I have some reasons why my new camera (Nikon Coolpix P5100, 12 Megapixels) isn't as good as the old one (Nikon Coolpix 5200, 5 Megapixels) bought around 3 years ago.

Pictures are not that much larger. 12 Megapixels is surely much larger than 5? Maybe not.. 5 million pixels on a square sensor is a square 2236 pixels on a side. With 12 Million pixels it’s 3464 pixels a side. 3464 over 2236 is about 1.55. The picture sides are only 1.55 times as long in pixels. So it's one and half times as large in pixels.

The image sensor inside the camera is probably about the same size as before, so the pixels are actually smaller sensors that now work off less light falling on them. This means more guesswork. Which would you rather have for a particular part of the image – 10 pixels with clean colour values, or 15 noisy ones? It's not clear any more that the new camera is an improvement.

It doesn't autofocus as well. Often things are out of focus, or I take longer finding the focus. Macro mode is not quite as good.

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