Its not all about the pixels

Its not all about the pixels

Before the advent of digital cameras, people rated cameras by the quality of the pictures that the cameras were able to produce. It was highly subjective of course. Brand names were important of course but there many factors involved: the type of lenses used, the type of film used to capture the image, and the controls used to handle the picture taking process. I remember when I had my father’s Minolta 35mm with its fixed lens, and the controls used to set the ASA speed and the aperture and shutter speed settings. Later on, I had a compact 35mm with a zoom lens and the limited ability to program the camera for various environments but no ability to set any controls as the camera set the shutter speed accordingly (the aperture was fixed). While father’s Minolta was thirty years older than that compact, the quality of the photographs from that camera was superior in all respects.

When digital cameras started to become more popular and became more affordable, one of the biggest drawbacks to having one was that to compare a digitally generated photograph to one from film illustrated that the quality of the resolution of the digital image was lacking. This directly correlated to the pixel count of the sensor used to capture the image. The early cameras with their 1 megapixel resolution were barely serviceable for quick and dirty images.

But as expected, people wanted better quality images and as quality was directly related to the resolution of the sensor, each increase of the sensor size by a megapixel or two made the quality of the digital camera much superior to others having less resolution. So it was fairly easy for the novice digital camera buyer to determine which was the best digital camera by the number of megapixels its sensor had and gauge the competing cameras accordingly.

However, in the past year or so the concept of a camera’s quality as related to its megapixel resolution has changed. Entry level cameras today, the point and shoot variety, have at least 5MP resolution capability is more than adequate if you want a high quality web image or print off a standard 6×4 inch picture. Higher resolutions than this are just not needed by most amateur photographers.

So we have returned to the time when we have to justify on why a $800 camera is superior to a $80 one.

So what we are seeing now is a return to the overall photo taking experience. Many people are satisfied with just selecting a picture taking mode and let the camera calculate the best image and in most situations, the cameras get it right. For those who want more control over their camera like myself, the ability to select the right aperture or shutter is more important along with the availability and quality of the lenses that can be used for a variety of photograph situations. There are other factors that were not around in the heyday of film cameras like the ability of the camera to minimize noise, the speed between taking shots among others. That is why after a rapid influx of manufacturers into the digital camera industry, once again the brand name has become important which is why Canon, Nikon, Olympus and maybe soon Sony are the top brands which people associate with quality.

So we have returned to the time when we have to justify on why a $800 camera is superior to a $80 one. This requires knowing what you are talking about which in turn is understanding what your camera is capable of doing and the skill in using that camera because there are far too many instance where the talented professional can take a superb picture with that $80 camera than the talented amateur with his $800 SLR. It is just not about the pixels anymore.