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If you keep reading: >And as far as resolution is concerned that tends to be the case I was only talking about resolution. Lower MP gives you less noise but i

by pedrocr 16y ago

If you keep reading: >And as far as resolution is concerned that tends to be the case I was only talking about resolution. Lower MP gives you less noise but it won't give you more resolution. In the extreme case where you push the ISO maybe the extra noise can overcome the extra resolution. To make it simple lets say that at base ISO on a sunny day the higher MP will out-resolve the lower MP for a given sensor generation. My point isn't that low MP isn't good for many applications it's that saying that higher MP doesn't lead to higher resolution is just wrong. If you want resolution you need pixels to produce it and current cameras are mostly not wasting the resolution away. The excessive MP problem only really exists in consumer compacts. High-end compacts and DSLRs haven't been stretching the limits too much. The highest MP DSLRs right now have 24MP on a full-frame sensor, which is about the same density as 10MP on an APS sensor. Some of the APS ones have pushed that on to ~16MP with accompanying improvements in the individual pixels. Maybe you're thinking of camera phones with 8MP, those may very well be in the extreme case you mention where noise overcomes the extra resolution.

acqq 16y ago
If you exclude professionals, nobody buys "full-frame" sensors. Excluding professionals, people don't even know what that means. Nobody brags about sensor size, everybody brags he has "more MP" than before. Also almost nobody wants to make photos only in the direct sunlight. Normal conditions are conditions with less than optimal light. So excluding "full-frame," more MP is actually worse, and people buy simply by believing "bigger number better." Edit: Let me stress once again: I'm not discussing a scenario of a "professional with a slave to carry all his equipment and another guy to set and hold the lights" but a "normal person" carrying not-too-expensive camera or even his phone and expecting "more MP better pictures."
- gaius 16y ago
  That's one of the most useful things about dpreview.com, they quote pixels per square cm as well. 2 pixels, one black, one white have more resolution than 10 pixels, all grey.
- pedrocr 16y ago
  I was only mentioning full-frame as those are the highest MP DSLRs available. I then mentioned APS cameras, which a lot of people do buy, especially the entry level stuff. In that segment and even in less than perfect light the higher MP cameras have been getting better, not worse. There's an argument to be made that if the manufacturers had stopped at say 12MP (to pick a number) and put all their effort into noise we would have better cameras now for the kind of use people actually put them through. In fact Nikon did just that at the high-end with the D700 and D3. There isn't however much of an argument to be made that the 16MP APS cameras of today are worse than the 12MP cameras of a couple years back. The latest models seem to have both more pixels and lower noise. Maybe you'd like a lower MP camera with even lower noise and maybe you can't buy it because MP sells cameras and thus shapes development. That could be a problem, but saying "excluding full-frame, more MP is actually worse" isn't really true. My impression is the complaints about MP are mostly right in compacts and everywhere else tend to be geek snobbery.
jacobolus 16y ago
> Lower MP gives you less noise but it won't give you more resolution. This is not a generally true statement (that is, it is sometimes true, but it depends). Sometimes the higher percentage of overhead on the chip required by smaller pixels reduces the overall amount of "actual" information collected. That is, more extra noise is being added than extra signal.

by pedrocr 16y ago

acqq 16y ago

If you exclude professionals, nobody buys "full-frame" sensors. Excluding professionals, people don't even know what that means. Nobody brags about sensor size, everybody brags he has "more MP" than before. Also almost nobody wants to make photos only in the direct sunlight. Normal conditions are conditions with less than optimal light. So excluding "full-frame," more MP is actually worse, and people buy simply by believing "bigger number better." Edit: Let me stress once again: I'm not discussing a scenario of a "professional with a slave to carry all his equipment and another guy to set and hold the lights" but a "normal person" carrying not-too-expensive camera or even his phone and expecting "more MP better pictures."

gaius 16y ago
That's one of the most useful things about dpreview.com, they quote pixels per square cm as well. 2 pixels, one black, one white have more resolution than 10 pixels, all grey.
pedrocr 16y ago
I was only mentioning full-frame as those are the highest MP DSLRs available. I then mentioned APS cameras, which a lot of people do buy, especially the entry level stuff. In that segment and even in less than perfect light the higher MP cameras have been getting better, not worse. There's an argument to be made that if the manufacturers had stopped at say 12MP (to pick a number) and put all their effort into noise we would have better cameras now for the kind of use people actually put them through. In fact Nikon did just that at the high-end with the D700 and D3. There isn't however much of an argument to be made that the 16MP APS cameras of today are worse than the 12MP cameras of a couple years back. The latest models seem to have both more pixels and lower noise. Maybe you'd like a lower MP camera with even lower noise and maybe you can't buy it because MP sells cameras and thus shapes development. That could be a problem, but saying "excluding full-frame, more MP is actually worse" isn't really true. My impression is the complaints about MP are mostly right in compacts and everywhere else tend to be geek snobbery.

jacobolus 16y ago

> Lower MP gives you less noise but it won't give you more resolution. This is not a generally true statement (that is, it is sometimes true, but it depends). Sometimes the higher percentage of overhead on the chip required by smaller pixels reduces the overall amount of "actual" information collected. That is, more extra noise is being added than extra signal.