What is a Megapixel?
A pixel is short for “picture element” and in Digital Camera terms this unit refers to the cells that collect the information in the camera. A “Megapixel” is one million pixels. The higher the Megapixels value of your camera the better quality the images it can capture. Please see our other FAQ on “How many megapixels do I need?” for more information.
Digital cameras capture images as pixel elements, known as pixels. Simply put, a megapixel is equal to one million pixels. Digital images are made up of thousands of these tiny, tile-like picture elements. The more pixels, the higher the image resolution. Resolution relates primarily to print size and the amount of detail an image has when viewed on a computer monitor at 100%. The number of megapixels is only one aspect relating to the quality of a camera, or the actual quality of a photo it is capable of producing. Factors such as camera sensor and the optical quality of a lens play equally important roles. If you buy a digital camera with too few megapixels for your printing and editing needs, photo quality can become degraded. A photo made into a large sized print from a camera with a low megapixel count will look fuzzy, or pixelated. So will a digital image that is cropped too much.
The term megapixel means one million pixels. Digital images are made of pixels, or picture elements. A pixel is a “square dot” in your picture. One of the first questions many people ask when shopping for a new digital camera is “How many megapixels do I need?” Many people are aware that the number of megapixels the camera is able to capture in a single image has a direct effect on the quality of the photos the camera is able to output. However, because the number of megapixels also has a direct effect on the price of the camera, most people also want to know how many megapixels they really need to get good quality prints without spending too much money on a camera. It’s important to note that there are many factors in choosing a digital camera, many of which may be increasingly more important than the number of megapixels. A camera with a high megapixel count but poor optics will take high resolution, poor looking pictures. You will be able to see close up just how bad the picture loo
A megapixel refers to one million pixels, and is commonly used in reference to digital cameras as an indication of resolution capability. A pixel is a tiny square on a computerized display that is so small it appears as a dot. The display screen is a solid grid of these squares or dots, which can be easily seen with a magnifying glass. The more pixels or dots that make up the display screen, the clearer the resolution or image will be. Greater numbers of dots or pixels allow for more refinement of the image, which results in higher, truer image replication. When it comes to digital cameras, the picture quality capability is measured in megapixels. For example, a 3.1 megapixel camera can take pictures with a resolution of 2048 x 1536, which equals 3,145,728 pixels. That is, the resulting image will be made up of 3.1 megapixels, or over three million dots. Printers measure quality in DPI (dots per inch). A printer capable of only 300 DPI will not print the 3.1 megapixel image in its nati
