What's the effective megapixel?

[erwin1978]

When I'm searching for digital cameras the specs would state how many megapixels like 3.6 and then state the effective pixels as 3.2. What's the difference?

 

[MiranoPoncho]

The difference between the 3.2 and the 3.6 is moot. The term megapixel denotes 1 million pixels, hence the metric unit, mega. Take an average desktop running 1024x768, that's about a . 78 megapixel image. Take hdtv on the otherhand, 1080p and that runs at a hair over 2 megapixels. The more pixels, the more detail in the image, but also as they become larger, the granular effect that is usally found in 35mm cameras' emerges.Hope this helps.

 

[WelshBloke]

5 megapixels FTW!

 

[Eureka]

:/ None of you are answering the question.

http://photonotes.org/cgi-bin/entry.pl?id=Effectivemegapixels

The actual number of pixels which make up the viewable image captured by a digital camera.

Image sensors used by digital cameras frequently have a number of pixels on the edge which are masked off and which do not form part of the image. These masked-off pixels are typically used as establish baseline (ie: totally dark) pixels for the camera to calculate light levels from.

The term ?effective megapixels? is thus more honest. If a camera has 6.5 megapixels with 6.1 effective megapixels you can safely ignore the 6.5 part. 6.1 megapixels is what you?ll actually see in a photograph.

Norm