Hi all.
I’m looking at buying a new camera as mine is giving up the ghost!! The current one I have is 5 megapixels - same as my smart phone. Now in general all the ones I’m looking at seem to be 16-20 megapixels and what I’m wondering is are the file sizes going to be too big for uploading onto Folksy or any social media? Can anyone give me an idea of the file size of say an 18 megapixel photo.
I am assuming you can usually take pictures at a lower resolution but how many megapixels is best for product photography? I’m quite happy to do some image manipulation after, I have some quite good software I just want the clearest crispest image I can get to start with without having huge file sizes!!
Thanks. xx
The higher the better really! The more mp you have the more information your photo will contain, so not only will it be crisper but it will also be easier to edit (ie. to get more detail out of areas that are too dark or too bright).
My DSLR is 16 mp and I take photos in .orf or raw format. Each image is roughly 10 mb in size when taken but after editing I scale them down to 1024 x 1024 and they’re usually around 1 mb … perfect for uploading 
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Many professional photographers state that if your photographs are for online only and you don’t intend to print them, don’t worry about the megapixels and a smartphone camera is fine. The reason for this is that where an image is displayed on a smartphone, computer or tablet screen, the device adapts it for the screen it is displayed on, effectively reducing the information that the image contains (and the number of pixels at the same time) and wiping out the difference between a pro camera with 20 odd megapixels and a smartphone with 5 or six. If you intend to print your photos and use them in promotional flyers etc, then you should pay more attention to megapixels.
As an example, my photograph shown above was taken using a web-cam with a pixel count even lower than that of your old camera. Seen at full size on my pc screen, it is very clearly pixelated. But I wonder if anybody else has noticed at the size it appears on this forum. It was my “No make-up Selfie” on a Facebook post a while ago and nobody noticed any pixelation at all. Neither did I and I KNOW that it is pixelated and would not print up very well at all.
The real difference between a smartphone camera and having a decent camera is in the lens quality and the ability of a better quality camera to alter things like aperture, shutter speed and iso, which will create better exposed and sharper images. If you are interested in using aperture to create an artsy blurred background for example, then a smartphone will not do this for you.
Hope this helps,
Love Sam x
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Thanks @SamanthaStanley and @Beledien that’s really interesting. Lots to think about then!!!
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My advice would be to buy the best camera you can afford, then edit your photos for the web. If you are serious about running an online business selling your products, then getting a good camera is a great investment, as great pictures can do wonders for your business
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