Canon EOS 1100D
Lesson One: Do MegaPixels Matter?
The first thing I noticed with this camera was that it had less megapixels then the 600D (and was lighter!). So I figured I needed to know what this meant - I knew it had something to do with how large the photos could be and maintain their sharpness (i.e. not become pixelated) so what I needed to know is would this difference affect me? The 1100D is 12 megapixels, the 600D is 18 megapixels: is this difference important?
Online and computer viewing
Firstly, a megapixel is one million pixels. What is your computer's screen resolution? Mine is currently 1366 x 780 pixels (1065480 pixels or a little over 1 megapixel). All your computer is using to display your photo is 1 megapixel, maybe a little higher if you have a higher screen resolution.
But what about photos?
Here is a link to a good guide on capture resolution (that is what is being measured in megapixels) and image quality. Here is the information summarised briefly:
6" x 4" prints require 2 megapixels
10" x 8" prints require 5 megapixels
14" x 11" prints require 7 megapixels
30" x 20" prints require 10+ megapixels.
Remember these are for photo quality prints, you can get decent results for the larger prints with anything above 7 megapixels.
When might you need more?
Put simply, cropping! If you are going to crop out a third of your photo, you've also cut the number of pixels by a third.. a 6 megapixel image is suddenly a 3 megapixel image.
My decision..
Obviously as I ended up purchasing the Canon 1100D, I decided that the difference between 12 and 18 megapixels was not going to affect me. I want to compose good photos, not crop the bejesus out of them! Nor am I planning on massive sized prints to be entered into competitions or viewed with a close eye. The benefits of 12 vrs 18 megapixels is to me, not a selling point for major consideration!
