HTC says 4 megapixels, Nokia says 41MP and even Apple wasn't worried about boosting the megapixel figure of its new iPhone 5S: who’s right?Megapixels. How did such a simple concept become so wrapped up in hyperbole, controversy and confusion? Compact camera manufacturers act like everyone needs more of them. Photography pundits generally wish there were less.
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Smartphone manufacturers are completely unable to agree where they stand on the issue. The current generation of premium smartphones includes a 4MP model from HTC, 8MP from both Apple and Google, 13MP from Samsung and LG, 20.7MP Sony and 41MP from Nokia.
Surely they can’t all be right?So how many megapixels do you really need? It’s a simple question without a simple answer, but let’s start by breaking it down into two parts. If we take the assumption that more detail is generally welcome, at what point is there no practical benefit to the user?
Then there’s the issue of technical limitations. How many megapixels can a smartphone deliver before the drawbacks outweigh the benefits?Before we tackle these questions, let’s make sure we’re talking about the same thing.
A megapixel rating tells you how many pixels there are in a photo. If it measures 4,000 by 3,000 pixels, multiply the two numbers to get 12 million, so it’s a 12-megapixel photo.It’s worth noting that a 24MP photo isn’t twice as wide as a 12MP photo. It’ll have twice as many pixels, but that means it’ll only be 41% wider and 41% taller – in this case, that’s 5,656 x 4,242. Similarly, if you halve the width of a 12MP photo, to 2,000 x 1,500, the megapixel rating drops to a quarter, or 3MP. As such, the differences between a 4MP, 8MP, 13MP and 41MP photo perhaps aren’t as big as the numbers might suggest.
This graphic represents the relative sizes of popular smartphones’ photo resolutions (the Nokia Lumia 1020 has a 41MP sensor but its photos are 38MP at the standard 4:3 aspect ratio)How many megapixels are sufficient for the average smartphone user?These days, most photos are shared on social media services and viewed on computers, TVs, tablets and phones. The resolution of these screens varies from around 1MP for a typical smartphone to just over 3MP for the Retina Display on an iPad.
A large number of TVs are Full HD (also known as 1080p), which works out at 2MP. A lot of computer monitors and an increasing number of phones and tablets use this resolution, too. The biggest screens around are 4K TVs, which equate to 8MP. They’re ridiculously expensive at the moment, but they’re bound to become more affordable and commonplace over the next decade.On this basis, the most megapixels you’re likely to need to show your photos at their best on today’s electronic displays is 3MP. If you want them to look great for decades to come, you might want to shoot them at 8MP.If you print photos out, the demands are similar: 300 pixels per inch (ppi) is widely accepted to be as sharp as the eye can see for photo prints. A 5x7-inch photo at 300 ppi weighs in at 3MP, while for an A4 print it jumps to 9MP. Even an A2 poster print at 300 ppi is only 35MP – still less than the 38MP photos from the Lumia 1020.The graphic below shows how these sizes stack up – red for displays, blue for print sizes and green for the photo resolutions of the four smartphones that we’re concentrating on in this feature.
The figures are included below for reference, too. A 4MP image can contain enough detail to fill an iPad screen or produce sharp 5x7-inch prints. It’s only when you get to A4 enlargements or 4K TVs that higher resolutions become necessary. Even then, 8MP is perfectly sufficient. The image on the left is a 1:1 pixel crop from a photo taken with an Olympus E-PM2. Focus is pixel-sharp, but details aren’t quite as precise as the version on the right. For this shot, we zoomed the lens from 14mm to 42mm (a 3x magnification) and then resized the image in Photoshop to match the sizes.We’re now ready to answer the question of how many megapixels are useful in practice.
For most sharing destinations, 3MP is fine, while 8MP is enough for A4 prints and 4K TVs. However, to achieve the crispest possible details, you might want to scale these figures up a bit. If you want to crop the photos – especially if your camera lacks an optical zoom – there’s no upper limit to the number of megapixels that might be useful.
How many megapixels can a smartphone realistically deliver?It’s all very well wanting something, but that doesn’t mean you can have it. There’s a reason why 1,000-megapixel cameras don’t exist, and it’s not because no one wants them (in fact, gigapixel photos are popular – they’re made by stitching hundreds of photos together).There are three technical limitations to raising the megapixel rating of a camera in an effort to boost quality. One is simply that a higher resolution takes longer to process and consumes more storage space. Cameras' and smartphones’ processors are getting more powerful and memory cards are getting bigger and cheaper, but there still needs to be a balance between resolution and the practicalities of saving the images.Another limitation is the sharpness of the lens. There’s little point in capturing more pixels if all they’re recording is a blurry image. At the current resolutions offered by smartphones, we’re already seeing lenses that struggle to maintain sharp focus throughout the frame.
Details are usually pretty sharp in the center but they tend to fall off slightly towards the edges. That’s not necessarily a disaster, as the main subject is usually somewhere near the center. However, it stands to reason that there would come a point where increasing the resolution would only capture the defects of the lens in increasing detail.Then there’s the thorny issue of sensor noise. This is caused by inaccuracies in the measurements for each pixel, and it takes the form of a speckled graininess across the image. Digital cameras try to mask it with noise-reduction processing, but it’s hard for a camera to distinguish between unwanted noise and fine details in the scene. As a result, noise reduction also removes some of the fine detail from a photo.
In dimly lit scenes, the camera must boost the exposure, and this boosts noise levels too. That’s why low-light photos often look grainy or exhibit smudged, syrupy details – the telltale signs of aggressive noise reduction.It’s especially true of smartphones and budget compact cameras because their sensors are physically very small.
A small sensor has a small lens sat in front of it, which captures less light than a bigger sensor and lens. Without getting bogged down in the physics, it’s clear that an SLR’s lens gathers much more light than a smartphone’s tiny lens. If both cameras have the same resolution, each pixel on the smartphone’s sensor has a tiny amount of light to measure. It’s harder to measure something accurately when it’s very small, so inaccuracies – and noise levels – are higher.If you doubled the number of megapixels on a camera’s sensor, you’d halve the amount of light that each pixel would have to measure, which means even more noise. In fact, it might well be more than double as you’d have to find room for all the extra ancillary components on the sensor too.
So while increasing the resolution seems like it should boost the amount of detail captured, there’s a chance that the resulting stronger noise reduction would actually decrease the detail levels.However, it is possible to increase the resolution without boosting noise levels if you also increase the physical size of the sensor. This explains why SLRs are able to offer 24MP and higher resolutions but still deliver lower noise than compact cameras with their tiny sensors.It also explains why the Nokia Lumia 1020 is able to capture 38MP photos that aren’t completely awash with noise. Its high resolution is matched by a 1/1.5 inch sensor – that’s twice the diagonal and four times the surface area of the 1/3 inch sensors that are commonly used in smartphones. It’s a bit like taking four conventional 10MP smartphone sensors and arranging them in a two-by-two grid.The HTC One takes the opposite approach with its 4MP sensor. It’s a conventional 1/3 inch size, but because each pixel has more light to measure, its noise levels are significantly lower than from sensors with more densely packed pixels.
Then again, merging multiple pixels averages out noise levels, so resizing a 12MP sensor’s output down to 4MP also helps to reduce noise.This is a can of worms that we’ll quickly put the lid back on – debates about pixel density will surely go on forever. It’s the overall physical size of the sensor and lens which play the biggest role in determining the amount of noise for a given print or screen size. These crops have been taken from our Low Light Studio Scene.
It’s not a direct comparison of the sensors’ performance as these shots are at different exposure settings and sat behind different lenses (the Galaxy S4’s relatively noisy output is largely due to the camera picking a faster 1/30s shutter speed, which has pushed the ISO speed up to a higher value than the others). We’ve resized them so they’re the same size as the HTC One’s 4MP output. The Nokia is the clear winner here, not so much because it has a huge resolution but because its sensor is so much bigger than the others. This reduces noise and minimizes the need for detail-slaying noise reduction.The bottom lineSo how many megapixels do you need? Here’s the shortest answer we can muster: for most purposes 3MP is plenty, but you might want to shoot at around 8MP for the crispest possible details. 8MP is a sensible minimum for big prints and 4K TVs, and even higher resolutions allow you to crop photos without sacrificing quality too much.
However, make sure that very high resolutions are matched by an equivalent increase in sensor size.Of course, image quality is also defined by the design of the sensor, the quality of the lens, the intelligence of the metering and automatic exposure system. The list goes on. It’s a good job, because if you could tell a camera’s quality just by its megapixel rating, we’d be out of a job. A friend of mine convinced me to get the D810. I thought the D 750 would have been fine.However the the D810 has better water proofing bit more rugged etc.D 750 would be a great back up body has better low noise characteristics and does not require a tripod in low light.I have set the D810 to a 1.2 crop which equates roughly to 25 Mp.This is to reduce file size.only intend to use ff 36 mp for something extra special that I may wish to crop or blow up to A2.( or bigger) Or if I want realley shallow depth of field or need true ff to take advantage of wide angle lens.plus a lot of touch up with software.
A friend of mine convinced me to get the D810. I thought the D 750 would have been fine.However the the D810 has better water proofing bit more rugged etc.D 750 would be a great back up body has better low noise characteristics and does not require a tripod in low light.I have set the D810 to a 1.2 crop which equates roughly to 25 Mp.This is to reduce file size.only intend to use ff 36 mp for something extra special that I may wish to crop or blow up to A2.( or bigger) Or if I want realley shallow depth of field or need true ff to take advantage of wide angle lens.plus a lot of touch up with software. (unknown member)There are many other considerations. The range of apertures available to a cell phone, between fastest possible and the point where diffraction becomes a problem, is very small. Also, because of the small absolute size of available apertures smartphone images will almost always be equally sharp (or equally fuzzy!!) from foreground to background.
This is great for landscapes in good light, but not for much else. It is especially bad for portraits and people shots which is ironic as that is what most people use them for. A smartphone's tiny lens and tiny sensor does not allow the differential focus that can be obtained with DSLRs.
APS-C, APS-H, and full frame (35mm size) and medium format all allow differential focussing. APS-H is pretty good, but the 35mm format is probably optimal.
With larger formats depth of field is too little for many subjects, and very difficult to work with. Isn't it strange that with so many improvements in the camera capabilities of these cell phones, I still see many people walking around in their front yards, driveways, and streets trying to pick up a signal to talk on their phone? Wouldn't it be easier to build cell phones into regular cameras?
You'd still have people trying to get a signal, but at least they wouldn't have to worry so much about their picture taking capabilities. Wouldn't it be easier to put a cell phone in a camera than the other way around? Camera was invented to take portrait and I think 'human viewed by human' is a good angle to see 'how many megapixels we need.' 'human' can be defined as a sheet of paper or display the size of a human. A tight rectangle enclosing an average person maybe 67 x 18 inch (height x shoulder width).' Viewed by human' can be defined as retina resolution at 10 inch or about 344 ppi.then we get 67 x 18 x 344^2 = 143 MPix,1.45 times more for Bayer or 207 MPix.some people may prefer cutting the lower part and put some room around the upper part (like Mona Lisa). But 160 MPix looks a good number what we need, where I expect the 'MP war' ends for mass market cameras for resolution.for phone/video cameras, 40 MPix looks a good number for standard resolution (that is, the low end).
The first cameras were actually used to record scenes. They were far too slow for people.Most pictures (as stated in the article) are never going to be seen with a device needing more than 10MP.Also you need to keep in mind viewing distance and apparent size. (I used to print billboards, and we rarely printed at much over 75ppi.) At 24' most people cannot see any improvement over 200ppi but let's use Apples 220ppi (macbook) as a maximum.A 20' x 30' print looks HUGE when viewed from 2 feet away. Doing the math, this requires a 29MP image. We have already reached the maximum viewable pixel size for larger cameras (My D600 is 24MP, a D800 is 36MP, and some medium format backs are 40+)With smartphones, the issues are noise and lens resolution. Give us a decent (even if small) sensor and a good lens (preferably with some kind of optical zoom) and very few will see any difference in resolution after 10MP.No one needs more than 50MP unless they need to crop. 3 MPix is a good number for Bayer images down sampled to fit a 1920x1080 screen.but this is really not we need, but the current technological limitation which is an important and changing factor.
So better look to the other end, human and human vision which won't evolve too fast, for an answer that won't become obsolete too quickly.I know friends who take photos of their kids with phone cameras. But when the kids grow up, they are going to watch the photos on standard 8K TVs and this is the technological limitation we are going to have in 7 years.so instead of 3 MPix, we will need 48 MPix for a standard display in 2020s (though well interleaved 20 MPix images may fool most eyes well). You assume that your friends' children are going to install 220' tvs in their homes, which is where 8k resolution matters at normal viewing distances. If the tv is only 80', they'll have to sit closer than 2 feet to the tv or else 8K is not going to be noticeably different than 1080p.and you can't compute megapixels from a retina screen because human vision isn't uniform, only the direct center is sensitive to detail and color, the peripheral is a blurry mess, which is why optical illusions work.
PPI doesn't actually matter until you print the image. How many people are taking pictures with their cell and hanging them in a gallery? I'd bet less than half a percent, but that number really can't be quantified among all pictures taken with a cell.Keep in mind that as you go to larger and larger prints, you expect them to be viewed from further and further away.
I'll spare the math, but a 12MP image (without cropping) can manage most commonly-available print sizes comfortably. Now that it's hard to find a sensor that can't manage 12MP, the game is more about image quality than MP.Adding MP is now more about getting more room to crop and doing some tricks with light collection, along with trying to make smartphone cameras more competitive with the small camera market. But, as long as people still buy into the idea that more megapixels yields higher quality, the war will continue, because the game at that level isn't about taking pictures at all: it's about selling stuff. @Binary Hulled Ion,please search 'angle' here and get the answer.life-size is a good word but it's not really the size that matters.
It's the detail (close focusing distance limited) that we care, like how many pixels will be needed to match the detail we get with 20/20 vision.as for cropping, up to 40% (my arbitrary) of a frame may be cropped to reframe a photo, otherwise enlarge to life size and view at 10 inch (or print at 344 ppi) sounds good to me, then it depends on the magnification (frame area as unit). The D800 and D7000 use different generations of sensor. Sony has quite consistently added about a stop of high sensitivity performance to each successive generation of their CMOS line. I guess if you scaled down the D800's sensor to APS-C, you'd get identical per-pixel performance. The 24MP APS-C sensor is a parallel development, but obviously it has smaller pixels so isn't directly comparable.
Still, as you may have noted (at least in Nikon's implementation), it delivers quite impressive performance for its pixel size - in good light comparable detail 'per pixel' to the 'old' 16MP sensor, and not too far behind at higher sensitivities resulting in a net win for detail capture. Pixel size isn't at all irrelevant to image quality - it's just that it's only one of many factors influencing IQ.
And how are you even defining IQ? Low light performance, resolution, DR?
It's foolish to try and pin IQ on any one attribute of a lens/sensor/processing combination. Pixel size, pixel count, generation of sensor and cpu all make a differencedifference of a small fraction of a stop, while lens aperture makes difference of several stops.compared with full-frame at the same f-number, APS-C cameras perform about 1.3 stops worse (for less than half of aperture area), 4/3' performs nearly 2 stops worse, and we go all the way down to more than 7 stops worse image qualities for low end mobile cameras (1/5').btw, D800 has a DX mode which gives similar result as D7000. One can think D800 got two D7000 sensors stitched together (2.347x area). People better understand that image quality is not pixel quality.image and pixel qualities have nothing to do with each other because they are measured under different conditions. Though the technologies we have happen to favor more pixels in general.image quality is measured against the whole frame and won't change no matter how pixel size changes.on the other hand, when people compare two pixels from 10MPix and 20MPix sensors, they compare one 10Mth arera of one sensor against one 20Mth area of another.
Whoever wrote this article knows nothing about digital sensors or where noise comes from:'Then there’s the thorny issue of sensor noise. This is caused by inaccuracies in the measurements for each pixel, and it takes the form of a speckled graininess across the image.' Most of the noise is in the light itself, even if it were measured perfectly.' If you doubled the number of megapixels on a camera’s sensor, you’d halve the amount of light that each pixel would have to measure, which means even more noise.'
This is just flat out false and perpetuates a long-held myth that DPReview helped to start and to perpetuate. In fact, more pixels in the same size usually leads to less noise not more, for various reasons. Let's say that when we look at our loved ones closely, there may be more than 3MPix covering less than 1/3 of the face (the exact number can vary but let's say 10MPix for 'chin up').then it's about 6% of the frame area for a portrait like Mona Lisa or we need 10 / 0.06 = 160MPix so that one can go close and look at the photo as if he were looking at his loved woman sitting infront of him 'knees against knees.' Just one example, not a demanding one.
It's physically viable for we can see it with naked eyes. 300ppi is a fallacy for inkjet printing - but not for magazine printing. The reason is simple - mags print using half-tone dots in a regular array. The eye is brilliant at seeing patterns and at less than 300 dpi, the linear array becomes visible. Inkjet printer, on the other hand are far more sophisticated and dither. I have taken a 5mp (Oly E-1) picture and printed out at 360 ppi, saved the file, resized to 250 ppi, printed out at the same size, and down to 180 ppi again printing out at the same size.
Pro photographers cannot distinguish the images, despite the smallest file containing 1/16 of the information of the original. What the inkjet software does to your file behind the scenes is the issue. For pretty much most amateur photographic uses, 5MP is more than enough.
Selling to magazines is another issue. That's why I like the upgradeWe pick Lumia 920 and a typical 1/3' sensorThe new Lumia 1020 has 2/3' sensorwhich means 4 times the areaThen you go for the u4/3 which is again 4x areaFinally FF = 8/3' gain 4x area of micro 4/3'Each time the difference is HUGESo the best thing about the Lumia 1020is not only the zoom and re-frame and pixel fusion and OIS and Pro Camera software and full 38Mpx images, but simply the size of the sensorNowwith the MS money bring a huge bulge phone Lumia 1620 and a 4/3' sensor. Yeah!(I would even like the Nikon 1' intercganeable option)more!
The downside for more MP must be considered also!More MP means larger files. Larger files means slower shot to shot times when taking pictures. This might cause you to loose the great shot, because your cameras was not yet ready to take it as it was still writing on the unnecessary big file of the previous shot.Large files mean also longer transfer times from mobile to your PC. It means more Disk space, more loading time in your image processor, more time for post processing. It means longer time to upload your images, more time for your readers to download them. And for your backup it means longer time to run them and more costs for your backup medium, as they are unnecessary large.Considering that most people never use 2 MP (viewing your picture full screen on a HD resolution display), they all suffer from the penalties of large files with no return of investment of their sufferings.I think an Article is in order to show users that there is a choice. Great Article.
This was long overdue and kudos to connect to do it whereas many other sites with similar responsibilities to their readers do chicken out.Typo in the resolution table for paper sizes: Please fix the MP values for A3 and A2.Also for reference, most Artists consider 240 ppi to be sufficient. In my experience A4=6MP, A3=12MP and A2=24MP works great. These numbers can be easily remembered and prints with these resolution will hold up most critical scrutiny in the real world, provided they are executed well.I wish this understanding that 8MP is more than enough would also sink in with pocket camera manufacturers. I would always pick a 4 MP compact with a larger dynamic range (less burned out highlights) and lower noise and with a sharp and bright lens over today's compacts.
Why is Connect still trying to impinge on us the idea that smartphones are a viable alternative to a decent camera? Look at those 4 pictures of the girl: they're ridiculous!
Their lack of quality is embarrassing. The Nokia fares a bit better, but that greenish hue is disgusting. Even the landscape above, which is quite acceptable, has clipped highlights. Besides, people who take snaps with smartphones can't be bothered with all that tech talk. They just want to make casual, unpretentious shots, that's all. And that's fine with me. Just don't pretend these things are competent cameras, because they aren't.
That's because I am! The fact that I have an Olympus E-P1 doesn't detract me from saying so.Seriously, there's very little to tell APS-C and micro 4/3 apart. You need to go full frame to see significant differences. That's because Sony did a superb job with the latest 4/3 sensors they made for Olympus.Still there's nothing to match full-frame in terms of dynamic range and depth of field - apart from medium and large formats.
And don't get me started about the advantage of 35mm film in dynamic range over full frame sensors. This 300ppi myth really ought not be spread even further.
It only makes sense at close viewing distances - say the distance you'd read a book at - since human vision simply isn't sharp enough to discern 300ppi at longer distances. And the larger the print, the longer the viewing distance. 10 sharp megapixels is enough for prints of just about any size, provided you're interested in the overall image and don't press your nose against the paper for maximum detail in one specific part of a large print. For iPhone 5, diffraction limit is 7MP for its f/2.4 lens and 4.54 x 3.42mm sensor, any more than that is absolutely meaningless. Lumia 1020 is diffraction limited to 31MP. The S4 is about 8.6 MP.Honestly, people shouldn't shop MP on cameras, the manufacturer should choose a MP just above the diffraction limit of the lens (assuming lens can actually resolve well enough).
I would rather see manufacturers focusing on better large aperture lenses or larger sensors, either will give more resolving power than more MP alone. Print is no more than a form of presentation using available technology thus is not relevant to the nature of the issue.one thing related to print maybe 'retina resolution' or about 0.07mm at close distance of 10 inch. We cannot see smaller because we cannot focus nearer. Otherwise we won't have to talk about dpi or per cm, per mm at all.we better talk angle of view (like 50mm equiv. Or 46 degrees diagonal), angle of presentation (like 110 degrees for a wide screen), and angular resolution (like 1 arcminute standard vision).
Prints for Display and Displays for watching movies shall be considered to have different resolution. On a Movie Display you will take in the scene at once, thus the method described above is appropriate. On a large print on display the view may choose to spend more time with the picture. To come close and examine it for more details.
If the picture is of significant higher resolution, it will hold up such detailed examination and that will impress the viewer. Thus more pixel for print is OK. Keep in mind it requires excellent equipment and very skillful craftsmanship to really make use of more than 8 MP.