Let’s face it. Not all photographers enjoy the technical side of photography. They just want to get great pictures. But if you want great pictures, you’re going to have to learn a bit about how cameras work.
As a photographer, you’ve probably heard the word Pixel come up a lot. It may have you running the other way. But if you take some time to understand it, you’ll find it’s nothing to be frightened of.
What is a Pixel?
A pixel is a picture element. Every digital photo is made up of Pixels. They are the smallest piece of information making up the picture. They are usually round or square and are arranged on a 2-dimensional grid.
If you blow up an image many times over, you will see a series of colored shapes. These are the pixels that make up the image.
Pixels and Resolution
The number of pixels in an image is often called the resolution. But this doesn’t exactly capture the meaning. To better understand it, a picture with a lot of pixels has a high resolution.
If a picture has a resolution of 1280 x 1024, that means it has 1280 pixels running horizontally and 1024 running vertically. The numbers can be multiplied to determine how many pixels are in the image. So, if you multiply 1280 by 1024 you’ll end up with 1,310,721.
You may also hear the term megapixel being thrown around a lot. A megapixel is a million pixels. So, a 5-megapixel camera will take images with a total number of 5 million pixels. Our above example of 1,310,721 would be obtained from a 1.31-pixel camera.
How Many Pixels Do I Need?
The more pixels you have, the higher resolution the photo will be and the more image detail you will see. And while many camera salespeople will try to sell photographers on how many pixels a camera has, most will have enough for the average home user.
You may need more pixels if you do professional photography and/or are in the habit of blowing your images up to much larger sizes than the original.
For excellent quality prints, you’ll want to find a camera that offers at least 240 pixels per inch. So, a 4x6 print would require 240 x 4 inches in width and 240 x 6 inches in height. This translates to 960 x 1440 which makes 1,382,4000 or a 1.4-megapixel camera.
If you do a lot of 8 x 10s, a 4.6-megapixel camera will be a better bet.
Generally, you won’t need more than a 4- or 5-megapixel camera for point-and-shoot purposes. Lack of image sharpness, lens quality, and poor lighting will limit how much better your image will be.
Keep in mind that certain software can help you improve the resolution of your photos. A DSLR camera will also give you the flexibility to enlarge images and crop out sections while retaining resolution quality.
Make Sure You’re Taking Advantage of the Pixels Available to You
Some cameras have adjustable quality settings that change the number of pixels you’re using. If your camera is not always on the highest setting, you aren’t taking advantage of its capabilities.
If you’re not sure if your camera has this feature, check your owner’s manual. It may be called something like 'quality' or 'size'.
Color Information
Each pixel stores color information for your image. It’s usually stored in the three components of RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) or four components of CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black).
The number of colors represented by the pixel will depend on the amount of information stored for each pixel. Information is stored as bits. The more bits per pixel (bpp), the more colors the pixel will represent.
So, if only a single bit of information is stored for a pixel, then it will be on or off, or black or white.
The number of bits used to represent the color of a single pixel is known as color depth or bit depth.
Now that you know everything there is to know about pixels, you are ready to make a great camera buying choice. Which number do you think is right for you?
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