shorter, but the camera doesn’t take a snap shot of what the lens sees, rather it takes a digital image of the LCD. Things might have changed, but Sony gave me a new camera, because a mega pixel went bad on my LCD, and started putting dots in all my images. They replaced it free of charge, and it was a year old, and gave me the next model up.

8mp, I asked a photographer and he said 8 mp was the minimum where film and digital are close under normal operations.

If you have a shutter speed less then 60 in a slr camera you are likely to have blur if you are shooting at moving objests.