"Megapixels are the digital camera market's equivalent of horsepower and megahertz—a single metric that consumers and marketers latch on to tenaciously, despite the fact that it hardly describes overall performance. Over the last several years, camera manufacturers have been pumping up the megapixels on each successive camera model, regardless of whether such increases offered any real benefits (hint: they usually did not)."
Manufacturers have always had the tough challenge of benchmarking or rating electronics. With CPUs you have Mhz/Ghz, with TVs you have resolution (and contrast ratio, and response time and brightness) and with cameras you have megapixels. All these ratings fall short of considering everything that's important in electronics. Fortunately, it seems that cameras have hit such a plateau that megapixels won't mean much anymore. Of course, camera manufacturers will probably switch to other simplistic numbers to promote their wares but at least we won't see ads for 250 megapixel cameras that come with a free 256mb SD card. Olyumpus seems to think that 12 megapixels should be enough to satisfy all but the most discrinimating photog. Ars Technica thinks 6 should be more than adequate for most people. Being largely unbitten by the bug, I hit my comfort zone at 4. I just hope that they'll now focus more on improved colour reproduction, less distortion and good performance under low light conditions. Yes, high end, and even prosumer cameras can do that, but I'm waiting for then them to do that with camera phones. Now I'll go hang my head in shame for revealing just how casual a photographer I am.
