Confusion Over Conversion: Inches To CM And Pixels To Megapixels

It’s incredible that, while most countries went through the great metric changeover last century confusion surrounds inches and centimeters, with many people not knowing what each is.

It’s almost on a par with confusion over the difference between mega pixels and pixels, although not as profitable for camera shops.

We are always here to help, so here is a quick guide to how to convert between measurements from the metric system and imperial system, and how to tell the difference between a megapixel and a pixel.

If you are from the U.S. or the U.K. you may have noticed that we use metric measurements for all our products.

When in doubt you can just follow these rules of thumb:

Imperial Measurements Explained

 

• 1 inch is the same as 2.54 centimeters OR 25.4 millimeters
• 1 foot measures 30.48 centimeters OR 12 inches
• 1 pound weighs the same as 0.453 kilograms

 

Metric Measurements Explained

 

• 1 millimeter(mm) equals 0.039 inches
• 1 centimeter(cm) is the same as 0.393 inches OR 10 mm
• 1 meter is the same as 3.28 feet OR 39.37 inches OR 100 cm
• 1 kilogram (kg) weighs 2.2 pounds (lb)

 

In addition, there are many great online resources like http://www.onlineconversion.com/ for finding common and unusual conversion factors.

In most cases you can even use the Google search bar. Just type ‘in’ between the two measurements you want to convert and you will have your result. It works just as well for currency conversions.

Pixels And Megapixels

 

While converting pixels to megapixels might not seem as important as changing inches to centimeters it can be vital, especially if you are doing and photography work or comparing one camera to another one.

Essentially one megapixel is the same as 1,000,000 pixels.

To work out how many megapixel something has you just need to multiply the horizontal pixels by the vertical pixels and see what you get.

So, something that has a resolution of 640×480 pixels has the equivalent resolution of 0.3 megapixels.

640×480 = 307,200 pixels

And something that has a resolution of 1280×1024 pixels has an equivalent resolution of 1.3 megapixels.

1280×1024 = 1,310,720 pixels

A good tip to remember is that when comparing cameras, you should compare the native resolution of the camera and not the software interpolated resolution of the camera.

If you follow these tips you’ll be happy dealing with any measurement in no time.

Why not check out our latest range of digital cameras to see what we can offer you.