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Recently I opted to buy a camera. I asked my brother a suggestion regarding my purchase, and suddenly he started to ask me number of questions. I was able to answer all the questions, except this one: "What is Nineteen Megapixels minus Sixteen Megapixels?. Does anyone know what this means? I checked most of the camera forums and review sites, but I was not able to find the answer. Actually I may know the answer, but I was not able to understand my brother's question when I asked him to clarify, he said the answer is in the question itself. What could he possibly mean?

mattdm
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Billy
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    I don't quite understand what you are asking. Is the question "What is 19 minus 16 megapixels?"? – Håkon K. Olafsen Aug 16 '13 at 10:49
  • OOPs LOL , I didn't had that presense of mind Hakon, absolutely you have found the answer. Its a simple silly question, You have a great presense of mind, As I was given a number of question related to camera before and then with this quesion , I just got confused and started to think that there is a denomination like that in the world of camera.

    Thanks for your answer.

     – Billy Aug 16 '13 at 12:40
  • Also I had asked about this to somemore people and forums but they are still thinking! Just imagine of it. :) – Billy Aug 16 '13 at 12:41
  • possible duplicate of How many pixels in a megapixel? – mattdm Aug 16 '13 at 13:21

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The answer is simple: "Not a big deal".

It's obviously technically right to say "three megapixels, give or take", but by itself that overstates the importance. 19 megapixels isn't automatically 18.7% better — in fact, the real resolution may actually be worse in the real world, as there are so many other factors.

It's hard to read minds, but I suspect this is what your brother was getting at.

mattdm
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I thought one of two things:

A. The camera has two aspect ratios and has a different pixel count for each' one of the two not using the entire sensor.

B. the sensor size is 19mp but the images made are 16mp due to internal cropping. I had an old Sony mini DV that did this to handle motion, vs. a lens based image stabilization.

David

David Goldwasser
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