Don't Waste Your Money

Sunny Kalara at “Talk Like a Physicist” wants a 576 MegaPixel camera, and while the post talks the physicist talk, it doesn’t walk the physicist walk (if there is such a thing).

And the gauntlet has been thrown down —

Next time a person tells me that I don’t need a digital camera with more than 6-10 mega pixel resolution, I am going to hit him/her on the head with the sharp corner of my camera

it appears I am risking photogricide by saying, “But that might actually be true. More pixels do not necessarily make a better picture.”

A further claim is:

Apparently, if you converted the resolution of what an eye can perceive in to mega pixel, it turns out that an eye can see at 576 Mega pixel. So, I want my camera to be at least 576MP camera; is that too much to ask?

When I look out, I see in stereo; with full depth – is it too much to expect that my camera does the same?

I want to take pictures for the unknown technology that will be available to me in 20 years, not for the 3×4 print that can be printed now!

Both the 6-10 MP claim and the 576 MP claim are based on a few assumptions, and as any good physicist knows, you have to make sure these assumptions are not violated in your analysis. So let’s put the Pentax down and talk about this.
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