It depends how you want to show your images. If you want prints the size of a house door then high megapixel cameras are the answer. If you only want to digitally project them or view on a computer screen them probably 8 megapixels is good enough since that's about the resolution of most computer screens. Digital projectors and slide show screens are much less.
The old saying "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link applies". If your computer screen only has a resolution of say 8 megapixels that's all you get even if your camera has 24 megapixels or more. Originally smartphones did not match cameras quality for web posting, particularly their lenses, but now are more than good enough. Once a camera of any type exceeds the resolution of the media you are reproducing the image on, other than being able to crop a picture more drastically and still have enough megapixels, then more megapixels are pointless.
However as they say "megapixels sell cameras" whether you need them or can use them or not in your photography. As George says, unlike film cameras smartphones and most digital cameras do the processing for you if you shoot JPEG's. If you choose to shoot RAW you have to do your own processing. In older cameras they used to soften the original images slightly to avoid moiré patterns and sharpening was later applied in camera when shooting JPEG's since not so many amateurs post processed or further sharpened their images.
How many megapixels was this camera image below? It was shot in RAW and sharpened in post processing in Photoshop Elements. However any other post processing software would do.
- Turbinicarpus polaskii.jpg (83.23 KiB) Viewed 9862 times
One thing that should be noted is some modern smartphones use a version of image stacking in camera to provide greater depth of field. Originally the amount of processing power in both cameras and smartphones was small so not much internal processing could be done therefore people post processed on more powerful computers. As processing chips gets smaller more will be embedded in cameras so they will then be automatically able to do what is often done in post processing now.
https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-compu ... ach%20time.
