How many Pixels?

[ardvark]

Looking to get me a diggy camera for stills and maybe video. I went to a wedding the other week and took some pics with me 8 mgp phone but they are'nt as good as I hoped. My question is, how many megapixels do our eyes see? Thery being I can take a pic then zoom in to alter them then print them out without anyone realising what I've done. Another question if I may, if I take a video and take stills from it how many pixels can I expect? Reason for asking is when taking pics at this ere wedding the amount of ******s who had there eyes closed when the pic was take drove me mad. Thery being with a small video I have a choice of stills and get them all with there peepers open.
I'm not looking into spending thousands of pounds but any advice would be greatfully recieved.

Al

[StevenWilliams]

I have no idea about our eyes but IMHO it's all about the quality and size of the CCD rather than the Megapixels as such.

Most 12 MP cameras use a really small CCD and are in no way as good as a good quality 8 MP unit.

Also make sure you look at the amount of noise on the image. This tends to increase in proportion to the cheapness of the unit.

[calibrax]

It all depends on if you want to crop pictures or print them larger than normal photo sizes. If you don't do either of these, then anything more than 4MP is pointless - you simply won't see the difference above that.

A 12MP camera takes photos sized 4000x3000. This is huge for using online, as well as being a huge file size. If you are using your cam purely for the web, even a 1MP camera will be fine. A picture sized 1024x768 is 0.7MP, and 800x600 is 0.5MP.

For general use, I would rather have a 4MP camera with a large diameter lens (to allow more light in), than a 12MP compact camera.

[ardvark]

What size lens you talking about Steve?

[calibrax]

Originally Posted by ardvark

What size lens you talking about Steve?

I have one of these, a Panasonic Lumix FZ7 (7MP):



and one of these, a Pentax Optio S12 (12MP):



The Lumix has a lens similar in size to an SLR camera, and the Pentax lens is about the size of a 20p piece. Despite only being 7MP compared to the 12MP on the Pentax, the quality of the pics from the Lumix are MUCH better, more light going through gives you much better definition as well as more flexibility with shutter speeds etc.

The only reason I have the Pentax is that it fits easily in a shirt pocket. But where possible I always prefer the Lumix.

[WeeMan]

Originally Posted by ardvark

My question is, how many megapixels do our eyes see? Thery being I can take a pic then zoom in to alter them then print them out without anyone realising what I've done.

LOL! Who did you get caught with?

[StevenWilliams]

Originally Posted by WeeMan

LOL! Who did you get caught with?

Perhaps he's a stalker

[T-Cut]

Originally Posted by ardvark

My question is, how many megapixels do our eyes see?

I thought this was an interesting question and since it remains unanswered, I thought I do so.

The human eye contains three different cell types capable of processing light into 'sight'. The ones we've all heard of are rods and cones. If we consider these as 'pixels' in the photographic sense, then you see with a resolution of around 120-130 megapixels.

TC

[ardvark]

Cheers TC,
That is one hell of a lot of pixles. That'll cost a bit on a camera. From what I've sussed out atm is that it does'nt matter how many mega pixle camera you have is the lens is small, to get clarity you need a large lens to let the light in. Correct me if I'm wrong please.
My next problem is to find a good looking camera with a decent sized lens that is'nt the size of a house brick.

Al

[stevemac]

Originally Posted by calibrax

I have one of these, a Panasonic Lumix FZ7 (7MP):






The Lumix has a lens similar in size to an SLR camera, and the Pentax lens is about the size of a 20p piece. Despite only being 7MP compared to the 12MP on the Pentax, the quality of the pics from the Lumix are MUCH better, more light going through gives you much better definition as well as more flexibility with shutter speeds etc.

The only reason I have the Pentax is that it fits easily in a shirt pocket. But where possible I always prefer the Lumix.

I also have a Lumix. I bought it because of the one thing you did not mention, The Leica lens. I don't expect that in a camera that price the lens is the top of the range but when I was in the photographic industry Leica made the best lenses in the world. I expect they still do!