6 ms·

X Megapixels lost all meaning a while ago. The size of the sensor and the smarts behind it matter a lot more

nicolas_t 5y ago
Even during the megapixels wars, Fuji released some great point and shoot cameras that had less megapixels but better image quality due to having a bigger sensor. For example, the f31d was great in its time and showed that megapixels weren't the only measure to look for.
peanutz454 5y ago
Why don't manufacturers advertise that more clearly? I've never seen that information on the simple specs that most models list out.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  It's not easy to qualitatively represent your fancy HDR algorithms and focus finding, especially in the realm of phones where there are fewer standard terms to play with (even something as simple as OIS means nothing to 99% of buyers) That's why you see a focus on showing off the end results now, like Apple's rebooted "Shot on iPhone" campaign or Samsung's current photo competition restricted to photos taken with a Galaxy S21
- einr 5y ago
  For a long time it was very easy to advertise cameras by the number of megapixels, and consumers supposedly like easy to understand numbers where bigger is better. This used to be kind of true back in the day of <6MP but raw megapixel numbers have been fairly useless for fifteen years or so. It's a slow process moving away from this once you've drilled it into people's heads with marketing. It's just like how MHz used to be an easy and fairly reliable way to compare CPU's in the 90's and it took a really long time for the general public to understand that clock speed isn't all that matters.
  - ctdonath 5y ago
    I’ll take that a step further and contend Apple wants to do away with advertising technical specs: resolution, speed, capacity, etc should be good enough that users just don’t care to know. At that point, most customers shy away from competition because the tech numbers are incomprehensible or deceptive.
    - exporectomy 5y ago
      I'm looking forward to further movement of the market in that direction. Some products aren't the centerpiece of your life and you want it to just work without consuming your mental effort. Enthusiasts can still read the spec sheets or reverse-engineered estimated spec sheets if it comes to that, but normal people can get on with their life. I don't know the storage capacity or resolution of my phone, nor the engine size of my car because they're good enough.
coldtea 5y ago
Well, not for video, where you need e.g. 12MP minimum to do 4K.
- einr 5y ago
  4K is 3840*2160 = roughly 8.3 megapixels.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    Hmm, had in mind DCI which consider quite larger than UHD 4K, but yes, it's still ~ 9MP.
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    Yeah, and now if something doesn't have enough to do 4k there's: a) nothing stopping them from faking it, plenty of crappy hardware will record files in an upscaled resolution (see webcams especially for this) b) you probably don't want a larger version of the output of that device anyways. I mean even a 130 dollar phone has a 13 megapixel camera. https://www.amazon.com/BLU-Android-Factory-Unlocked-Display/dp/B0844S4JVF https://www.amazon.com/BLU-Android-Factory-Unlocked-Display/...
  - fouc 5y ago
    > YouTube, since 2010,[51] and Vimeo allow a maximum upload resolution of 4096 × 3072 pixels (12.6 megapixels, aspect ratio 4:3) I guess it really depends on the aspect ratio you're going for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution#Video_streaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution#Video_streaming
    - einr 5y ago
      I've never personally seen that resolution used, nor called "4K". If you're going to lump together a resolution with 50% more pixels under the same umbrella term then IMO "4K" is meaningless and we need more granular terminology.
  - jychang 5y ago
    That's at a 16:9 video ratio though. There are no phone camera sensors out there with a 16:9 ratio. That would be useless for taking still photographs. Most DSLR/mirrorless cameras have a 3:2 ratio, whereas smartphone cameras tend to have a 4:3 ratio. If you want to make a smartphone camera sensor that can do 3840 pixels across that can shoot 4k, the 4:3 sensor would need to be 2880 pixels tall. So 3840*2880 = 11.1MP would be the bare minimum size for a smartphone camera that can shoot 4K. In practice you'd want something larger than that, so you can do DCI 4K (which is a bit higher resolution) and do things like gyroscopically assisted electronic image stabilization (which benefits from a few extra pixels around the border). The iPhone can probably implement video stabilization that rivals GoPro's HyperSmooth stabilization.
jcun4128 5y ago
Don't forget the Lumia 1020 with its "41MP camera" back in 2010 ha
- einr 5y ago
  No "quotes" necessary, it does have a 41MP sensor.
  - jcun4128 5y ago
    See I never got that, I have an A7R3 42MP and its photos far surpass the Lumia 1020 so what gives (other than lens/age). And sensor size, that's why I don't understand that metric. Yeah the resolution is right eg. ~8Kx4K Bigger pixel is the difference apparently
    - einr 5y ago
      It really is sensor size. For two sensors of the same resolution (= number of photosensitive cells), a physically larger sensor will have a greater number of photons hitting each photosite. This means better signal-to-noise ratio (fewer photons = base electrical noise is greater in relation to the signal) and dynamic range. So inescapably, due to basic laws of physics, for two identically implemented sensors of the same resolution, the larger one will always be better. This doesn't mean you can't make miniscule sensors with 41MP -- you certainly can. There can even be advantages to doing so. The Nokia PureView cameras were based on a novel concept that by capturing very high resolution images (41MP) you can then smooth out the noise (because it is essentially random) while retaining huge amounts of detail if you downsample them to a reasonable size (something like 12MP? I forget what it does exactly) in post-processing. It is a tradeoff -- you trade worse dynamic range for better detail -- but it worked really well for a smartphone at the time. If you were to pixel peep the 41 MP files before downsampling they would look horrible, especially at higher sensitivities.
      - jcun4128 5y ago
        I see thanks for that explanation. It's a race now... GAS as they say, now there's the 100MP one A1. Random side note: it is cool how we adjust our perception of HD eg. back then 480P was "pretty good" ha. Good lord just looked up one of the Nokia phones and it has 5 cameras on it dang...
nucleardog 5y ago
> The size of the sensor and the smarts behind it matter a lot more And the lenses. My backup DSLR shooting at 6MP with $100 of glass on the front looks infinitely better than the photos out of my iPhone 12 Pro.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  I feel like that's not giving the iPhone 12 camera nearly enough credit, but yes having infinitely more space for optics helps
  - nucleardog 5y ago
    Oh, I give the iPhone a ton of credit. It generally looks good enough, the HDR on video makes shit look better than reality, the low-light performance beats the absolute pants off of anything else I own by a _huge_ margin. I bought an iPhone 12 Pro pretty much entirely as a camera to use to capture a bunch of photos of my kid because (1) I don't have my DSLR within arm's reach in the house all the time and (2) our house isn't very well lit. I have zero complaints about it. I probably take photos with my iPhone versus my actual photo gear at least 20:1, if not more. The photos look great on a phone screen. But even just printing a 4x6 photo from the iPhone and a 15 year old DSLR and putting them side by side, the difference is immediately obvious. The iPhone photos are disgustingly oversharpened while somehow being weirdly smoothed, but in all the wrong spots. I grabbed a couple of my own photos taken on the same day in the same place under largely the same lighting conditions (it's never exact) and zoomed/cropped them to help demonstrate and for privacy. Neither have been adjusted at all (I did try and improve the iPhone photo best I could, but really managed no substantial looking improvement so posted it as-shot), so focus more on the definition in the hair: https://imgur.com/a/7bn8W5S https://imgur.com/a/7bn8W5S See if you can guess which came from an iPhone 12 Pro, and which came from a Nikon D70 (about a $100 camera body at this point). That all said, the entire point was... expecting anything more than 12MP out of an iPhone is absolutely pointless because the sensor size and optics simply aren't there to actually produce a better photo.
    - foldr 5y ago
dzhiurgis 5y ago
I'd suggest playing with such camera before commenting. Maybe it doesn't matter for day to day point and shoot, but you can capture insane pics with 100MP sensor.

Even during the megapixels wars, Fuji released some great point and shoot cameras that had less megapixels but better image quality due to having a bigger sensor. For example, the f31d was great in its time and showed that megapixels weren't the only measure to look for.

peanutz454 5y ago

Why don't manufacturers advertise that more clearly? I've never seen that information on the simple specs that most models list out.

BoorishBears 5y ago
It's not easy to qualitatively represent your fancy HDR algorithms and focus finding, especially in the realm of phones where there are fewer standard terms to play with (even something as simple as OIS means nothing to 99% of buyers) That's why you see a focus on showing off the end results now, like Apple's rebooted "Shot on iPhone" campaign or Samsung's current photo competition restricted to photos taken with a Galaxy S21
einr 5y ago
For a long time it was very easy to advertise cameras by the number of megapixels, and consumers supposedly like easy to understand numbers where bigger is better. This used to be kind of true back in the day of <6MP but raw megapixel numbers have been fairly useless for fifteen years or so. It's a slow process moving away from this once you've drilled it into people's heads with marketing. It's just like how MHz used to be an easy and fairly reliable way to compare CPU's in the 90's and it took a really long time for the general public to understand that clock speed isn't all that matters.
- ctdonath 5y ago
  I’ll take that a step further and contend Apple wants to do away with advertising technical specs: resolution, speed, capacity, etc should be good enough that users just don’t care to know. At that point, most customers shy away from competition because the tech numbers are incomprehensible or deceptive.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    I'm looking forward to further movement of the market in that direction. Some products aren't the centerpiece of your life and you want it to just work without consuming your mental effort. Enthusiasts can still read the spec sheets or reverse-engineered estimated spec sheets if it comes to that, but normal people can get on with their life. I don't know the storage capacity or resolution of my phone, nor the engine size of my car because they're good enough.

coldtea 5y ago

Well, not for video, where you need e.g. 12MP minimum to do 4K.

einr 5y ago
4K is 3840*2160 = roughly 8.3 megapixels.
- coldtea 5y ago
  Hmm, had in mind DCI which consider quite larger than UHD 4K, but yes, it's still ~ 9MP.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  Yeah, and now if something doesn't have enough to do 4k there's: a) nothing stopping them from faking it, plenty of crappy hardware will record files in an upscaled resolution (see webcams especially for this) b) you probably don't want a larger version of the output of that device anyways. I mean even a 130 dollar phone has a 13 megapixel camera. https://www.amazon.com/BLU-Android-Factory-Unlocked-Display/dp/B0844S4JVF https://www.amazon.com/BLU-Android-Factory-Unlocked-Display/...
- fouc 5y ago
  > YouTube, since 2010,[51] and Vimeo allow a maximum upload resolution of 4096 × 3072 pixels (12.6 megapixels, aspect ratio 4:3) I guess it really depends on the aspect ratio you're going for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution#Video_streaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution#Video_streaming
  - einr 5y ago
    I've never personally seen that resolution used, nor called "4K". If you're going to lump together a resolution with 50% more pixels under the same umbrella term then IMO "4K" is meaningless and we need more granular terminology.
- jychang 5y ago
  That's at a 16:9 video ratio though. There are no phone camera sensors out there with a 16:9 ratio. That would be useless for taking still photographs. Most DSLR/mirrorless cameras have a 3:2 ratio, whereas smartphone cameras tend to have a 4:3 ratio. If you want to make a smartphone camera sensor that can do 3840 pixels across that can shoot 4k, the 4:3 sensor would need to be 2880 pixels tall. So 3840*2880 = 11.1MP would be the bare minimum size for a smartphone camera that can shoot 4K. In practice you'd want something larger than that, so you can do DCI 4K (which is a bit higher resolution) and do things like gyroscopically assisted electronic image stabilization (which benefits from a few extra pixels around the border). The iPhone can probably implement video stabilization that rivals GoPro's HyperSmooth stabilization.

jcun4128 5y ago

Don't forget the Lumia 1020 with its "41MP camera" back in 2010 ha

einr 5y ago
No "quotes" necessary, it does have a 41MP sensor.
- jcun4128 5y ago
  See I never got that, I have an A7R3 42MP and its photos far surpass the Lumia 1020 so what gives (other than lens/age). And sensor size, that's why I don't understand that metric. Yeah the resolution is right eg. ~8Kx4K Bigger pixel is the difference apparently
  - einr 5y ago
    It really is sensor size. For two sensors of the same resolution (= number of photosensitive cells), a physically larger sensor will have a greater number of photons hitting each photosite. This means better signal-to-noise ratio (fewer photons = base electrical noise is greater in relation to the signal) and dynamic range. So inescapably, due to basic laws of physics, for two identically implemented sensors of the same resolution, the larger one will always be better. This doesn't mean you can't make miniscule sensors with 41MP -- you certainly can. There can even be advantages to doing so. The Nokia PureView cameras were based on a novel concept that by capturing very high resolution images (41MP) you can then smooth out the noise (because it is essentially random) while retaining huge amounts of detail if you downsample them to a reasonable size (something like 12MP? I forget what it does exactly) in post-processing. It is a tradeoff -- you trade worse dynamic range for better detail -- but it worked really well for a smartphone at the time. If you were to pixel peep the 41 MP files before downsampling they would look horrible, especially at higher sensitivities.
    - jcun4128 5y ago
      I see thanks for that explanation. It's a race now... GAS as they say, now there's the 100MP one A1. Random side note: it is cool how we adjust our perception of HD eg. back then 480P was "pretty good" ha. Good lord just looked up one of the Nokia phones and it has 5 cameras on it dang...

nucleardog 5y ago

> The size of the sensor and the smarts behind it matter a lot more And the lenses. My backup DSLR shooting at 6MP with $100 of glass on the front looks infinitely better than the photos out of my iPhone 12 Pro.

BoorishBears 5y ago
I feel like that's not giving the iPhone 12 camera nearly enough credit, but yes having infinitely more space for optics helps
- nucleardog 5y ago
  Oh, I give the iPhone a ton of credit. It generally looks good enough, the HDR on video makes shit look better than reality, the low-light performance beats the absolute pants off of anything else I own by a _huge_ margin. I bought an iPhone 12 Pro pretty much entirely as a camera to use to capture a bunch of photos of my kid because (1) I don't have my DSLR within arm's reach in the house all the time and (2) our house isn't very well lit. I have zero complaints about it. I probably take photos with my iPhone versus my actual photo gear at least 20:1, if not more. The photos look great on a phone screen. But even just printing a 4x6 photo from the iPhone and a 15 year old DSLR and putting them side by side, the difference is immediately obvious. The iPhone photos are disgustingly oversharpened while somehow being weirdly smoothed, but in all the wrong spots. I grabbed a couple of my own photos taken on the same day in the same place under largely the same lighting conditions (it's never exact) and zoomed/cropped them to help demonstrate and for privacy. Neither have been adjusted at all (I did try and improve the iPhone photo best I could, but really managed no substantial looking improvement so posted it as-shot), so focus more on the definition in the hair: https://imgur.com/a/7bn8W5S https://imgur.com/a/7bn8W5S See if you can guess which came from an iPhone 12 Pro, and which came from a Nikon D70 (about a $100 camera body at this point). That all said, the entire point was... expecting anything more than 12MP out of an iPhone is absolutely pointless because the sensor size and optics simply aren't there to actually produce a better photo.
  - foldr 5y ago

dzhiurgis 5y ago

I'd suggest playing with such camera before commenting. Maybe it doesn't matter for day to day point and shoot, but you can capture insane pics with 100MP sensor.