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Digital compact cameras have grown increasingly powerful over the past few years, to the point where it is now hard to find a camera under five megapixels, which just a few years ago would have been the most powerful camera you could buy. There are now many compact cameras with 10-megapixel sensors, and it’s quite likely that 12-megapixel compact cameras will arrive at some point in the next few months. Do you really need something that powerful, or are other features more important?

To decide how many megapixels you need, you need to think about what you want to do with your photos. If all you’re going to do is store them on your computer and print some of them at 10 x 15cm (6 x 4in) snapshot size, then really five megapixels is probably more than you need. You can get a perfect photo-quality snapshot print from a camera with a three megapixel sensor. With six megapixels you can print your photos at A4 size, and with a 10MP camera A3-size high quality prints are possible. You only need more than that if you regularly shoot double-page spreads for National Geographic.

The way to work it out is to look at the maximum image size in pixels. For true photo-quality a print should be made at a resolution of 150 pixels per centimetre, although 100 pixels per centimetre will still produce very good results, so if you divide the pixel size of the camera’s image by 150 or 100 you will be able to work out how big the prints can be in centimetres. Here’s a table that shows the relationship between megapixels and print size.

More powerful sensors do capture more fine detail, but they also have some problems. They are often more prone to image noise, have less dynamic range (less detail in shadow and highlight areas) and may also suffer from purple fringes around bright highlights, due to charge leaking from the tiny, closely-crowded photocells. The performance of very high resolution sensors will no doubt improve, but at the moment the best compromise between cost and performance for non-SLR cameras seems to be around seven to eight megapixels.

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