What is the difference between 12 megapixels and 18 megapixels

Go here to link your subscription. Need help? Visit our Help Center. Go here to connect your wallet. You should also consider how well your printer can reproduce fine detail. There comes a point beyond which high output resolution on its own is irrelevant. The shots from the megapixel camera have slightly greater potential for enlargement, however. Equally important is the size of the actual photosites on the sensor that collect the image-making light.

Details of how to calculate the size of sensor photosites are provided below. As you can see, the sensors used in digital SLR cameras are substantially larger.

This is important because the more light each photosite collects, the less the signal has to be amplified to produce an image and the better the image quality will be.

The actual calculation is straightforward. Simply divide the length of one side of the imaging area by the number of image pixels that correspond to that side. Dividing the width of the sensor 5. The table below shows a range of typical photosite sizes for current consumer digicams in red and DSLR cameras in green with typical examples for each resolution category. The more photons collected, the more information the camera can process — and the less the image is affected by the background noise that is generated by all electronic devices, which is relatively constant.

The real notable difference is not one of quality , but one of file size : 18 megapixel cameras create larger digital files than their 12 megapixel counterparts. This leads us to ask an important question: what's the point of cameras with more megapixels if image processing takes up so much time and space? First, the most obvious advantage: you can print photos with more megapixels at large sizes. Let me define this another way: if you print a 12 megapixel photo and a 24 megapixel photo at 4x6 inches standard print size you'll be hard-pressed to tell which one is which just like when you compared the small images above.

But if you print both photos at 20x24, then you will see a difference in quality. The 12 megapixel photo won't look as clear and as sharp as the 24 megapixel photo when printed at this large size. This table shows the most common "acceptable" print sizes based on the number of megapixels in some cases, the print size will be the same since there are a limited number of regular print sizes.

There's nothing stopping you from printing your 6 megapixel photos at 20x30, or even billboard size if you so desire. But there is a catch: as you increase the size of a print above the acceptable print size, the image quality deteriorates.

If you just want to print at 4x6 and e-mail photos to friends, then spending a lot on more megapixels is a bit of a waste. There is a second benefit to having a lot of megapixels in your photos: it gives you freedom to crop.

Let's say that you've taken a photo with an 18 megapixel camera - you're able to make nice 16x20 prints with this. Take that warning on top of all the others about how Megapixels don't necessarily make for quality. DJClayworth: a reasonable suspicion, but probably not the case here. See photo. Show 1 more comment. Active Oldest Votes. That means Improve this answer. Guffa Guffa Indeed, if you make 4x6" prints, you probably won't see the difference above about 2 megapixels x as that is ppi.

I actually once made a 6"x8" print from a 1. Add a comment. I'll add a few pictures here: Lens resolution exceeding sensor resolution: Sensor resolution slightly higher than lens resolution: Sensor resolution much higher than lens resolution:.

Jerry Coffin Jerry Coffin As someone who owns the Noise on the D is terrible beyond ISO Noise on the D is acceptable up to ISO I would say that sensor well size is a minor factor in noise these days.

It's worth noting that from a technical standpoint neither the lens nor sensor are ever solely the limiting factor in the resolving power of the system. The spatial frequency response of the system is the product of the spatial frequency response of the lens and sensor, meaning that even if you have a "soft" lens, it will still produce sharper images with a higher resolution sensor and will continue to do so as sensor resolution increases, though by smaller increments.

Interesting simulation. A couple criticisms: the airy disk is not uniform intensity, but rather something like a sinc squared function.

Second, the difference between the the light and dark pixels will be the greatest in the 1st case, where most of the photons are counted in the single well and not spread out. And we are talking about perceived sharpness, which is best measured by modulation transfer function, or perceived the spatial frequency, directly related to contrast. Show 22 more comments.

There are two reasons in my mind why you might care about more pixels, one of which might apply to the average photographer, and one that would apply mostly to pros: Retouching.

Most mere mortals never have to worry about having this excess of pixels High quality prints. Community Bot 1. Kevin Won Kevin Won 1, 7 7 silver badges 12 12 bronze badges. When I win the lottery and I will , although the not buying tickets thing makes that a little harder I'm definitely getting one or the other.

A very rough guesstimate: 50 per cent more Staale S Staale S 7, 21 21 silver badges 29 29 bronze badges. It's more like It's 50 per cent more area , but Kinda like how you'd have to go from 6 megapixels to 24 megapixels to double the resolution.

Zack Zack 1 1 bronze badge.