Only buy what you need.

[Zipper1981]

Pixel count is wonderful.....but do you need it and do you use it? You are
probably limited by your printer....letter size! So, somewhere around 2 megs
should do you. Now if you're really a pro that may not be true. But for the
average guy it is. Remember the trade offs. The higher the pixel count the
more memory it takes.

[Mike in PA]

"Zipper1981" <zippe...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030926213256...@mb-m29.aol.com...

I disagree to a point. I have a 3.2 and a 5 megapixel. Same scene taken
with both cameras, printed on 4x6 Canon Paper Pro using S900 yields easy to
see differences.

[Tesselator]

"Mike in PA" <heritag...@comcast.net> wrote in message news:-jCdnTec4_w...@comcast.com...

To a point? I disagree with him completely. :)

It's roughly 300dpi to get nice prints so you can just do the math. ;)

Not to mention there are guys like me that never print anything and only
do "work" with digital still cameras for surface textures in 3D software
output to film, video (Digibeta), and DVD. I've got a buttload of cameras
but none of them were ever too many pixels for my purposes... In fact the
new Kodak 11megapixel is on my wish list and oh-boy!!! I know I'm gonna use
all that and in a year or two will be wanting more. Keep in mind that
these silly digital cameras (non-slr) are really troublesome to frame
your shots with.. so zooming and cropping in photoshop is _very_ often
needed for "the average guy". I want 48bit 11megapixel with a hurt!

You bring up image size as an issue but really it isn't. A 1gig CF
card is only about $100 and that's like 700 high quality (8) JPegs
at 3.5megapixels or a little over 100 at the same size if there is
*NO* compression at all -- More like 160 "raw" (lossless compression)
images.

There's a reason camera manufacturers are constantly trying to increase
the pixel count of thier devices!