Photography - How Many Megapixels Do You Need?

My first "Professional" digital camera was a Canon EOS 10D, a 6 megapixel camera.  I put professional in quotes because now it is probably considered a prosumer camera, or worse, LOL.  And yet, I was able to get the results below, and make a 24x30 enlargement that looks great, even close-up.  I have since upgraded to a much larger sensor, but still have my EOS 10D.

To answer the question above, it depends on what you are shooting and the results you might need.  More important is the lens you are using.  The photo in this example was taken with Canon's 50mm (equal to about 80mm on a full frame sensor) f1.8 lens.

The first photo below is cropped about 30%, and the close up, if it was of the full frame, would have been a little larger than the 24x30 (and with Perfect Resize, would be even better).  Note, too, the photos here have been reduced in size for this blog.

Click on the photos to see the larger size.

In a coming post, I will shot some much larger megapixel images.

Happy Holidays to all.