Is 2M Pixels enough ????

[SSSteve]

I bought an Ixus v about 3 months ago and love it.

Recentlly tho I've read a lot of information about how many pixels to get when buying a digital camera. One very good explanation, broke down the figures and somehow proved that for real photo quality prints you need at least 3M Pixels.
Also I've noticed some new camera's come with as high as 7MP now, which they wouldnt do unless it really was necessary!! would they??

Anyway, I take all my photo's on max settings, to get the best results, but as yet have never got any developed.

So a few questions:

1) Can home printers do as good a job, as taking your flash card to a proper place?

2) Is 2MP really enough? - How big can you go with your prints to maintain real photo quality?

[bmwracer]

Question 1: I think most of the new inkjet printers will do a fine job printing out your digicam pics... And maybe some of the older printers as well, if you use the special (and rather expensive) glossy photo paper...

Question 2: I've read that with 2MP you can print up to an 8x10 size with pretty good quality and you should be able to get very good to excellent quality (printer dependent, of course) with 5x7 and smaller sizes...

[Rustle]

Agreed. 2MP is fine for a 5x7 print. Any larger and you'll lose quality, but an 8x10 is manageable from a really good image.

As for printers, you can only judge the quality at home if you're going to use high-quality paper. Otherwise, you're comparing apples to oranges. In the end, it just depends on your personal preferences.

Was that article online? I'd like to see the writer's justification for 3MP, since it's really dependent on how large of a print you want.

Russ

[SSSteve]

The article was on MSN's homepage a few months back as part of a guide for buying a digital camera for the summer. I seem to remember the calculation was based on prints measuring 6x4. By breaking the values down to pixels per inch, he somehow proved that 3MPixels was required for real photo quality even at this small size.
Quite p***** me off at the time as I'd just bought my 2.1MP Ixus V.
When I see the amount of detail on my computer in some 1200x1600 res pics, I can't believe that wouldnt produce a decent print. I'm gonna take some to Jessops soon to experiment. I'll get them to develop some at different sizes, and judge for myself.

[BOshek]

Well, I compared my Canon s-200 (picture 1600x1200) with a 3.2Meg Olympus (2000x1600) and printed both pictures at home with a Canon BJC-2100 (5x7).

There was no noticeable difference between both. The Canon (2meg) didn't show any jaggies.

So there you go. I really believe that it's beyond 8x10 that the 2 meg will really show problems.

[shaohui75]

I own a V2, i usually take with 2M. I have send it for developing and it come out superb on size 4R glossy surface. Its still very sharp.

[Denny]

For highest quality printouts, your file must be at least 300dpi (most inkjets can only read up to 300dpi. It changes all higher dpi files to a lower dpi file). A 2 mp can produce a good 4x6 photo
a 3 can produce a good 5x7 photo

for some photo finishing store, they can develop it at 600dpi for super clarity.

[octathlon]

One other thing to consider is that you might need to crop your picture, especially if you don't have much optical zoom. In that case, it is nice to have those "extra" pixels to throw away :)