Once again David Pogue crusades for truth in Image Quality, remarking on the new crop of high quality devices with big sensors:

“The best overall predictor of image quality, though, is the size of the sensor inside. Big sensors absorb more light, so you get better color and sharper low-light images. Small sensors pack too many light-absorbing pixels into too little space, so heat builds up, creating digital “noise” (random speckles) in your photos.”

[Read More at NYTimes.com]
Continue reading ‘David Pogue on Big Sensors in Small Cameras’ »

Image engineering, a German company, has launched an initiative to proclaim the sensibility of not getting crazy packing insane amounts of megapixels into tiny sensors. They assert the best number of megapixels is Six.

“To increase the pixel count, the sensor has to be divided into smaller and smaller pixels. The result is a decrease in sensitivity of the camera and an increase in noise because the amount of light collected by a single pixel is smaller.”

[Read more at 6mpixel.org]

In summary, To paraphrase Monty Python: “Six shalt be the number of megapixels, and the number of megapixels shalt be six. Five shalt it not be, nor either four, Seven is right out.”

Continue reading ‘6 megapixel – the best picture quality’ »

This article explains the importance of the size of the sensor, and how it trumps the number of megapixels contained within it.

“Beyond 6MP, it’s the law of diminishing returns: you get more pixels, but if the pixels are smaller, you also get more noise (tinyurl.com/k2ma4). This can make the image worse rather than better.”

[Click Here for More]
Continue reading ‘The Guardian chimes in on the importance of sensor size’ »

“the megapixel arms race has now gotten severely out of hand”

“buying a camera with more pixels these days often means just paying more for a noisier image that captures less detail than a similar counterpart with fewer megapixels”

[Read More at US News and World Report]

Continue reading ‘Beyond Megapixels: Picking a Compact Digital Camera’ »

Norman Koren, an image quality expert explains the Megapixel Myth at PMAI 2007.

“Increasing the number of pixels does not always increase image quality, there is an optimum number and cosumers need to be educated that you really have to measure what a camera does because it depends on the lens, the sensor, the signal processing, and what you do afterwards, the post processing. The megapixel count has some meaning but it gets exagerated”

Continue reading ‘Video: Megapixel Myth Explained’ »

"But one myth is so deeply ingrained, millions of people waste money on it every year. I’m referring, of course, to the Megapixel Myth.

It goes like this: “The more megapixels a camera has, the better the pictures.”

It’s a big fat lie. The camera companies and camera stores all know it, but they continue to exploit our misunderstanding. Advertisements declare a camera’s megapixel rating as though it’s a letter grade, implying that a 7-megapixel model is necessarily better than a 5-megapixel model."

Continue reading ‘David Pogue: Breaking the Myth of Megapixels’ »

“why would Nikon want to turn the clock back with its latest offering, a 6.1-megapixel SLR called the D40? cost is only part of the reason. On image tests, the six-megapixel D40 outperforms many of its bigger brethren. Nikon may have left out some bells and whistles, but the D40’s raw image-processing ability doesn’t seem to have suffered unduly.”

[Read More from the Economist]

Continue reading ‘Nikon’s new camera favours quality over quantity’ »