Probably been done to death.

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Tony
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In the real world, how many pixels is enough?

I was quite happy with 20mp then, a Canon 50mp came along and now, we have the Olympus (I think) 100mp.

Asides extreme cropping advantages, do I/we need 100mp?

It is a question that has been bothering me for some time.
 
In the real world, how many pixels is enough?

I was quite happy with 20mp then, a Canon 50mp came along and now, we have the Olympus (I think) 100mp.

Asides extreme cropping advantages, do I/we need 100mp?

It is a question that has been bothering me for some time.
No.
Print size and viewing distance will overide pixel count.
 
24 is plenty for me. My preferred end product is A3+ prints and the 24MP camera I use delivers them just fine!

As Tony points out, more might be useful if extreme cropping is needed but in real life, 24 is enough for most people.
 
My feeling is for most it's a numbers game. The bigger the number the better the camera. Just listen to some people talking.
 
For screen use, around 16-20MP, although theoretically 4mp should be more than enough to fill a typical HD screen. Prints at 12"X16" 20MP or more does no harm. For bigger prints 20" X 30" then at least 20, but if it's landscapes with fine detail & a sharp lens then 36MP or more would do no harm.
 
Doesn't it rather depend on what your doing with the pictures.. and why are we disspelling cropping and why are we calling it extreme cropping? For long prime use in nature and sport for example the more pixels gives you longer reach.

Nobody needs anything much.. But the extra pixels are nice to ahve if you need them :)
 
There’s only ‘too many’ pixels when the lens’ ability to resolve that is inadequate.
But the reverse is also true, if you’re not cropping, 10mpix is enough.

A bowl of cereal is ‘enough’ breakfast, but that doesn’t mean adding a full English, a couple of rounds of toast and some fruit is ‘too much’.
 
I guess the biggest downside to having a gazillion pixels is trying to negate vibrations/shutter shock/pan motion.
After a while the shutter speed would have to be un-realistically high.
 
The biggest downside is slow processing compared to a smaller (but fully adequate) file size.

Not to mention the fact that once upon a time with my 6MP/10MP cameras a 250GB external HDD would take ages to fill up but now my 3TB HDDs fill up very quickly with images from my K-1/D810.
 
I guess it's a kind of personal thing as to how bucket loads of pixels is perceived.
Personally I don't hold on to many of my pictures as, to be quite frank, most are garbage.
I'm also in the habit of pixel peeping (I think that's the term) and any amount of blur in images renders them of no use to me.
 
I do a lot of printing on my Pro-100 often to A3+ My Olympus is 16mp and providing its not a total balls up pic that is way good quality.
I think a lot of people now "pixel peep" and go looking for issues rather than taking the picture as a whole.
 
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