Need some advice

Wingnut · Joined: Dec 05, 2002 Posts: 49

With the holidays fast approaching, it is time to start thinking about what to get that special someone in my life the perfect Christmas gift ~ ME. Very Happy

Since I've been especially good this year I've decided to ask for a digital camera, since my wife loaned my 4mp Olympus to her sister who promptly broke it. I was always happy with it save a few quirks with the lens cover.

I've been looking at the Pentax Optio A20 ~ which is their top of the line compact 10mp offering. I also have my eye on their 7.2 mp job. Is there really a noticeable difference between 7.2 and 10 mp? Is the extra 2.8 mp really worth the extra $100? I won't be printing 16" X 20" photos or anything like that.

Anything you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1502 Location: London

I hope that you got your camera.
If not, the general rule is that number of megapixels is only relevant for the size of eventual output. AND even then the size for the CCD device that receives the light may not be up to managing all those megapixels.
As with any camera the important things are lens quality and film plane size ( i.e. CCD as an electronic "film").

Philocalist

Just come across your post, so I guess that this advice may be a little late?
I've worked as a pro photographer for over 20 years, initially with traditional camera's and film, then digital started creeping into my life maybe 8 years ago (in the form of an Olympus Compact digital camera, resolution 640x480 pixels ... cost around Â£650!!!!!

Around three years ago I switched over to digital entirely, so I guess what I have to say is based on actual experience rather than sales-literature Smile

First-off, you can afford to be very sceptical about the claims that you need 10 Megapixel cameras etc to give good results ... it depends very much upon what YOU want to use the end result for ... and not all cameras offering the same image resolution will give you the same image quality! Shocked

To try and put this into perspective, my daughter recently returned from a trip to New York, and showed me pictures she had taken with a camera phone ... 3 Megapixels.

To say I was surprised at the quality is an understatement! If you are putting the resultant enlargements in a frame behind glass, these images blow up beautifully to around 10" x 8" without any problem ... and are as sharp as you may wish for most practical purposes!!!

On a personal, professional basis, virtually 100% of my work is done on 6 Megapixel cameras (Canon SLR's), from which I can print happily to 16" x 12", and get perfectly sharp pictures .... but to put this into perspective, probably 95% plus of my work over a 20 year+ period has never been enlarged beyong 7" x 5"!!!!

So ... I'm probably as big a 'tackle-tart' as the next man, and considerably worse than most, but I feel no compelling need to go for more cameras with more pixels ... my next / current interest is to upgrade my ancient mobile phone for a 3 MP camera phone ... purely for the quality of the images and convenience of having it with me at all times!

Hope you enjoy a little obfuscation? Very Happy

piero · Joined: Feb 16, 2007 Posts: 78 Location: UK

I advise you SONY or CANON.

Cool