More Megapixels don't make the pictures better. They just make them bigger, which is of limited use to everyone except for the few of us who use their iPhone for capturing pictures for poster-sized prints.
More megapixels also have some big downsides that are felt by everyone: More noise in the picture, worse low light performance, increased file sizes and increased processing time.
Better pictures instead of bigger pictures is the right trade off!
What you say may be true. But it isn't as true today as it used to be. And newer generations of sensors, and processing chips have better per pixel performance, or equal performance with higher resolution.
HTC tried to go the big pixel route with a 4mp sensor, but the images were so unsharp when compared to the competition, they've abandoned that approach. So just how many pixels are enough? I've been making the point that for smartphones, which are primarily used for email and Facebook, with some people going to 8x12, or, I should mention whatever size their standard printer goes to, which would be for 8.5x11" and 8.5 x14" paper, 8mp is enough, unless they do lots of cropping.
If pixel quality goes up again, as it will, then possibly higher resolution would be good. Some of the higher resolution smartphones don't have a lot of noise for a smartphone. I think Apple can keep 8mp for one more generation of camera, and then they'll need to move higher. It's a simple matter of competition.
I just bought an app called HYDA, previously available for OS X. It gives you a choice of different setting, now that Apple has finally opened up the camera APIs. One is low noise, the other is high resolution, then there's HDR, and a couple of others. Some of this is available for video as well. It works by taking a lot of pictures for each shot, and combining them. It actually works very well. The low noise setting seems to eliminate most all noise. But it's slow, because of all the pics it needs to take. Fortunately, the iPhone camera is very fast. If you can hold it steady, aided by image stabilization, it works amazingly well.
This is a good solution for those times you do need higher resolution, better HDR, and low noise, and can take the time for it. The higher the resolution of the camera, the better this will work.
But let me tell you about noise, resolution and print size.
There's a direct relationship in these variables. Given an equal print size, smaller pixels will make the image sharper. But for equal noise, it will also make the image look less noisy. This is very well known, I'm not making it up. So for equal pixel IQ, smaller pixels will have the image look as though it has less noise than the same size print, ot onscreen image with larger, and equally noisy pixels. If each pixel is slightly noisier, then given that same print size, they will look as though they have the same noise.
But there's another variable that we count on. Printing an image decreases image noise. In fact, printing an image gives us about half the resolution of the file in actual viewable resolution. That's what printing does.
So when people make statements about higher resolution not having advantages, it's not true. Even the better smartphone cameras are ahead of where DSLRs were less than ten years ago. And the lenses are surprisingly good. One reason is that with no variable diaphragm, designers can optimize for the one stop the lens delivers, rather than needing to balance it through several stops. Even most of the best DSLR lenses change focus as you stop down. It's just a small amount, but it's enough so that many pros refocus stopped down. Another reason is because with the great depth of field, a number of aberrations aren't significant.
For Facebook and holiday snapshots a 2MP camera is fine. Heck, a 2MP Nikon DSLR with a good lens will in many cases take better pictures than an iPhone 6.
And if you need a high MP camera to use instead of a zoom, is like using a screwdriver for a hammers job. Yeah, you can probably get the nail in. But using a hammer would still have been a better idea.
And somebody using his 20 MP camera instead of a zoom, should just go out and get a camera with a zoom lens instead. The pictures will be better.
Canons new 50MP cameras is made for professionals that use them for landscape photography. The same kind of people who often use an analog Medium size camera.
And with the resolution in medium sized film cameras approaching hundreds of MP, it's no wonder they might get a 50MP camera, or that cameras with higher MP counts may be available in the future.
But the other pro's: The newsphotographers won't have a camera much above 20-30 MPs in the future, most likely lower than that in fact.
For them, and the amateurs, the MP race has effectively stopped. In 4-5 years the majority of cameras for pro's and amateurs will be below 30MP, most of them somewhere between 8-20 MP, just like today.
The trade offs you have to make in order to get a bigger picture (more MP) just aren't worth it for most of us.
The lens is fine, but not impressive compared to what you get in a DSLR lens. It's a matter of physics. You just can't gather as much light as you can in a big lens. And photography is all about light.
Undoubtedly. Even one of the old 2 MP Nikon D2- cameras with a good lens could get better pictures than an iPhone 6 in many cases. It's all about the light, and a full size lens can gather much more light than the lens on an iPhone.
And the most important part for many photographers: Freedom. A DSLR gives you much more freedom in how you compose you picture with limited depth of field settings you have on an iPhone.
Then you dont need lots of MP, you need a zoom lens. Don't get me wrong, it may be fine for an occasional holiday movie, but anything much beyond that, you'd need a zoom lens.
The result you get through cropping a huge 40 MP picture is much worse than what you'd get by using a proper zoom lens instead.
This was my business for many years. I ran a major commercial film lab here in NYC for some time, and before shot product and fashion when I started out. So I'm familiar with these issues.
The old Nikon DSLRs were terrible. I Mean, really terrible. The first DSLR that was considered to have lead to the "modern" DSLR was the Canon D30. That only had a bit more than 3mp. It was surprisingly good. But then, circa 2000, or so, ot cost $3,000 for the body alone. Was it better than an iPhone 6? Well, I so t have one now, so I can't really compare. But I would bet that the iPhone is much sharper, and that the pixel IQ comes close, if not exceeds it.
I have no idea as to what a hammer and a nail have to do with this. That's an inappropriate comparison. A zoom doesn't substitute for higher resolution, if higher resolution is what you need. In addition, all lenses are better in the center than at the edges, even apochromats, which are not necessarily sharper than standard achromats. If you go to DPReview, which does extensive, and sophisticated testing, you will see that lenses perform better on APS-c than they do full frame, and yes, I'm talking about full frame lenses.
What that means is that if you have enough pixels, and crop, you could end up with a sharp image, as you are using that sharpest part of the coverage.
Canon's new cameras are also for studio work such as fashion and product photography. The more detail there, the better. 80mp medium frame cameras are being used for that on a regular basis. And when 100mp cameras come out, they will be used too.
As far as news photographers go, they will buy whatever's out there, as they always do. Why do you think they stuck with the 4x5 Graphlex for so long? Resolution! Medium format and 35 didn't have it.
In 4-5 years, most DSLRs will be at 30mp, or above, except for the entry models which won't be far behind. Sony put out a very good 24mp mirror less model. We'll be seeing those in higher resolution as well.
The iPhone lens is as good as it needs to be for what the camera does. As resolution moves higher, a better lens will be used. It's easier to make lenses for small sensors than for large sensors. Look at microscope lenses. The best ones are better than pretty much any camera lens. The image circle is about the size as the one in the iPhone, or just a bit bigger.
The files are too big and take up too much room and time to write to disk.
Apple has always done an excellent job with processing what the iPhone camera captures, always, since the first 2 megapixel cameras went up against 5 megapixel cameras from other manufacturers.
The proof was in the file size of the results way back in 2007 and 2008.
That's no excuse. There is a thing called "options". They could keep JPEG as the default, but give us the option of moving to RAW should we want to. This should be up to the photographer. And after processing, it can be converted to TIFF or JPEG, and the raw can be stored on the computer. Drives are big enough so that this isn't a problem. A 1TB drive is only $60, so lack of storage is no excuse anymore.
The point is dedicated cameras and phone cameras are chalk and cheese.
Phone cameras are constrained by the size of the components you can use.
Of course they are. But so is every other camera. I can think of every camera that ever existed, and say, without anyone being able to disagree, that if the film or sensor were larger, a better quality image would be made. There no question about that.
But the point to the article, and this discussion, is about what would improve the camera in a phone, and particularly, the iPhone. So there are several thing that would do that. Better pixel IQ, more pixels, a better lens, as that would be needed with more pixels, and an optical zoom.
Fortunately, technology is continually improving. The original iPhone camera with its 2mp image was great for the time. But if we took that technology and made an 8mp camera, it would have been terrible! But nor now. Every metric is better, resolution, noise, dynamic range, etc. so why would anyone think that this won't continue on for some time? We aren't yet at the point where we can't go further.
And it doesn't matter that contemporary DSLRs are better. There's a point where it's good enough for the time, as the severe drop in compact camera sales shows. And, even more importantly, DSLR sales have been dropping as well, and that also being deceived as being the fault, at least partly, of smartphones, primarily the iPhone.
The problem with higher resolution is, that there is no better IQ possible when the diffraction limit is exceeded by a certain amount. it is solely defined by the aperture of the lens and the sensor pixel size. And when the sensor pixels are significantly smaller than the airy disk of the light ray, it's just over. Pixel binning does not anything at this stage too. Having a lens / sensor combo which is already exceeding the limit too much trying to use a sensor with an even higher pixel count is reducing the image quality further no matter what.
The sensor / f2.2 lens combo in the iPhone 6 is already diffraction limited (when I am correct, that the pixel size is 1.5 µm), so an increase in pixel density to e.g. 10 or 12 MP would result in more noise and in less sharp pictures, less contrast. What they could do is to increase the sensor size appropriately, but this would increase the size of the whole camera module quite a lot.
For that reason I am also very sure, there will never be a FF camera with more then 51MP, as the the 5Ds. Image degradation from diffraction can start to become visible between apertures f6.2 and f9.3. I am looking forward to see some tests with apertures f8 and higher, once they will be available. The same problem exists for CMOS cameras too, but it's noticed almost exclusively when making long exposures in the dark using high ISO (requiring more electric energy flowing through the sensor, heating it up). Fun fact: all professional astrophotography cameras are CCD cameras. CCD cameras are much more sensitive to light than CMOS sensors, but they require about 20x times more power. So the cameras used for long exposures are required to be actively cooled.
There's some old thinking on that, but newer research has shown that the old airy disk concept isn't quite correct. We're seeing smartphone cameras with sensing spots approaching 1.1, and yet, increased resolution is happening. I don't know whether diffraction is limiting the iPhone lens, as I've not done the work. But I doubt it. In any case, they can open it up from its present f2.2 if they decide they need to. Diffraction is a problem with theoretically perfect lenses, where stopping down leads to diffraction limiting. There is no lens that doesn't benefit from one stop of closing down. Other than some very expensive production limited designs.
But increased depth of field often is of greater benefit than a bit of diffraction limited resolution takes away, because focussing systems aren't accurate enough for big f stop lenses.
Diffraction of ff cameras has little to do with the problem. It's abberations such as chromatic abberation that's the biggest problem, and poor auto focussing systems, and lack of a heavy and sturdy tripod. You simply can't handhold a camera at this resolution and expect to get the full benefit of it. Optical stabilization will surely help.
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What you say may be true. But it isn't as true today as it used to be. And newer generations of sensors, and processing chips have better per pixel performance, or equal performance with higher resolution.
HTC tried to go the big pixel route with a 4mp sensor, but the images were so unsharp when compared to the competition, they've abandoned that approach. So just how many pixels are enough? I've been making the point that for smartphones, which are primarily used for email and Facebook, with some people going to 8x12, or, I should mention whatever size their standard printer goes to, which would be for 8.5x11" and 8.5 x14" paper, 8mp is enough, unless they do lots of cropping.
If pixel quality goes up again, as it will, then possibly higher resolution would be good. Some of the higher resolution smartphones don't have a lot of noise for a smartphone. I think Apple can keep 8mp for one more generation of camera, and then they'll need to move higher. It's a simple matter of competition.
I just bought an app called HYDA, previously available for OS X. It gives you a choice of different setting, now that Apple has finally opened up the camera APIs. One is low noise, the other is high resolution, then there's HDR, and a couple of others. Some of this is available for video as well. It works by taking a lot of pictures for each shot, and combining them. It actually works very well. The low noise setting seems to eliminate most all noise. But it's slow, because of all the pics it needs to take. Fortunately, the iPhone camera is very fast. If you can hold it steady, aided by image stabilization, it works amazingly well.
This is a good solution for those times you do need higher resolution, better HDR, and low noise, and can take the time for it. The higher the resolution of the camera, the better this will work.
But let me tell you about noise, resolution and print size.
There's a direct relationship in these variables. Given an equal print size, smaller pixels will make the image sharper. But for equal noise, it will also make the image look less noisy. This is very well known, I'm not making it up. So for equal pixel IQ, smaller pixels will have the image look as though it has less noise than the same size print, ot onscreen image with larger, and equally noisy pixels. If each pixel is slightly noisier, then given that same print size, they will look as though they have the same noise.
But there's another variable that we count on. Printing an image decreases image noise. In fact, printing an image gives us about half the resolution of the file in actual viewable resolution. That's what printing does.
So when people make statements about higher resolution not having advantages, it's not true. Even the better smartphone cameras are ahead of where DSLRs were less than ten years ago. And the lenses are surprisingly good. One reason is that with no variable diaphragm, designers can optimize for the one stop the lens delivers, rather than needing to balance it through several stops. Even most of the best DSLR lenses change focus as you stop down. It's just a small amount, but it's enough so that many pros refocus stopped down. Another reason is because with the great depth of field, a number of aberrations aren't significant.
Things are better than you think.
This was my business for many years. I ran a major commercial film lab here in NYC for some time, and before shot product and fashion when I started out. So I'm familiar with these issues.
The old Nikon DSLRs were terrible. I Mean, really terrible. The first DSLR that was considered to have lead to the "modern" DSLR was the Canon D30. That only had a bit more than 3mp. It was surprisingly good. But then, circa 2000, or so, ot cost $3,000 for the body alone. Was it better than an iPhone 6? Well, I so t have one now, so I can't really compare. But I would bet that the iPhone is much sharper, and that the pixel IQ comes close, if not exceeds it.
I have no idea as to what a hammer and a nail have to do with this. That's an inappropriate comparison. A zoom doesn't substitute for higher resolution, if higher resolution is what you need. In addition, all lenses are better in the center than at the edges, even apochromats, which are not necessarily sharper than standard achromats. If you go to DPReview, which does extensive, and sophisticated testing, you will see that lenses perform better on APS-c than they do full frame, and yes, I'm talking about full frame lenses.
What that means is that if you have enough pixels, and crop, you could end up with a sharp image, as you are using that sharpest part of the coverage.
Canon's new cameras are also for studio work such as fashion and product photography. The more detail there, the better. 80mp medium frame cameras are being used for that on a regular basis. And when 100mp cameras come out, they will be used too.
As far as news photographers go, they will buy whatever's out there, as they always do. Why do you think they stuck with the 4x5 Graphlex for so long? Resolution! Medium format and 35 didn't have it.
In 4-5 years, most DSLRs will be at 30mp, or above, except for the entry models which won't be far behind. Sony put out a very good 24mp mirror less model. We'll be seeing those in higher resolution as well.
The iPhone lens is as good as it needs to be for what the camera does. As resolution moves higher, a better lens will be used. It's easier to make lenses for small sensors than for large sensors. Look at microscope lenses. The best ones are better than pretty much any camera lens. The image circle is about the size as the one in the iPhone, or just a bit bigger.
That's no excuse. There is a thing called "options". They could keep JPEG as the default, but give us the option of moving to RAW should we want to. This should be up to the photographer. And after processing, it can be converted to TIFF or JPEG, and the raw can be stored on the computer. Drives are big enough so that this isn't a problem. A 1TB drive is only $60, so lack of storage is no excuse anymore.
Of course they are. But so is every other camera. I can think of every camera that ever existed, and say, without anyone being able to disagree, that if the film or sensor were larger, a better quality image would be made. There no question about that.
But the point to the article, and this discussion, is about what would improve the camera in a phone, and particularly, the iPhone. So there are several thing that would do that. Better pixel IQ, more pixels, a better lens, as that would be needed with more pixels, and an optical zoom.
Fortunately, technology is continually improving. The original iPhone camera with its 2mp image was great for the time. But if we took that technology and made an 8mp camera, it would have been terrible! But nor now. Every metric is better, resolution, noise, dynamic range, etc. so why would anyone think that this won't continue on for some time? We aren't yet at the point where we can't go further.
And it doesn't matter that contemporary DSLRs are better. There's a point where it's good enough for the time, as the severe drop in compact camera sales shows. And, even more importantly, DSLR sales have been dropping as well, and that also being deceived as being the fault, at least partly, of smartphones, primarily the iPhone.
There's some old thinking on that, but newer research has shown that the old airy disk concept isn't quite correct. We're seeing smartphone cameras with sensing spots approaching 1.1, and yet, increased resolution is happening. I don't know whether diffraction is limiting the iPhone lens, as I've not done the work. But I doubt it. In any case, they can open it up from its present f2.2 if they decide they need to. Diffraction is a problem with theoretically perfect lenses, where stopping down leads to diffraction limiting. There is no lens that doesn't benefit from one stop of closing down. Other than some very expensive production limited designs.
But increased depth of field often is of greater benefit than a bit of diffraction limited resolution takes away, because focussing systems aren't accurate enough for big f stop lenses.
Diffraction of ff cameras has little to do with the problem. It's abberations such as chromatic abberation that's the biggest problem, and poor auto focussing systems, and lack of a heavy and sturdy tripod. You simply can't handhold a camera at this resolution and expect to get the full benefit of it. Optical stabilization will surely help.
Ever since I held an iPhone 6, I said that it was too thin. I have never changed that view.