I just ordered my very first digital camera...

7.1 MP is definitely enough to work with. I've printed pictures that I took with my 5 MPix Canon from several years ago as big as 10" x 16".

Yeah, Canon is great. 7.1 mp is more than enough for a beginner just snapping casual photos of friends and family. A couple of years ago, 4-5 mp was more than enough for the same situations. Enjoy

It's been a while since I did my research, but I believe anything over 3.0 mp gets you 35 mm quality for standard use, can't remember if that is up to 8"x10" or 11"x17". obviously higher mps for larger sizes and more specialized use.

How much was the camera? I think that you can get a 12.0-megapixel Canon PoweShot digital camera for $200 or under.

I would've gone with the 12 mp Allows for more detail and a bigger picture. You can take the memory card out of the camera and go to wal mart or cvs and they'll print selected pictures for you at a small charge. Their printers are nice and you'll be getting quality photos rather photos from a packaged printer. Plus, you don't have to worry about ink or photopaper. Or you can just stick the photos on your computer for later viewing and not even print them.

I see now. Maybe you can learn the camera and later on upgrade it to something with more megapixels.

It is not about pixels, but image quality (resolution, sharpness, color fidelity). A good quality camera + some image editing software can render pictures just as good and big as a run of the mill cheapo of twice as many MPixels.

I agree, the lens, sensor and the processor all work together for the result of a great photo. Usually the quality manufacturers like Canon, Nikon, Sony and others produce quality products. Lens are usually good all the time, but in my opinion the sensor is the #1 thing to consider. More megapixels means a larger image matrix. Processors are pretty much the same when it comes to quality manufacturers: Canon makes the Digic (4th generation is the newest), Nikon makes the eXpeed(I think) and Sony makes the Bionz, it is the software firmware that usually limits the image processing quality and processing algorithms.

Point is that the megapixel size is #1 decisive factor in terms of quality.

7.1 Megapixels corresponds to a resolution of about 308 dpi for an 7.5"x10" photograph (assuming a typical 3:4 camera aspect ratio) and 12 Megapixels corresponds to a resolution of 400 dpi for the same size photo. The resolution of the human eye, for shorter "blue-shifted" wavelengths is about 1/60 degree at a distance of 10 inches. This corresponds to a resolution of 344 dpi. So anything in excess of a 9 Megapixel camera is overkill for anyone not expanding their images beyond 7.5"x10" or doing serious cropping and expansion. You would be better off pushing the extra money into lenses or a top-flight color printer, I would think.

I use a 4 Megapixel Canon PowerShot S410, and have been very pleased with the image quality. I chose it primarily because my research indicated that its color mapping was excellent.

Well, I prefer a 7.1 Mpixel Canon over a 10 Mega pixel Plaroid any day. The polaroid gives bigger images in terms of pixel count, they look bigger on your computer screen, but the images taken with the cannon will look sharper and will have a better resolution.

The point is that lilybelle scored a great gadget.

Agreed...

Anything over 6 or 7 mega-pixels isn't necessary unless you plan on getting much larger than normal prints. 99% of casual digital camera users never will...

They are, if you are talking about monitors. If you ar talking about image quality, they are different.
the image below has 4 times more pixels than my avatar, but it also has pretty bad resolution.

I ordered 20x30 prints from my 6.0-megapixel EOS 10D camera. They came out good.

Resolution is directly proportional to pixel density, not the raw number of pixels. This is because resolution and pixel density are intrinsic properties of an image of particular magnification, but the number of pixels is an extrinsic property. Let's crunch through the gory details, since this is probably a question in several peoples' minds ...

Your camera has 7.1 Megapixels, and they are probably arranged in a rectangular area with a height-to-width ratio of 3-to-4 (pretty standard). So if you take a picture with it, and expand the photo so the longest dimension is 10", this will create a picture which is 7.5"x10", or 75 square inches of area. Since all 7.1 Megapixels cover this area evenly, this provides coverage of 94667 pixels per square inch. This means there are 308 pixels covering one inch of linear dimension (pixel density), which is reported as 308 dpi (dots per inch), which is a unit of resolution. Of course, if you expand the image further, it decreases the resolution, since the same number of pixels need to cover a larger area. This is why the size of the photos you want to take should impact your choice of camera.

Your eye's limit of resolution is measured in terms of angles. This is because everything you see, no matter how far away, is projected onto your retina which is a fixed distance from your eye's lens. The retina also has a fixed density of rods and cones, which results in the eye's resolution limit. For images 10" from your face, this angular resolution is about 1/60 of a degree. This means your eye can discern two dots of light which are 0.002909" from each other. This is the same as a resolution of 344 dpi.

I think you'll be just fine with the 7.1Mpix

I'm sure you will be more than happy with the qualities of your pictures. Again; in terms of quality, don't stare yourself blind on the pixels.

This photo is taken by my old cellphone (sony ericsson k610i) without autofocus. 2.0 megapixels and I shrunk the picture to 60% of it's original size for the sake of the forum.

lillybelle, always the person behind the camera is more important than the camera itself. My boyfriend worked with a Hasselblad H3DII... A 39MP camera and he shares the same opinion as me. :P

Noalick, I have a similar Sony (K750i, same camera as in the K610i) and the pictures come out very nice but only in perfect lighting conditions (outdoors, in the sun). Anything less than perfect lighting and you get very bad quality pics.

lilybelle, we want pics when your camera arrives. I've been wanting to get me a small camera too but I have no idea what would be good for someone who's not into photography (or gadgets), and also wouldn't want to pay too much (Sony's are too expensive, aren't they?).

Says the guy with a 39 MP camera.

Thanks. I merely wanted to give some perspectives, but as Mostapha very correctly pointed out; you need perfect lightning conditions for it to work. The phone doesn't even have a flash.

It's been a matter of great debate how many megapixels give you the quality of 35mm film. Last I saw it was 50Mpixels or more.

The reason for this is that people were using scanners to scan 35mm film and compare the results to the detail they got in a digital photo, by magnifying each up. And that's where all the low Mpixel equivalencies came from - because they were using cheap one or two hundred dollar scanners. But when expensive $5000 scanners were used, they collected very much more useful detail out of 35mm film, thus bumping up the equivalent Mpixel count dramatically.

But for common everyday shooting and printing, 6 or 7 Mpixels is usually adequate. If one needs to enlarge the pixel count for a very big picture, one can use either Genuine Fractals Print Pro to increase it up to eight fold in one hit, or keep continuously increasing increasing the size of the photo by 10% - as this apparently doesn't muck up the fine detail.
Regards,
Renato

When you are a professional and need pictures big enough and good enough to cover the face of a whole building, than yes, you need a 39MP camera.

Like those pictures. Or if people buy your pictures for a certain thing that needs huge sizes.

Or you don't really need a L series Canon lens that costs 3000$ if you just begin or don't take pictures for money. A great camera doesn't substitute the skill of the person using it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnU32BQPnw0
Funny thing to do to a camera that costs as much as two and a half second hand BMWs.