Many
people (including marketing departments) seem to be looking at cameras
almost purely in terms of megapixels. Is this a valid approach? The
sensor
is efectively the "film" in a digital camera and the number of
megapixels
is equivelent to the grain in film and who wants grainy pictures? But
how
"grainy" is a low megapixel image and would you notice in the way you
use
images?
Certainly
if
you make very large prints you will choose a high
megapixel
count, but do you do that?
I
decided
to take test images with my three camera bodies and show you
the
results.
I will use a prime 70mm lens (Sigma) and a tripod, I will process all the images in the same way, having shot in raw mode at the same settings and converted to JPEG for the web images, using the same sharpening. Lets see what will happen:-
Pentax Ist 6 megapixels
Pentax K10 10 megapixels
Pentax K20 14.6 megapixels
Well,
that showed the three cameras getting different results, but for other
reasons than the sensor I think, (I will have to do this under
more
controlled conditions next time).
(Now of course the three cameras do of course have other differences, the K10 and K20 for instance, can shoot in an automatic mode where the user sets shutter and aperture and the camera adjusts ISO speed to get a correct exposure. If buying a compact camera the lens offered may vary widely between models with a similar pixel count).
But
anyway, now lets try cropping and really enlarging the
images...........................
Pentax
Ist 6 megapixels
Pentax K10 10 megapixels
Pentax K20 14.6 megapixels
