If you’re in the market for a new camera, it often seems like the number one criteria is megapixels. I’m not saying that this is right, but it’s the one of the few criteria that camera makers think that their customers can understand.

I often think there’s a lot of hype with cameras, so I’d like to take a second and break down what a megapixel really is and help you figure out how many you actually need for your workflow.

A megapixel is simply a unit of storage that describes the amount of data captured by a camera. It can be written to internal memory or to a removable card. A megapixel is one million pixels and is a term commonly used to describe how much data a digital camera can capture.

A good analogy with megapixels is to look at the gas tank on your car. Just…