Is it foolish to buy a 40-plus megapixel camera ? Does it make any difference to your prints? Here are further reasons why it may be a false wish.

Camera manufacturers are still pushing ever higher megapixel counts. For years, the big manufacturers have fought over ever more pixels. As I pointed out in my last article , those bigger pictures can be disadvantageous for us photographers.

Even if the big file sizes are not a hindrance, many photographers may see no benefit in upgrading. Many of us don’t need all the 40- or 60-megapixel resolution some modern cameras deliver. But what about printing our images? Surely more pixels are better, right?

Separating Pixels, Points, and Dots

I can print this image shot with my 20.4-megapixel OM-1 Mark II to A3 and A2 using upscaling software.

To understand how pixels affect your images, you must get to grips with a few terms.

Firstly, the absolute resolution of an image is the number of tiny dots (pixels) it contains.…