End to the mega pixel wars ?

[pcolbeck]

It looks like there has been an outbreak of sanity by the camera manufacturers and that they are not going to keep uping the mega-pixel count on every new model any more. Rather they are going to attack other areas that need improvement.

Akira Watanabe, head of Olympus' SLR planning department, said that 12 megapixels is plenty for most photography purposes and that his company will henceforth be focusing on improving colour accuracy and low-light performance.

Hurrah !

[JohnP]

About time to. Current point & shoot, snapshot cameras are already more than adequate.  Some mobile phones are higher res than my 'slr style' Fuji.  Sunday mag had a flyby review of sub £100 pocket cameras. One was described as not bad despite the low pixel count (8meg).

[Jaded]

6MP is perfectly adequate for what most of the public want from their cameras. My D50 was excellent. My D90 is also excellent, but the doubling of the pixel count is far outweighed by other improvements. My Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX35 is an amazing camera, but it is 10MP. Unnecessarily noisy in low light, although it does actually take pics in low light and you can turn the flash off - two essentials for a camera for me.

Sadly everyone that looks at my cameras says "How many pixels?" rather than how good is the lens, how good in low light, or is there a shutter delay, or how long does the battery last, or can you actually see the info stuff on the screen etc.

[andygates]

It's like "how many speeds?" on a bike: a number that's an easy selling point for sales staff and advertisers.  Quality is a harder sell.

[Rob S]

The camera database at DPR now list pixel density in the spec list.....some of the newest compacts have a desity of 43 million pixels per square centimetre ....my LX3 from memory is about 24 million, Panasonic say they specifically didn't join in the pixel race with that camera but clearly they forgot that with subsequent models.