Digital cameras
Crazy eights: 8-megapixel cameras compared
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.
By Lori Grunin (January 26, 2005; updated March 28, 2005)
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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 3,264x2,468 dimensions work out to 10.9x8.2 inches; in contrast, a typical 6-megapixel image's dimensions of 3,072x2,000 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 i9900.
However, despite the enthusiasm of camera nuts willing to pay about $1,000 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. (For more on the viewfinder issue, check out my co-doyenne Aimee's column, Sights for sore eyes: SLR vs. EVF.) 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. The current influx of relatively inexpensive 7-megapixel point-and -shoots cannibalizes that potential market even further. 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, 7, 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 a chart to help you get a handle on each model's strengths and weaknesses.
Read the CNET editor's take
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6.9 out of 10
8.2 out of 10
7.3 out of 10
