Why is six megapixel best?

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m hella excited about the first 50 megapixel monster digital SLR (regardless of who makes it). And why not? More megapixels is better, right? 

If you believe the German site 6mpixel.org – maybe not. More megapixels is certainly a higher physical resolution, but do the pictures produced at that resolution look better?

Well, not always. As technology improves, camera companies manage to increase the number of pixels they can fit into the same area of sensor they used in the previous model, but there must be a limit. Since the pixels technology itself is not changing (only the size) the result is that you’ll have smaller, greater numbers of pixels spread over the same surface area. Smaller pixels have a harder time handling noise.

6mpixel.org is a German site that asserts that six megapixel is the threshold, where you get the best balance of resolution versus noise. I’m not sure I entirely agree with their reasoning, but they are on to something here, so it’s worth a look.