Interesting. I'm just going on a hunch here, but maybe getting better photographs of the Mars surface is not a priority anymore? From the wikipedia page of Mars

Interesting. I'm just going on a hunch here, but maybe getting better photographs of the Mars surface is not a priority anymore? From the wikipedia page of Mars Science Laboratory the goals of the mission are: To contribute to these goals, MSL has six main scientific objectives: * Determine the mineralogical composition of the Martian surface and near-surface geological materials. * Attempt to detect chemical building blocks of life (biosignatures). * Interpret the processes that have formed and modified rocks and soils. * Assess long-timescale (i.e., 4-billion-year) Martian atmospheric evolution processes. * Determine present state, distribution, and cycling of water and carbon dioxide. * Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including galactic radiation, cosmic radiation, solar proton events and secondary neutrons. By those I can understand why carrying a high res camera was not a priority because it would have added weight, taken up space and also consumed more bandwidth while transmitting? :)