Megapixel Marketing Scam

Don’t be fooled by claims that cameras with more megapixels are better, it’s not true. This is just a gimmick used to convince people that newer camera models with more megapixels are better than older ones.  Picture quality and picture resolution are two different things that camera manufacturers and salesmen often exploit to capitalize profits.

The camera industry has relied on the megapixel as a measure of quality;  that more is better. Sure, this would be important if you were to blow up the image, but the image quality itself is determined by the lens and the skill of the photographer. With a better lens, more light can be focused onto the sensor which gives sharper and more saturated images. And of course, if you know how to manipulate light with a camera then your photos will turn out better than someone with the most expensive DSLR  who doesn’t know how ISO, shutter speed and aperture correlate.

Here’s another way of looking at it;

“A megapixel is one million tiny colored dots in a photo. It seems logical that more megapixels would mean a sharper photo. In truth, though, it could just mean a terrible photo made of more dots.” –David Pogue.  For those of you who don’t know who David Pogue is, he’s a technology columnist for the New York Times but he’s better known for hosting the show, “It’s All Geek To Me” . He ran a test in which he took a series of identical photographs with a 5MP, 8MP and 13MP camera. He then posted the 3 pictures on a wall in Union Square Manhattan and for 45 minutes where dozens of people were asked to rank picture quality with respect to megapixels. Only one person managed to do so correctly.

So, if you’re going to get scammed by pharmaceutical companies claiming they have an effective weight loss pill, or if you’re going to get tricked by cosmetic companies who promote anti-aging creams, do not; after reading this article be fooled by the Megapixel Marketing Scam.

Article: Louis Le