Hard to believe summer vacation will soon be upon us. With vacations planned, many people dig out their cameras only to discover a new one is needed. If you haven’t bought a camera in years, you’ll discover much has changed. Film cameras are a thing of the past. OK so perhaps you did buy a digital camera years ago. Even so, cameras are much smarter than they were.

The biggest myth about digital cameras is more megapixels are better. Sure they are if you are the salesman getting a commission on the sale. More pixels cost more. Before you head off to the camera store, stop to think about how you use the photos you take. Do you make prints or just keep them on your computer? How big a print do you make?

Let me stop for a moment and mention that just as cameras have been getting better over the years, so have the photo printers. As an experiment with my professional lab, we printed a three megapixel file as a 20×30 print. We also printed the same photo as a six and twelve megapixel file. A host of experts at the lab could find only minor differences at that size and only by looking closely. However, a 20×30 print is supposed to be viewed from about ten feet away. At that distance, our experts could not see a difference!

All of this means is that a three megapixel camera is sufficient for you, the average consumer. A camera with three megapixels is not going to provide you with any better results than a more expensive camera. A bigger concern for your camera is the lens and sensor used to capture the image. Personally, I would rather have higher quality optics/sensor than more megapixels.