The fallacy of megapixel - megapixels camera

The fallacy of megapixel - megapixels camera

   October 10, 2012       Unknown

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Internet Giant Social Media - The fallacy of megapixels

You can start to see that cramming more pixels onto a sensor may not be the best way to increase pixel resolution.

Jon Erensen, a Gartner analyst who has covered camera sensors, remembers when the cell phone industry jumped from 1-megapixel to 2-megapixel sensors.

"They would make the pixel sizes smaller [to fit in more pixels]," Erensen told me over the phone, "But keep the image sensor the same." Erensen similarly used the water analogy, this time swapping "buckets" for "wells."

What ended up happening is that the light would go into the well and hit the photo-sensitive part of the image sensor capturing the light. So if you make the wells smaller, the light has a harder time getting to the photo-sensitive part of the sensor. In the end, increased resolution wasn't worth very much. Noise increased.

The relationship between the number of pixels and the physical size of the sensor is why some 5-megapixel cameras can outperform some 8-megapixel cameras, and why we may not see, or want, a 12-megapixel camera on a smartphone. A slim smartphone limits the sensor size for one, and moving up the megapixel ladder without increasing the sensor size can unnecessarily degrade the photo quality by letting in less light than you could get with slightly fewer megapixels.

Then again, drastically shrunken pixel sizes aren't always the case when you increase your megapixels. HTC's Bjorn Kilburn, vice president of portfolio strategy, did share that the pixel size on the 16-megapixel Titan II measures 1.12 microns whereas it measures 1.4 microns on the One X's 8-megapixel camera. CNET's Josh Goldman points out that this is a small pixel size; however the take-away in terms of this discussion is that the two similar sizes mean that photo quality should be comparable at a pixel-by-pixel comparison.

Unfortunately, most smartphone-makers don't share granular detail about their camera components and sensor size, so until we test them, the quality is largely up in the air. Even if smartphone makers did release the details, I'm not sure how scrutable those specs would be to the majority of smartphone shoppers.

For more information on the interplay between megapixels and sensors, check out the excellent description in CNET's digital camera buying guide.

What about Nokia's 41-megapixel PureView?

Nokia's story behind its 808 PureView smartphone is really interesting. CNET Senior Editor Josh Goldman has written one of the best explanations of the Nokia 808 Pureview's 41-megapixel camera that I've seen. I strongly suggest you read it.

In the meantime, here's a short summary of what's going on.

Juha Alakarhu (pronounce his first name YOO-hah), is head of camera technologies at Nokia, where he works within the Smart Devices team. Alakarhu explained to me that although Nokia has engineered the PureView to capture up to 41-megapixels, most users will view photos as the 5-megapixels default.

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Sean Lahman: Evolution preceded revolution in digital cameras

Sean Lahman: Evolution preceded revolution in digital cameras

   May 07, 2012       Unknown

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Steve Jobs didn’t invent the MP3 player. The Wright Brothers weren’t the first to fly. And the incandescent light bulb had been around in one form or another for 50 years before Thomas Edison came up with his version.

We tend to think of inventors as people who create things that are entirely new, but that’s rarely the case. More often, innovation comes from a series of smaller, incremental improvements.

“That was certainly true in my case,” said James McGarvey, who was honored last week as the Distinguished Inventor of the Year, an award given annually by the Rochester Intellectual Property Lawyers Association.

McGarvey was recognized for his work to invent and commercialize digital single lens reflex cameras (D-SLRs) at Eastman Kodak Co. “The first D-SLR was not a big invention,” he said. “It was a series of small inventions.”

The challenge began when a government client approached McGarvey, asking if he could put Kodak’s one megapixel sensor — used in high-end video cameras — in a 35mm camera body for some sort of covert operation.

“Because I was an avid photographer and a SLR user, I knew how a film camera worked,” he said. “I asked myself, ‘What do I need to make something that works the same way?’ ”

In 1988, McGarvey hand-delivered the top-secret camera (I’m imagining it in a case handcuffed to his wrist) and never saw it again.

He ended up building three more prototypes the next two years and by 1990 began showing those cameras to news photographers at trade shows for feedback. “The reaction was intense,” McGarvey said.

McGarvey was granted patent No. 4,916,476 for that first design, the first of many he received.

The first digital SLR — the Kodak Professional Digital Camera System (DCS) — hit the market in 1991, and was an instant hit.

“The impact of Jim’s work cannot be overstated,” said Kenneth Parulski, chief scientist at Kodak. “Some of the world’s most famous photos, from Super Bowl touchdowns to the 9/11 tragedy, were captured by sports and press photographers using D-SLR cameras that Jim designed.”

McGarvey made tremendous strides in a short period of time, and by the mid-1990s had implemented almost all of the features present in current-day digital cameras. “The only significant addition in the last 15 years has been the ability to shoot movies,” he said.

Sean Lahman: Evolution preceded revolution in digital cameras 

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