So, I was just in a discussion with my roommate about what makes a high quality camera (He's a PC, and I'm a Mac, so we always get into tech debates). He was extolling the latest offering from Sony, which touts over 16 megapixels. Thinking he was talking about a video camera, I called foul. Though he was discussing a still camera with video capabilities, it sparked a discussion about the difference between resolution for video and still photography.
My roommate is a Photoshop junkie, and a bit of a HD fanatic. When I told him that DVD's resolution wasn't even half a megapixel, his jaw just about hit the floor. But it's true! Take a look at some common resolutions broken down below:
- DVD - 720 x 480 = 345600 = .35 megapixels
- 720p - 1280 x 720 = 921600 = .92 megapixels
- 1080p - 1920 x 1080 = 2073600 = 2.07 megapixels
Well, for one, still photos use resolution in a very different way than video does. Traditionally, high quality printed images use 300 pixels per inch. The standard for media seen on any type of screen is actually only 72 pixels per inch. This originally stems from technical limitations (It's really hard to make screens with 300 pixels per inch, let alone process the signal to it), but it is part of the viewer's expectation, and seems totally normal to us now. If you were to print out a web image though, you could easily see the pixelation, which seems like a rather low quality picture on paper.
The the thing is, you never print videos onto paper, so video image quality never has to be seen in the harsh light of print. Even tech-lover director James Cameron isn't in a race for more pixels. He said, “4K (ultimate HD) is a concept born in fear. I would vastly prefer to see 2K/48 frames per second.” So there you have it! If 2 megapixel images are enough for James Cameron, then they are good enough for me!
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