What is the maximum possible megapixel a camera can have?

What is the maximum possible megapixel a camera can have?

There's no limit as cameramakers keep upping the marketting ante.

Among smaller dslr's Nikon has the D800e with 36.2mp, Canon has just released their 5DS with 50.2mp.

Canon also announced, but may or may not release their 120mp camera.
http://www.pcworld.com/...amera.html

Hasselblad already has their 200mp HD4-200ms.
http://www.theverge.com/...200ms/1458

The Dept. Of Energy is planning a car-sized super camera with a resolution of 3.2 gigapixels.
http://www.forbes.com/...ul-camera/

Now, before you get all megapixel crazy, remember that you can print a perfectly usable billboard from a 16mp camera.
http://improvephotography.com/34880/how-big-print-with-megapixel-camera/ The first consumer level P&S digital cameras had 0.9 mp sensors and cost in the neighborhood of around $600.

Now most digital cameras have from 16 mp to 36 mp sensors… Some of the newer ones up to 50 mp. It will keep going up as long as manufacturers can keep duping idiots into thinking that more megapixels makes them a better photographer. If you really think hard about it, the answer would be one pixel smaller than the universe.

If the camera were as big as the universe then that would mean it would overlap it and we all know that's not possible. The content must always be smaller than the container.

Aight? No theoretical limit in the future.

In practice, for domestic compact cameras, any number above about 12MPs is just a marketing exercise, and may actually be counterproductive for quality. Upmarket compacts, at several hundred pounds/dollars, tend to have 12MPs, clearly the makers know their market. Highest I know of currently (at least for consumers) is the 41MP sensors for the Nokia PureView 808 & Nokia Lumia 1020. Though that is an ever expanding thing as technology improves. Don't forget to consider your usage. Facebook is a great example. With images uploaded and shown on Facebook, they can't be any larger than about 4 megapixels.

Prints require about 300 dpi. So a 20x30 print needs a resolution just under 36MP. This is not taking into account the newer and better scaling software that can take a 24MP image and print it 24x50 or larger and have it look photo quality at normal viewing distances.

Of course, you don't need to have a lot pixels in your camera to have photos with a lot of pixels too. You can take multiple shots and stitch them together to make a final image of what ever size you want There's photos on line with more than 100MP, or 1,000MP go to gigapan.com and check out their gallery of stitched photos. Some are comprised of more than 1,000 24MP images!

The first consumer level P&S digital cameras had 0.9 mp sensors and cost in the neighborhood of around $600.

Now most digital cameras have from 16 mp to 36 mp sensors… Some of the newer ones up to 50 mp.

It will keep going up as long as manufacturers can keep duping idiots into thinking that more megapixels makes them a better photographer.

If you really think hard about it, the answer would be one pixel smaller than the universe.

If the camera were as big as the universe then that would mean it would overlap it and we all know that's not possible. The content must always be smaller than the container.

No theoretical limit in the future.

In practice, for domestic compact cameras, any number above about 12MPs is just a marketing exercise, and may actually be counterproductive for quality. Upmarket compacts, at several hundred pounds/dollars, tend to have 12MPs, clearly the makers know their market.

Highest I know of currently (at least for consumers) is the 41MP sensors for the Nokia PureView 808 & Nokia Lumia 1020. Though that is an ever expanding thing as technology improves.

Don't forget to consider your usage. Facebook is a great example. With images uploaded and shown on Facebook, they can't be any larger than about 4 megapixels.

Prints require about 300 dpi. So a 20x30 print needs a resolution just under 36MP. This is not taking into account the newer and better scaling software that can take a 24MP image and print it 24x50 or larger and have it look photo quality at normal viewing distances.

Of course, you don't need to have a lot pixels in your camera to have photos with a lot of pixels too. You can take multiple shots and stitch them together to make a final image of what ever size you want There's photos on line with more than 100MP, or 1,000MP go to gigapan.com and check out their gallery of stitched photos. Some are comprised of more than 1,000 24MP images!