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
There is a lot that affects image quality.
One is amount of light. Smaller lenses can collect and focus less light, and because a camera is just a light detector, smaller cameras (or smaller lenses) will always be inherently limited.
The second is the quality of a lens. Lenses aren’t perfect- different colors focus differently. Objects near the edge of a photo focus differently. Large cameras use better lenses to minimize this. Cameras are limited in how complex the lenses can be due to size, and thus limit how much this can be corrected. Phones also need to be cheap so cut corners, nobody is going to pay $2000 for a phone for a lens, but people will definitely pay that for a dedicated pro camera.
The third is that pixel resolution doesn’t equal image detail. Because of lens imperfections, and because of physics (diffraction) light has a fundamental resolution beyond which smaller or more pixels will not provide any more detail. In fact, too many pixels can make noise more apparent in the image. Smaller lenses run into this physical limit much more quickly, as the resolution limit of light depends on the lens size.
Also, smaller pixels lead to less range of colors because the pixels have less electrons to carry signal, meaning you get less rich colors or poor performance in suboptimal lighting.
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