Thom Hogan's Nikon Field Guide and Nikon Flash Guide

How Many Pixels Do You Need?. Hmm. A couple? This image certainly doesn't need many. We're in the midst of the lastest camera introduction waves (CES and CP+ shows being the catalyst), and megapixels seem to be on everyone's mind. Olympusians are eager to try 16mp, as are Fujifilmians. Nikonians are salavating over 36mp. Even the camera phone folk are thinking about wandering above 8mp. It's been interesting, though, in how many of the emails I've been getting about "should I preorder?" just how rare it was for anyone to actually ask "what will I use those pixels for?" Even the ones that do seem to often be speaking generically (e.g. "I'll use them for landscapes"). Landscapes don't tend to move, and I've yet to find many situations where I couldn't stitch a far bigger image than any rumored camera could do on its own. So, no, "landscapes" is not the answer. If you answer "because I want to print 48 inches wide" my question to you is going to be "how many times do you think you'll do that this year?" If the answer is a couple or a few, you don't need to buy a camera, you could probably just rent a MF camera for a couple of weeks and satisfy your big print lust for a lot less money. Another common answer I get is "it'll give me more cropping flexibility." In other words, you don't own the right lens and you have no idea how perspective informs an image. Now, this isn't to say that there aren't uses for more pixels. More pixels, all else equal, does offer us some benefits. But make sure you know what those are and what they'll do for you specifically before you lust over pixels. As I've noted several times, I find myself using my D3s more than my D3x, and according to all of the emails I get about why more pixels are better, I ought to be doing the opposite (landscapes, cropping, print wider). One thing I noticed about a lot of pros in the past few years: we talk far less about pixel count than we used to. We're more often talking about lens selection, perspective, and light these days than bemoaning something our cameras can't do. Somewhere we crested a pass and have moved on to things that are more important to our work. Sure, we'll take some more pixels if none of the other things we count on don't go backwards, but we're in no hurry to grab more pixels. We have enough for most of our jobs. So here's a question to you: don't you have enough pixels for what you do? Discussion of this image on Google+.