This week I helped an old friend (damn, if we're old friends I'm getting old) pick out a new camera. I was proud of the fact that he wasn't caught up in the hype of bigger is better. He just wanted a good camera that matched his needs and felt good in his hands.

Given a conversation about size we had, I knew that a micro 4/3rds camera may be a better fit for him than a full size DSLR. So, we looked at a variety of cameras at Hunt's. In the end the Panasonix Lumix G2(K?) beat out the Nikon 3100 (his friend has an older nikon so he was familiar with it) - it was just a bit smaller and more comfortable.

The stuff that doesn't really matter:

BUT, the Nikon was 14MP! The Panasonic only 12MP. So what does that mean? Well, it has to do with the number of dots that are used to make up the image you capture. 12 million dots or 14 million dots. There is a lot of science that goes into this stuff; but for sake of simplicity just remember that more doesn't mean better. Cramming millions of photosites onto a chip means that each site captures less light as you cram in more. So, the amount of light (signal) to noise goes down. Basically it means more pixels is often a trade off with the noisiness of the photo.

But, don't compare a 6MP camera from 2004 to a 12MP camera from 2011 and feel like less is more either. Every year a number of evolutionary steps happen. At the end of the day 12MP is plenty for most people. If you don't print larger than 8x10 it generally doesn't matter which consumer DSLR you're using.

The stuff that does really matter:

How does the camera feel? Do you understand the menus? Is it easy to review the photos? Can you focus accurately? How does it feel again?

It doesn't really matter how amazing your camera is if you don't feel like taking it with you. That is the downfall of most DSLRs. They aren't point and shoots. And point and shoots aren't DSLRs. A group of manufactorers stepped in with a middle of the road solution called micro-4/3rds.

But, get what feels right for you. I have bought the "lesser" camera (read: less megapixels) because it fit in my hand better (I ended up choosing my first Canon). It only matters how much you like your camera ~ and will you use it.