What is the best MPs when buying a digital camera?

As I always respond to such a question, the answer is: "Best" depends on what use you intend for your photos.

If you only intend to set up online photo albums, and share digital files with friends and family, online, even one or two Megapixels is more than enough. For this application, you don't even have to spend over a hundred dollars for a pretty good camera.

If you really want to make good quality prints, no larger than 5 inches by 7, then 3 megs is plenty.

If you intend to make larger, say, 8 by 10 enlargements, then you will have to spend money and get 5, 6 or even more megapixels.

A pro, intending to publish his images in a high quality magazine, or needing to make poster size images and billboards will be using 12 20 or even more megs to capture the detail needed.

So, again, "best" depend on what you need. It's kind of like asking what is the "best" car to drive. The best off road vehicle would not be the most economical. The "best" family minivan would not be the best drag racer. The "best" European road ralleye car makes a lousy vehicle for transporting the soccer team to the pizza parlor.

In the real world, where I guess you and I live, it would be 10-12 MP. This is NOT the only thing to judge a camera by, though.

How much money have you got?
The Hasselblad H3D-39 has 39 MP for $32,000.
The Canon EOS-1D2 Mark II has 16.6 MP for $7,000.
There are several in the 10-12 MP range, though, that mere mortals can afford.

Get as many MPs as you can afford. the more megapixels, the more clarity, sharpness and overall digital size of your photographs

Actually, a 3 Megapixel is considered "photo quality". Which means that you can get very good results from an image taken with a 3 MP camera, usually 3x5, 4x6, 5x7. You will start to see some pixilation on an 8x10. Just make sure that you have your camera resolution set to the highest setting.

5-6 is a good size if you will not be printing on paper larger than a standard photo size, but larger is better if you plan on printing large prints, or if you would need to zoom in on some small detail in the photo. if you are only using picts for screen viewing, (like for selling things on ebay) 4-5 mp is more than enough.

you really should look at the other features on the camera and make sure it has eveything that is important to you (can it zoom up really close on an object(taking photos of bugs) or can it zoom far on things that are far away (taking a photo at a football game). it's not just about MP.

For someone new to digital cameras, I would say that 6MP would be the minimum I would recommend (which is much more than the average person really needs, because most don't even get their photos printed).

If you intend to print out very large photos or do a lot of editing/cropping on the PC, then 8-10 would be better.
But, for the occasional small to large print, 6MP is just fine.

Before you spend too much money. Do yourself a favor and read this.

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/11/2...

and this

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.h...