First of all, I must say that I have resisted the urge to write this post for over a year because I know I am going to get dozens of comments saying nothing more than “Megapixels are unnecessary–I want ISO.” I often think that photographers simply repeat what they have heard other pro photographers teach online, and stick to it instead of investigating things on their own.
Before I get nerdy on you, allow me to provide some background if you’re newer to this debate. On a camera sensor, there are millions of light receptors (called photosites) that collect information about how much light is present, color, and other information. It used to be, in the early days of digital photography, that camera manufacturers could only fit 2 or 3 million pixels on these sensors. Now, a sensor of the same size can contain 30 or more megapixels. The problem with the proliferation of mexapixels on a sensor is that it reduces the space available for each photosite. The smaller the photosites are, the more difficult it is for camera manufacturers to create cameras that can take pictures with high ISO levels and still maintain a low amount of digital noise. So many photographers argue that they don’t want camera manufacturers to keep adding more megapixels on a sensor, and would prefer that the manufacturers instead focus on low light performance.
I COMPLETELY understand this sentiment. I have missed many pictures in low light environments because my camera simply couldn’t take a clean picture without adding more light to the scene with a flash. I understand that if all else is equal, the camera with fewer megapixels will produce images with less noise because each photosite has a larger area of light to gather from. I get it. Really–I do. This mirrors a conversation I had with Scott Bourne a few weeks ago at the Google+ Photographer’s Conference, where he argued that the new Nikon D800 (which has 36.3 megapixels) should not be used by portrait photographers because it has too many megapixels. I very respect Scott, but we disagree on this point.
Future-Proof Your Images with Higher Megapixel Cameras
