8 megapixels: essential or overkill?
Is 8 megapixels enough already? For snapshooters, soccer moms, and stylists, the answer is yes. If you're a megazoom or macro enthusiast, however, one of these five enthusiast-oriented digital cameras may fill your needs or leave you hungry for more.
Whenever I think about these cameras, the Sesame Street flashbacks start. "Eight, eight, eight. Let's sing a song about eight. How many is eight?" But it
always ends, "Who needs as many as eight?" If the answer doesn't
immediately pop into your head, join the club: I could list more reasons against buying an 8-megapixel camera than in favor of getting one.
What's the fuss?
By the numbers, 8 megapixels is the
first resolution plateau at which you can print a full 8x10 at 300dpi without
having to interpolate pixels for the 8-inch side. (At 300dpi, the 3,264 x 2,468
dimensions work out to 10.9x8.2 inches; in contrast, a typical 6-megapixel
image's dimensions of 3,072 x 2,000 produces only 10.2x6.7 inches.) Technically,
that's good enough for a half-page, magazine-quality image. So the resolution
increase is good news for entry-level professional photographers and enthusiasts
with medium-format printers such as the Epson Stylus Photo
2200 and the Canon
i9950.
However, despite the enthusiasm of camera nuts willing to pay
about US$1,000 (S$1,899) for their photographic toys, the 6-megapixel sensor of a similarly
priced digital SLR will yield photos that you can retouch to your heart's
content yet still print as large as 11x14. And dSLRs have many advantages over
the all-in-one designs of the current crop of 8-megapixel models, not the least
of which are interchangeable lenses and good optical viewfinders. Furthermore, with a mainstream market enamored of
4x6-inch prints, 8 megapixels would redefine overkill for a snapshot
camera, should the prices drop low enough. And even when larger photos replace
4x6s in the hearts of consumers--as they inevitably will--I'd bet most
snapshooters wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 6 and 8 megapixels.
So, clearly, these cameras should appeal to relatively specialized
groups within the entire photographic market. Resolution junkies--you know who
you are--top the list. Megazoom fans follow, and not just because all of these
cameras have 5x or greater zoom lenses. The higher resolution allows you to crop
in closely yet retain enough pixels to produce a good print. For example, on my
trip to Alaska, I nabbed a photo of a bear looking right at me, with a
6-megapixel dSLR and a 300mm lens. After a substantial crop, it made a fine
8x10, but had it been an 8-megapixel image, I could have gotten the exact
framing I wanted without having to inflate the image: more bear, less beach. For
the same reason, people who shoot a lot of macro photos make the list of
potential buyers as well.
Nobody's perfect
Given the ambiguity of the technology's
application, it's unsurprising that the actual products seem a bit ambivalently
executed. Our Editors' Choice, the Konica Minolta Dimage A2, best succeeds, but
it still falls short in some ways that may irk shooters. Since they all use the
same Sony sensor (but not Sony's RGBE color filter array), most of the key
differentiators between models lie in the lens quality, shooting performance,
electronic viewfinder operation, and controls layout. Here's some info to help
you get a handle on each model's strengths and weaknesses.
| |
Canon PowerShot Pro 1
 |
Konica Minolta Dimage A2 
 |
Nikon Coolpix 8800
 |
Olympus Camedia C-8080 Wide Zoom
 |
Sony Cyber Shot DSC-F828
 |
| Ratings |
| Design |
8 |
9 |
8 |
7 |
9 |
| Features |
8 |
9 |
8 |
8 |
7 |
| Performance |
7 |
8 |
7 |
6 |
8 |
| Image quality |
8 |
8 |
7 |
8 |
8 |
| Zoom and macro specs |
| Maximum aperture |
F2.4 (W),
F3.5 (T) |
F2.8 (W),
F3.5 (T) |
F2.8 (W),
F5.2 (T) |
F2.4 (W),
F3.5 (T) |
F2.0 (W),
F2.8 (T) |
| Focal lengths (35mm equivalent) |
28mm - 200mm |
28mm - 200mm |
35mm - 350mm |
28mm - 140mm |
28mm - 200mm |
| Minimum macro focus distance
(inches) |
1.2 |
5.1 |
1.2 |
2.0 |
0.8 |
| Select performance results |
| Typical shutter lag (seconds) |
1.1 |
0.4 |
0.6 |
0.6 |
0.3 |
| JPEG shot-to-shot time (seconds) |
2.0 |
1.0 |
2.8 |
2.0 |
1.7 |
| RAW shot-to-shot time (seconds) |
3.0 |
1.0 |
9.2 |
15.1 |
12.8 |
Read
the full review:
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