I know it is that everyone thinks the more the better when it comes to your digital camera features. This theory is especially true in the case of mega pixels. I myself have been guilty of sizing up the number of mega pixels from camera to camera in the electronics store, but is this really necessary do we really need more pixels? To answer this, you must first know what you are going to do with the images. Before we address that issue, let's make sure we know what a megapixel is:

Megapixel is a technical term for "million pixels", where a single pixel is the smallest unit of color that a camera's sensor is able to capture. The more pixels in the sensor, the sharper the image a camera can reproduce. Note that some camera specifications abbreviate megapixel as "MP".

Now then, how many of those pixels do we need? The first task in answering this question is to determine how we intend to use the images. We are mainly concerned about uses that require a high resolution digital photo. Putting a photo on the computer's screen requires a low resolution image, so any camera is sufficient, if this is our only intention. The most common need for high resolution photos is to print or develop pictures. Let us then focus on putting pictures on paper to answer our megapixel question.

The second task is to determine the largest print size we would like of our photo. Sure, it would look cool to have poster-size images all over the house of our sweetheart, but are we really going to go through that expense? I assume for most of us, poster size prints fall into the "rarely or never" category. Having ruled out extreme sizes, we have the three most common photo sizes to consider. According to online photo labs, the following minimum resolutions are sufficient to produce high quality prints:

4 x 6": 640 x 480 pixels (0.3 mega pixels) 5 x 7": 1024 x 768 pixels (0.8 mega pixels) 8 x 10": 1536 x 1024 pixels (1.6 mega pixels)

I have found through my own trial and error that my 3 megapixel camera serves as the bare megapixel minimum that I would use for an 8 x 10" print. Mega pixels any lower will begin to show pixilation under close inspection. To prevent this, double the above megapixel recommendations when buying a camera. The example shows that if your goal is only for 4 x 6" prints, a 0.6 megapixel camera is plenty. Most digital cameras start a 2 mega pixels, which would be enough for quality prints up to 5 x 7".

Now that we know the minimum megapixel requirements for our needs, we are free to focus on other important features of the camera such as lens quality, color reproduction, optical zoom, body size, etc.