Printing is still an excellent outlet for your photography and can bring your images to life. But when you print, how much does the number of megapixels your camera has actually matter?
The megapixel race is tired and has more or less come to an end. The diminishing returns on useful quality are extremely high and most people are no longer interested in getting the most megapixels possible. There have been myriad examples of how low megapixel cameras can produce brilliant image quality and this transfers to printing. But, what about when you want to print a little larger than usual?
The first thing to note is that you can print great-looking images with relatively low-megapixel cameras, especially if you know what you’re doing. You can even print the images large and have them perfectly usable. But, if you want to have the highest quality prints at a reasonably large size, say A2 or bigger, then extra megapixels might come in handy.
In this video, James Popsys discusses his experience with shooting and printing images of different megapixels and how much of a role the megapixels play. Though Popsys does point out it’s more of a difference than you might think, it’s still not enough to convince me I need high megapixel cameras for printing purposes, though I admittedly do lean on extra resolution when it comes to cropping and product imagery.