Megapixel monotony

I posted a similar blog just over 2 years ago on my bebo site. However, this is narking me more these days. What this is is the way digital photographic and video cameras are going, Both in terms of mega-pixels and in terms of HD video content.

Again, this is something I'm gonna geek out on, you have been warned... again!! :P

I'll tackle digital cameras first

Why On earth do are they rated/categorised/priced in terms of however many "megapixels" they give?

Lets look at where they get the term megapixel from….

This is the science bit… Concentrate :P

For example you are looking at a computer monitor reading this just now. The monitor is set at a “Resolution” I’m willing to bet that the resolution of your monitor is set to “1024 x 768” or above. (For all you widescreeners out there I dunno how your resolutions are gonna work before you get pedantic on me :P eg my laptop is set to 1200 by 800 ). What the resolution means is that there are 1024 pixels occupying the length of the screen (left to right) and there are 768 pixels occupying the side (top to bottom)

Now Pretend you are in primary/elementary school again and you are finding out about “areas” for the first time. You multiply the length by the bredth of the screen (or in this case, image) to give you how many pixels your image has… therefore… *gets chalk & calculator out*

1024 x768 = 786432 Pixels

Now if you remember your Kilo’s, Mega’s, Giga’s and Terra’s then that would equal (approx) 0.79 Mega pixel (rounding up of course)

1280 x 800 (my case) = 1024000 = 1.024 megapixels

1280 x1024 = 1310720 pixels = 1.3 Megapixels. Only the serious geek would have resolutions beyond this on his/her monitor I reckon, :P

1600 x 1200 = 1920000 pixels = 1.92 Megapixels

Now at the time of writing, cameras are approaching the 12 Megapixel mark, with cellphone cameras approaching 8 megapixels. Now I’m no David Bayley.. BUT WHAT ON EARTH COULD YOU NEED SUCH HIGH RESOLUTIONS FOR? >:-( =/ considering a 640 x480 photograph could give you a sharp enough 6” x 4” Print at any decent bulk photoprinters, beyond billboard poster campaigns I’m struggling to see what.

Another possibility would be that you could cut out loads of “little” images/photos at say 1024 x 768 from the one main “high res” photo, I’m tending to do this a fair bit from my pictures for phone backdrops, especially since I learned how to perfectly mess about with aspect ratios on photoshop… but I digress.

The term megapixel can also mislead in some other way… I haven't seen any yet, but you could get a camera that could give you some VERY weird resolutions, for example 8 megapixel = 2000000 x 4, or 400000 x 20. I might be exaggerating a bit but you get the idea.

The point for me is that a camera should be rated not by the megapixel output, but by the Resolution output. Megapixel is just confusing for many people that don’t understand Physics computer science, or (god forbid) simple mathematics. The resolution gives the picture size in terms of length and height. What could be simpler than that? You don’t need to go for the ones with the highest megapixel rating. If you do take pictures at such a high resolution you’ll run out of space on your memory card before you know it. & if the images are to be web based, imagine he resizing/cropping/zooming you’d have to do. For example I recenty joined flickr, and i I can view the images quite reasonably on 800 x 600 resolution. Beyond that is just overkill for the site.

What annoys me more is that in my lifetime thus far I've used around 4 cellphones with a camera on them, and for taking photos, I found them very substandard, for taking videos is a different story which is something I'll touch on later. They varied in terms of megapixel size, (or should I call that "resolution" now? :P ) for now My HTC Kaiser, has 2 cameras on it and it's main one on its back panel is rated for 3 megapixels. And for taking pictures, it is Rubbish!! apart from certain image and video processing driver issues which I have touched on before. But in gerneral it mirrored every cell phone camera I have used so far. In which case I get the phone out to take an picture, point it, it takes an age to focus, then once it's focused, there's a lag of a few more seconds before it takes a picture and whats more, the shakyness is captured on the image as well, which is less than ideal, and not many of us have the steadyness of hand in order to combat this.

And this is also the case for my kaiser, which is rated for 3MP. More recently cameras on cell phones are bucking this trend. The cameras on the N series nokias are coming close to digital camera sharpness ever since the N95.

in my opinion if you do wanna get a camera.. Is that if you are after a digital camera that takes good sharp images that you don't necessarily need to identify specs of dust in.. Find out what resolutions the camera can do before you buy one. I’ve never found myself needing to take photographs above 1600 by 1200 so far. And as shown above that's bareley 2 megapixels. I've tried one of the latest low end cybershots, and the lowest resolutions was 3024 x 2048. which i found too excessive in terms of file size, and the sharpness of the images was something I found lacking. And the User interface of the camera wasn't as intuitive and responsive as the canon was.

Up to that temporary use of the cybershot, I've always used cannons. I went from at first using a powershot A80, which i lost on a night out in aberdeen, to the digital ixus 60 (the american version known as the SD600) which had its LCD cracked whin i slipped on the floor of a nightclub in a french ski resort, Then The Ixus 70 up to, and beyond it surviving a dunking in thailand. Then reverting back to my SD 600 after replacing the LCD on that. I've never fone beyond the 1600 x 1200 resolution in any of them. And that has also prooved good in the case of using photshop where I want to play around with aspect ratios and get smaller images for other projects, say, getting an image to use as a backdrop on my phone or EEEPC

All in all I think a camera around the 2 - 3 megapixel rating would be good enough for general use by anyone these days (providing the resolutions seem reasonable ;) ) . This will save you a bit of money if you are gonna buy one.

Onto HD cameras/camcorders/visual output now.

I've kinda staying away from HD video & blu ray in terms of both watching and making, when people talk about things like 1080P or 720p I'm not too sure what that means fully and right now I'm not too interested in finding out , I'm guessing its somewhere along the lines of the either pixels length or bredth like I explained whilst talking about resolution in the cameras.

but in terms of viewing, Hd does not interest me, at least not yet, for reasons that can be read here

Another reason is - i think - that the vast majority of viewing content, doesn't really justify viewing in Hi definition. Fair enough, there is stuff that does justify being in Hd, Planet earth for one and I'm sure many films would be too. But outside of those, its not worth the Big screen tv or PS3 to view it on, or in the case of new media, the extra bandwidth you'd use in downloading.

What extra benefit would I get of watching say, a cartoon in HD, say, the Simpsons. that's largely cell shaded and at a fixed framrate so i don't think I'd notice much difference than it would be in standard def. If I'm watching some sports in HD, for example, a soccer game, I wouldn't really want to look at the hairyness of the players' legs. Hell I already know that Wayne Rooney looks like Shrek without needing any more proof for heavens sake, and watching it in HD isn't gonna make me notice if a team scores a goal any differently than standard Def would do.

So in this case of new media, why would I want to watch diggnation in HD then? To comment on how spiky Alex's hair is or can be? to comment on Kevin's stubble or how hungover he looks? I don't think so =/ . Why would I want to watch Epicfu in HD? to comment on the facial imperfections of Zadi's make up? Again i don't think so =/ (only kidding Zadi, I'm sure you're gorgeous enough without it!! ;) :P )

So overall the point I'm trying to make is, I still appreciate the program and its content (both in new and old media) regardless of whether is filmed, or shown in hi-res/def. That's why i'm able to watch and listen to stuff on my kaiser at, what many would see as, low resolutions and bit rates and still appreciate it. I still enjoy the quirkyness informativeness of epicfu, as well as the drunken banter and stories on Diggnation. And not being able able to watch in HD does not take anything away from the viewing experience for these types of programs in my view.

and to conclude, here's An Example done by me personally:


Find more videos like this on MIX
This was taken using my (newly refurbished) Canon SD 600 at an original resolution of 320 x 240 and original frame rate of 30FPS, If I filmed that clip in hi def you'd still think that the Arc de Triomphe in Paris is a scary place to drive :P

Also for this reason I have recorded my campfire response videos using the front facing camera of my Kaiser, Video Quality is hardly that of Planet earth (i'd put it in the same quality as that of the pictures it takes :P ), but nonetheless you're still able to see me, hear me, and understand (I hope?!?! :P ) the points I'm making all the same!!

Rant over, and thanks for reading @:-)


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