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Digital photography is slowly crawling out of the spotlight as everybody seems to have at least one camera in the form of a compact, mobile telephone, DSLR or videocamera. Megapixels have not stopped creeping up, now at a slower pace than previous years of the decade. Many are happy with what they got, others will move on to newer stuff. And even though the megapixel count is not as important as it used to, it still plays a role in our buying choices. Amid all this, Akira Watanabe of Olympus states that 12 megapixels is enough for most applications and most customers. It is an ambiguous argument but for many reasons it is not true:

1. Progress is progress and so the megapixel count increase is irreversible. The same way we have faster CPUs even if we still use the same wordprocessing functions we did twenty years ago.
2. The sensor is one part of the story because the info captured  is then processed considerably before it even hits the flash card. Good processing is vital but there is also limits to what you can do with a certain sensor resolution.
3. Zooming into images reveals details not visible when it is seen as a whole. People, trees, anything. The more the megapixels, the more the fun we have and the deeper we can zoom in.
4. The 12 megapixel argument certainly doesn’t hold in DSLR territory. Here sensors are larger and the opportunity to get more detail has to be grabbed by the horns. We all know that Olympus has a smaller size sensor than its competitors, but why ground Olympus followers to a certain resolution?
5. 12 megapixels are not enough because of one important parameter. Competition! When everyone has moved on to more megapixels who wants to stick to a certain number? This holds in all camera categories and Olympus already knows it. Even if more resolution does not necessarily mean better results…
6. Economics and production costs also limit choices. Stopping at resolutions at the lower market end, means low product pricing, tiny margins, and in the long term going out of business.

If anything but megapixels was important, professionals would still use a D20 and never need anything better. But life is not like that, especially in the technological sector. Of course, Watanabe’s statement means more than just resolution and for this I feel obliged to come back with reasons the megapixel count is not as important as it used to be.