What you call "The Megapixel Myth" has two sides. One is what everybody talks about... CMOS and CCD sensors with their advantages and disadvatages. CMOS for being cheaper and smaller and CCD for quality.
But there is a second part to this myth, a part which a lot of people ignore and it covered up (just like in the first case) by marketing policies. It's not only the type and number of megapixels that matters in picture quality but also the size of the lens and of the sensor itself. In practice that means a 7 megapixel SLR will do a lot better then a normal (more smaller) 10 megapixel camera. Why that happens? Here are the two main reasons:
1. On a SLR camera size is not a big issue (since it is build for professional or semi-profesional use people using those cameras don't care that much for size in relation to the quality of the pictures it takes). That means you can have a larger sensor size. Why is that important? Because if the same amount of pixels (or more) are crowded onto a smaller surface every pixel will receive a smaller amount of light. It may be 10 megapixels but it will look just a 7 megapixel or even worse.
2. The size of the lens is also really important. A larger lens means sharper images as more light gets to the sensor.
So next time you go shopping for a new digital camera don't look only at the price and number of megapixels that the camera has, but also the way it is built. A golden rule when it comes to digital camers: SMALLER SIZE MEANS LOWER QUALITY!

PS: I have a Sony video camera that has 3 megapixels for still images (I am satisfied with the quality and the fact that I don't have to carry another digital camera with me) and a HP (somewhat older then the video camera) 3,3 megapixel digital camera. The video camera (!?!) takes much better pictures then the digital camera. It wasn't designed for still images, but it has the great advantage of sensor size... while the HP has 2-2,5cm lens the Sony has 4-4,5. That proves it isn't all about the number of megapixels!

Here is a small quote for Wikipedia that gives the same explination I did:


This post has been edited by adriantc: Jan 25 2008, 10:38 AM

Yeahh you don't actually NEED a camera with more 3mp with 6mp being the max. My camera is 10mp only because the camera I wanted conveniently had 10mp.

Wow. thanks for this topic. I am currently looking for a digital camera. Now I know how to select the best one.

One thing that most camera manufacturers have failed to increase is the dynamic range of cameras. The higher the dynamic range, the more levels of light can be represented in the picture. With most digital cameras when you take a picture of a scene with very bright and very dark sections, the camera fails to capture the brightest or darkest areas. Of course in order to take full advantage of a mythical camera with very high dynamic range one would want a monitor with increased dynamic range to view it on.