What Do Megapixels On A Camera Mean

What does megapixel mean? Are more megapixels always amend? How many megapixels do i demand? We explain it to you lot!

What does megapixel hateful?

Megapixel the compound word from mega and pixel.

Mega: is a prefix and stands for one million (1'000'000).
Pixel: or pixel is the smallest displayable unit in an image.

With this definition we tin can say: i megapixel = one 1000000 pixels/dots in an epitome. This corresponds to an prototype of exactly 1000 x 1000 pixels.

Megapixels are used in the recording and display of images. For example, if nosotros want to impress an image with 1 megapixel and 300 dpi (dpi explained here), the paradigm is 85 x 85mm. A full HD monitor (2560 x 1440 pixels) could not display this image in full resolution.

Abbreviations Megapixel: MP, Mpx, Mpix or MPixel?

Many companies use a unlike abridgement when specifying megapixels, every bit no uniform abbreviation has yet been established. Thus, all of the following abbreviations are right: MP , Mpx , Mpix and MPixel .

We employ Mpx as an abbreviation because, in our experience, px is the most common abbreviation for pixels.

Are more megapixels (resolution) always better?

No! Many camera manufacturers apply megapixel resolution as the most important quality feature of their products, as information technology is the easiest quality characteristic to understand. It is by far not the most important thing at present that almost every photographic camera has enough resolution for normal use (12Mpx and up). 12 Mpx can display images on the post-obit media with the best quality:

Image for photo album (300dpi) up to 25 ten 33cm (larger than A4)
Poster (100dpi) up to 75 x 100 cm
4k Television set/projector

Megapixels only become important if you want to display images on a larger medium or enlarged sections (posters, large posters, professional photo presentations).

How many megapixels do I really need at present?

Correctly recognized, it depends on the application. Let'southward go over some use cases:

- Brandish a picture on the net/blog

If we assume that the image should merely be displayed on the Internet, nosotros actually just need a very small number of megapixels, mainly considering of the file size that should be every bit small as possible on the Internet. The images on this blog are displayed with a maximum width of 720 pixels. So I reduce a large moving-picture show so that it is exactly 720 pixels wide.

The post-obit picture has a resolution of 720 x 480 pixels and would only require a 0.35 Mpx camera.

MegaPixel MPixel Full HD

- Prove the department of a picture in the internet/weblog

Only if we want to display a section of the image from above in the same quality (720 10 480 pixels), the original prototype must be a lot larger. The original (higher up) of the following picture should have a camera resolution of 12 Mpx:

MegaPixel MP CROP

- Calculation of the resolution for farther use cases

The resolution is always calculated based on the image size and quality for the application. The quality is the bespeak density (dpi, dots per inch). You can use the following guidelines:

Physical pressure level:

Photo for photo album: 300 dpi
Affiche: 100-150 dpi

Presentation on a digital medium (idiot box/monitor/projector)

HD: 1280 × 720 pixels ~ ane Mpx
Full Hard disk drive: 1920 x 1080 pixels ~ 2 Mpx
2K: 2560 x 1440 pixels ~ iv Mpx
4k: 3840 ten 2160 pixels ~ 8 Mpx

You lot are welcome to apply our pixel calculator to calculate other resolutions: Pixel figurer

Why is one Mpx specified with 1024 x 1024 pixels (e.one thousand. Wikipedia)

The reason why many camera manufacturers really calculate 1 megapixel at 1024 10 1024 every bit the footing for the MP calculation lies in the architecture and manufacture of the sensors. A camera sensor is divided into stock-still blocks, each of which ranges from 16 pixels up to 256 pixels in steps of sixteen pixels, 64 being a standard value.

Case:

If I had a camera with a width of 1000 pixels, divided into 16-pixel blocks of the sensor, this would upshot in an odd number of 62.five blocks. That is not technically possible.

And then I build the photographic camera with e.g. 62 blocks or 63 blocks.

With 62 blocks of 16 pixels each this results in 992 pixels
With 63 blocks of 16 pixels each, this results in 1008 pixels
With 64 blocks of 16 pixels each this results in 1024 pixels

Since reading out in 64-pixel blocks is faster today, sixteen blocks of 64 pixels each are built in. This so results in the number of 1024 pixels, which is rounded down to 1000 pixels for sales purposes.