Camera quality 15mp vs 21mp?

[hal1]

Of course I could try to see a difference myself, but my pictures are so amateurish that I don't know that I'd notice. Have you been able to see a material difference?

 

[Rukbat]

That depends on what you do with them. On a phone screen? Even 6"? No. Print them a few feet across? Probably. Upload them to the web? You can't see 15MP on the web unless you're scanning across the picture and seeing about 5% of it at a time. (The difference between a 5MP picture and a 42MP picture on Instagram or Facebook doesn't exist - they're going to show the same on a computer screen.)

It's the photographer that makes the picture, not the camera. Look up Dorothea Lange or Ansel Adams on the web and look at some of their pictures. Some of the cameras Adams used had lenses that make the worst phone camera lenses look great, but all you see posted by people with 42MP cameras are snapshots. (And most of them aren't even very good snapshots.) A great artist can take a fantastic picture with a Kodak Brownie (you can find some for a buck or two on ebay). Someone who doesn't know the rule of thirds from depth of field couldn't take a good picture with a $4,000 Hasselblad. (I still use my 3MP Fuji when I'm without a phone and see a great picture I can take.)

 

[Zaisaroni]

The 15MP setting is merely a cropped version of the 21MP setting, it fills the screen so there are no black bars. I would lock in 21MP so you can always just crop it down.