A Megapixel is one million pixels. Pixel stands for picture element and are the little dots that make the picture. The number of megapixels is found by multiplying the number of horizontal pixels by the number of vertical pixels.
My Nikon D90 has 12.3 megapixels. My cameraphone has 5 megapixels. A photo taken with my cameraphone would be fine if I’m planning to only display the photo online. But for printing, more megapixels is usually better than fewer.
Other factors are important to the quality of an image. The digital camera’s image sensor, processor, lens, and other factors are as important as the number of megapixels.
I found data online that gives the minimum megapixels for quality prints printed at 300 dpi.
Max Print Size || Minimum MP || Resolution
4 x 6″ || 2 megapixels || 1600 x 1200
5 x 7″ || 3 megapixels || 2048 x 1536
8 x 10″ || 5 megapixels || 2560 x 1920
11 x 14″ || 6 megapixels || 2816 x 2112
16 x 20″ || 8 megapixels || 3264 x 2468
16 x 24″ || 12 megapixels || 4200×2800
Subscribe to the RSS feed