Effective Megapixels

[cedwar]

Hello everyone...

Can anyone tell me what the term "effective megapixels" means when refering to a digital camera?

cedwar

[Doug Nelson]

From the web:

Effective megapixels:

The actual number of pixels which make up the viewable image captured by a digital camera.

Image sensors used by digital cameras frequently have a number of pixels on the edge which are masked off and which do not form part of the image. These masked-off pixels are typically used as establish baseline (ie: totally dark) pixels for the camera to calculate light levels from.

The term “effective megapixels” is thus more honest. If a camera has 6.5 megapixels with 6.1 effective megapixels you can safely ignore the 6.5 part. 6.1 megapixels is what you’ll actually see in a photograph.

[cedwar]

Thanks Doug!

...cedwar