Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Looking Beyond Megapixels
Posted by Suhit Gupta in "ARTICLE" @ 01:00 PM
"For years, resolution was considered the main measure of image quality in digital photos, but continual improvements have only shown up the fallacy: Grainy, blurry and underexposed photos look just as bad at 8 megapixels as they do at 5. These days, most new cameras pack enough firepower to produce high quality 8.5-by-11-inch enlargements, which is big enough for most people. As a result, new features are beginning to take center stage that promise to dramatically raise the bar on quality for casual point-and-click shooters. (See images illustrating some of these new features here.) "You're not seeing pixels as the lead sentence on a press release anymore," said Sally Smith Clemens, product manager at Olympus."
I completely agree with the article. Features like low-light shooting, better control at high ISO, better zoom and consequently, and image-stabilization among others are become more and more important these days. In fact, I was thinking just the other day that now I barely even look at the megapixels a camera allows. It reminds me of times about five years ago when processor speeds started becoming less important and other features like memory, hard drive speeds, video cards, etc became a much more integral part of the PC-buying decision. So, what features do you look for these days when buying a camera?
I completely agree with the article. Features like low-light shooting, better control at high ISO, better zoom and consequently, and image-stabilization among others are become more and more important these days. In fact, I was thinking just the other day that now I barely even look at the megapixels a camera allows. It reminds me of times about five years ago when processor speeds started becoming less important and other features like memory, hard drive speeds, video cards, etc became a much more integral part of the PC-buying decision. So, what features do you look for these days when buying a camera?
