Goldilocks and the Three Megapixels

According to a study by Image Engineering, more mega pixels might not equate to better pictures.

The folks over at coolest-gadgets.com sum it up pretty well:

The argument is essentially this: CCD chips on point and shoot cameras a smaller and as such, fitting in more pixels causes them to lose light sensivity. Sure, there’s more data on the chip, but the chip can’t absorb the light data and what it ends up with is a picture that has more noise than image quality. In addition, the more megapixels a camera has, the larger the lens it needs to provide the clarity it deserves and prevent diffraction due to a loss of detail with smaller apertures. But since we’re talking portable point and shoots here, those large lenses simply aren’t being made.

Finally, with larger mega pixels comes longer saving time due to their requires huge storage capacity, or more compression if not storing images in RAW format. The result is a noisier image and a dissatisfied camera user who thirsts for high quality and speed.
In the end, relying on a smaller MP that can balance all these needs may indeed be the answer. But is anyone really asking the question?

The image at the top of this post shows what happens as you go from too few pixels on the left (too pixelated) to too many pixels on the right (increased errors result in too much noise).

via coolest-gadgets