Expert: John Oliverio - 11/15/2008

Question
hello, thank you for taking my question. I am an amatuer photographer. I have done a few senior and family group pics. I seem to have an  eye for it but the little point and shoot kodak i use isnt cutting it. I would like to bump up a notch or two and have heard good things about the canon A590 for the price. my biggest problem with my pics seem to be blurry or no clarity. i mostly take pics of people. would you recommend this camera or is there one you would recommend? also how important is megapixel number and exactly what does it do and what number do you recommend? thank you for your input. laura

Answer
Canon makes great cameras.  So the a590 wouldn't be a bad choice.  Though it has been replaced by a 4 digit series of cameras...  Like the A1000.

Pixels no longer matter in cameras of the type you are interested in.  They probably should have stopped around 6mp. The more pixels, the larger you can print....  that is just numbers though.  So yes, you could buy a 15mp point and shoot camera and make 50 inch prints.  But what nobody talks about is that the lens on a point and shoot camera isn't really able to resolve more than about 6mp and isn't really sharp enough to make anything larger than an 8x10.

John