Mega Pixel Differences 
by Makoto Honda                August 24, 2005

General

There is a mega pixel war being waged by digital camera manufacturers. Everybody is glued to this number, because it appears everywhere and this is the first number that hits our eyes. It's easy to compare these numbers. Your camera has 6 mega pixels but mine has 8 meg! Since the camera's mega pixel count is an area measurement, when converted to the corresponding linear measure of width and height, the difference becomes much small er. The table below shows the mega pixel count of various digital sensors mapped to the equivalent width and height pixel numbers. (The width and height aspect ratio of 1.5 x 1.0 is assumed.) In terms of linear pixel counts (width and height), there is not much difference between 6M and 8M cameras. The 6M has 2000 pixels along its frame height and the 8M has 2310 pixels. Just looking at these numbers along, what this means is this: With the 6M camera, you make a print of a certain size. With the 8M camera, you can make a print 15% larger on width and height and still keep the same sharpness. A big deal!