Image Resolution – What are Megapixels?
Megapixels
A description of the quality (resolution) of the image a camera is able to take, or one million pixels. Which begs the question what in the name of over-complicated-jargon is a pixel?
An image on your computer screen consists of many many dots and each one of those dots is a pixel. For those of you who are not lovers of technospeak a Pixel actually stands for PICture ELement. Put a few million of these little pixels together and hey presto – we’ve a photo that you can look at on your computer screen. Get close enough to your computer screen (or use a magnifier) and you’ll see them.
So back to your phone or camera both which probably has some meaningless ‘megapixel’ number beside it that seemed important when you bought it, but you can’t remember why. However as with all meaningless numbers we know that the higher it is the better and we were willing to pay extra for it!!! Unless it’s something like the number of politicians, then it’s probably the lower the better. And we’d rather not pay for a lot of ’em… but back to megapixels…
At the heart of your camera is a sensor which has horizontal and vertical lines forming a grid. So your camera may have 2,000 vertical pixels and 3,000 horizontal pixels. Multiply those together and you get a grand total of 6,000,000 pixels, 6 million pixels or 6 megapixel. So you take a picture with your 6 megapixel camera and your image is made up of 6 million pixels.
Having all those pixels get’s important when figuring out how big it’s possible to print a photo before it gets fuzzy (we’re all about the jargon with this article…). In our next blog we’ll take a look at the very real relationship between megapixels and how big you can print a photo.
Our Address
We have a very central location just a few minutes from: Glenageary, Dun Laoghaire & Dalkey; Cabinteely, Corneslcourt & Foxrock; Stillorgan & Blackrock.
The Pictorium Ltd
No 3 Monkstown Court
Monkstown Farm – Opposite The Credit Union
Monkstown, Co. Dublin
Tel: +353 1 284 6106
info@pictorium.ie
Our Opening Hours
Mon-Fri: 9.30am to 5.30pm
Saturday: 10am to 4pm
