I know dslr cameras have a lot of customization options but other than that how are they better? Also I would be appreciated if someone explains “megapixels” to me in this sense.
Edit : Thank you all for the great answers, cheers!
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Megapixels is just how many light sensitive dots are on the sensor of the camera. In the early days of camera development, more dots meant your image would have better resolution, which made it look better.
Nowadays, pixels are getting so small that we can cram 100 million of them onto a sensor the size of a fingernail. The issue with this approach is that the sensor can only receive so much light at once, and obviously a small sensor receives less light than a big one.
If a small sensor like you’d see in a phone has loads of pixels, then each individual pixel gets a smaller share of the total light for the sensor.
Contrast that to a DSLR, with a sensor of 24/35mm, that has only 24MP for example. The sensor itself is much bigger, and the light is being shared by fewer pixels. This means that each pixel sees a lot more light.
Practically this has a few benefits, namely that your camera works better in lower light, and the sensitivity can be turned down, resulting in better noise performance.
There are additionao benefits like being able to install large glass lenses with very good optical quality and low focal lengths that allow bokeh to be generated naturally, whereas smartphones tend to (attempt) to add this in software
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