Currently, you don’t have to be a professional to create high quality pictures. To get a good result, a novice photographer will also use the usual “soap box”. To select the appropriate technique, you will need general knowledge about the image formation process. In this article you will learn about what 1 megapixel is and how to reduce it. It will also help to understand the main characteristics of the camera that affect the image. Is it true that the clarity of a picture depends on the number of megapixels?
We understand the concept
A digital photograph consists of many dots forming an image. They are called pixels. Each of them is an element of matrix construction, the larger their number, the better the camera itself. So, 1 megapixel consists of 1,000,000 pixels.
How can this term be summarized? Often there is such a megapixel reduction as mpx. The concept comes from the English words pix and element. Perhaps, with a strong increase in the photo received from the device, you already saw how the image is divided into the smallest squares? These are pixels.
How many units are needed
You can meet the opinion that the more points and, accordingly, the higher the resolution, the more clear the picture will come out. In reality, much more important is the availability of good optics and copyright craftsmanship.
The result is affected by the settings of aperture, shutter speed, ISO (photosensitivity) and many others. Of the external factors, it is exposed light or natural light, weather conditions (in the event that shooting takes place on the street).
The physical size of the matrix itself affects the characteristics of the picture much more than the number of megapixels (or reduction - Mp) in the camera. If these units are very few, you will get a blurry frame with a lot of noise. This problem is usually encountered by owners of inexpensive smartphones and cameras. Even powerful editors such as Adobe Photoshop will not be able to completely get rid of such artifacts. If you want to immediately get great shots, we recommend that you pay attention to the presence of the required number of megapixels, and to such a thing as crop matrices.
What determines image quality
In most modern devices, megapixels (or abbreviations - mpx, Mp, MP) are in excess, while manufacturers are trying to save on other parameters. For example, on the physical size of the matrix.
In the days of film photography, the concept of “full frame” appeared, it is associated with a 35 mm film used as a photosensitive element. With the advent of digital cameras, the matrix has replaced the latter. But its production is more expensive, so companies began to produce truncated options. So the crop coefficient appeared - the ratio of the diameter of the full frame to the diagonal of a smaller matrix.
This parameter affects, first of all, what percentage of the visible image will fall into the frame, and a kind of cropping of the future image. With an increase in the coefficient, the noise level increases, and the viewing angle decreases. The image obtained with a camera with a full-frame sensor will be several times clearer and better. Also, when buying a camera, you should pay attention to the focal length, the characteristics of which are more related to the lens.
A little more about matrix resolution
In what cases is a greater number of megapixels needed (in short, MP)? If you are going to greatly increase the future image, for example, for printing photo wallpapers. The larger the number, the stronger the image can be cropped without loss of quality. Additional pixels come in handy and when shooting an object from afar, it will be possible to zoom in when editing.
Another factor is the increase in the amount of occupied memory on the medium and the processing time of the received image. In most cases, a novice photographer will have enough resolution of 8-13 megapixels (in abbreviation, Mp). When printing street posters, for example, they do not use such a high resolution, since they are located at a height and the viewer looks at them from afar.
Instead of a conclusion
From this article, readers learned what megapixels (in abbreviation, MP, Mp or mpx) are, how these elements affect the photo. Whether it is worth acquiring a camera with a large number of these elements depends on the tasks for which you will use photographic equipment. If the goal is to obtain high-quality images for small printed images (including A4 format), it is better to pay attention to other, more important characteristics of the camera, which were discussed above.
If you plan to print large posters or greatly enlarge your pictures, you should prefer a device with a lot of megapixels. In all other cases, you do not need to pay special attention to this parameter - it is better to purchase a good lens or filters. The clarity of the image is affected to a greater extent by the skill of the photographer and the settings suitable for the shooting conditions than the number of pixels in the device.