On the face of it, the two questions aren’t connected.

But I think they are. And I think the ramifications are fascinating.

How many megapixels do you need?

Starting out with the camera resolution point, the logic goes something like this.

• The chase used to be for megapixels. However many you had, you wanted more. Early DSLRs delivered around 6 megapixels, things seemed to have settled now at around 12 megapixels
• Yes there are cameras around that’ll deliver a lot more than 12 megapixels, but they’re pretty expensive beasts
• The myth that megapixels equals quality seems to have been buried, and it seems accepted that other factors, especially image noise at higher ISOs, are much more important
• Storing thousands of 12 megpixel sized files isn’t easy. We used to backup to 250GB drives, now we back up to 1TB drives. And quite a few of them.

How does resolution relate to printing?

• A 12 megapixel camera will create a file just over 4,000 pixels wide and just under 3,000 pixels tall
• At a normal printing resolution that’ll create a print with a natural size of about 400mm wide and 300 mm tall. Bigger than A3…
• And it doesn’t need much upscaling to get to a very acceptable A2 print. Far bigger than you’ll probably ever want.

And now we get to the really interesting questions

• When was the last time you printed anything bigger than A3? Have you EVER printed anything bigger than A3?
• In fact, how many prints do you produce at all? We’ve an Epson 4800 in the corner, gently gathering dust. It’ll produce truly beautiful A2 prints. But I hasn’t been used in months
• Neither of us have professionally or for fun produced any prints at all in months
• All our work is published on the web. One of our clients takes files as big as 800px wide. Most take files at around 700px wide.  So the first thing we do is scale the files down to the size we want. Just 3% of the original…

So what is the point of shooting at 12 megapixels?

The picture at the head of this article was shot with my 2 megapixel Blackberry smartphone. And even that needed some downscaling for the web. I used just 17% of the original file size.

And the irony is the D700 was in my briefcase. I just couldn't be bothered to get it out. The Blackberry did just fine...

So where is this all leading?

Is my Nikon D700 up for being pensioned off and I’ll shoot professional jobs with my Blackberry? Hmmm…. It’d certainly be much lighter to carry around!