I get that more MP is better ends up being pure marketing. However I don’t understand why all cameras don’t bring 108 MP sensors or whatever. I’m confused.
In: 16
Smartphones pixel bin, so the image you actually get is 12 megapixel. In essence, the sensor ‘bins’ pixels into groups to create one larger pixel out of nine smaller ones.
Professional photographers typically don’t need higher than 20 megapixels for any reasonable print or screen size. What is more important is the quality of each of those photosites, some are known to be excellent. Sony makes some outstanding 24 megapixel sensors that are much larger than a smartphone. Sony makes most of the sensors (by now, all?) for Nikon cameras. At any rate, when you smear those pixels over a larger area, you end up with much better low light capabilities in most instances. People still shoot cameras from 2008 with 12.4 megapixels on a full frame (so 35 mm, same size as standard film) sensor that is now older than some people reading this comment.
We are now seeing what are called ‘backlit’ CMOS sensors and ‘stacked’ sensors which have comparably few pixels (I think Nikon’s biggest is 46.7) but those technologies allow for faster autofocus and image detect autofocus. A Z9 can literally tell what a bird is, when it is in focus, and can take pictures of it automatically. They have car recognition and eye recognition, all of that built off of the sensor’s electronics so they can go as fast as an old school DSLR but have a lot of the high tech features of a smartphone. The MP count matters less than the overall quality of the sensor and the sensor’s capabilities.
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