Megapixels enough? Slippery Aluminum?

[viper69]

I plan on getting a digi cam for party situations/family. Some close up work taking pictures of animals mostly...And if I am lucky..maybe some pictures at night like city scenes or pictures of places/things during sightseeing.

I like how the Kodak cameras feel in my hand..easy to hold. But most of them are 5megapixels. Sony has 7.1 megapixels now.

Plus the screen on some cams is up to 2.5"...Kodak for some reason hasn't increased the megapixels of their cameras yet...

Do people think 5megapixels would be adequate for my purposes??

Second, do people find that the cameras with aluminum bodies are somewhat slippery to hold?? I know I do.

[Rufford]

unless you want to print your photos really big, five mp will be enough. If you like how the camera feels, I say go for it. The difference between five mp and seven mp really isn't that big.

[pip22]

Small 'point and shoot' digicams have a small sensor (much smaller than a large digital SLR camera), and therefore the physical size of the pixels on the sensor will also be smaller.
More pixels means they will be smaller still and this usually results in poorer quality pictures especially in poor light. So in this case, fewer pixels means higher quality pictures in most situations. 7MP on a small sensor digicam is too many for good quality. 5MP is more sensible in my opinion, because it will yield better quality pictures with less digital grain (noise), so they will actually look better when enlarged than a grainy-looking 7MP picture. Don't be fooled by the 'more megapixels is better' argument. Pixel-quality is also important. Generally speaking,on a small sensor, as pixels increase in number, their light-gathering power drops and this results in lower quality pictures. Current technology dictates that 5MP is the optimal figure for good balance of quality and decent print-size on a small digital camera, and will yield very high quality prints up to about 9 x 7 inches (assuming a linear image resolution of 300 pixels-per-inch for printing puposes).

[viper69]

thanks a lot....I got a Kodak Z760 for Xmas..so I am psyched!!

[jsnapshot]

Originally posted by viper69
thanks a lot....I got a Kodak Z760 for Xmas..so I am psyched!!

That's great! Ya, no matter what kind of photos you're taking the higher the megapixel, the more freedom you'll have to crop and still get a reasonably resolved image.

Besides..........KODAK has four cameras with 6 mp or more.