Apple's Next iPhone Needs More Megapixels

[seancaptain]

If rumors of a jump to a 12MP rear camera for the iPhone 6s are true, it's a good move on Apple's part. But what about the selfie cam?

Apple's Next iPhone Needs More Megapixels : Read more

 

[therealduckofdeath]

...another way to solve the constant "I wish the iPhone could do this and that like the other ones do" is, just buy a Galaxy S6 instead. Problem solved. 😀

 

[soldier44]

Apple will be stuck in 2010 forever, let them be.

 

[Cons29]

apple actually has good camera on their iphones. sure they may not be the best all the time but they are always good as far as i can remember.
this is coming from someone who don't like apple

 

[ohim]

Cameras on the phone... turning every one at a wedding into a photographer... giving us the real photographers/videographers head aches. Or when people go to concerts and choose to see it trough their 5" display instead of just enjoying the show there ...

 

[Steveymoo]

No, I don't think you're right. Image quality, low light performance, dynamic range, and noise are more important than resolution. 90% of all photos taken on a smartphone are just going to end up on a downscaling social media site anyway. One of the best professional cameras out right now only has a 12MP sensor, but it is a low light, HDR beast.

 

[truerock]

Why couldn't you take 2 identical photographs? Couldn't you match the exposures? Why was the scarf rearranged?

 

[aldaia]

The eternal (nearly useless) megapixels race. Even a 10 years old entry level DSLR like Canon EOS 350D (8 megapixels) or Nikon D50 (6 megapixels) equiped with cheap plastic kit lenses of questionable optic quality runs circles around any smartphone camera no matter how many Mpixels. Once you have enough Mpixels your botleneck is in the optics. 2 Mpixels is good enough, specially considering that for the average Joe, 99.9999% of the pictures taken with a smartphone will only be viewed in the screen. For the majority of phones, 1920×1080 is all you need. Assuming that for the remaining 0,0001% of the pictures our average user wants to enlarge them and hang them on the wall, then yes he needs more Mpixels. Unfortunately doing so, will show the deficiencies of its tiny optics.

 

[RedJaron]

No, I don't think you're right. Image quality, low light performance, dynamic range, and noise are more important than resolution. 90% of all photos taken on a smartphone are just going to end up on a downscaling social media site anyway. One of the best professional cameras out right now only has a 12MP sensor, but it is a low light, HDR beast.

Absolutely right. More pixels with junk sensors and optics just means more junk pixels. The sad part is too many people have been conditioned by marketing that more = better. If one camera has more pixels than another, that must mean it's better. If one product has a higher model number, that must mean it's better.

I just don't get the mania with cell phone cameras. I get that you want a camera good enough for snapping some on-the-spot moments, but why are people expecting them to be, or worse treating them as though they are, equal or better than a good compact camera?

 

[zodiacfml]

No. Misleading title. It's not resolution/megapixels. Just from the thumbnails, the S6 is better because it is not overexposed. It also has too much sharpening than the i6.

Aside from faster f-stops, a larger sensor helps with image quality and not resolution. I have 4.7MP camera from 2009 and beats all smartphone cameras many times over and it's not even a huge camera.

 

[one-of-us]

Could someone explain exactly how you can see the better quality of more pixels on a 2 megapixel monitor (1920 x 1080). Also, increasing the number of pixels for the same size sensor simply decreases the diameter of each pixel. How does decreasing that diameter increase the number of photons each pixel can detect and therefore increase color accuracy and reduce noise?

 

[TwoDigital]

The camera module in the Galaxy S6 (a GH96-08225A) has a retail cost of a whopping $50. How much more would it have cost for Apple to use something similar or a few steps ahead? You're already paying $800+ for a phone. If you are looking for bragging rights, why not go crazy and have a camera phone you could brag about for $850 instead? The older camera modules just seem like they are screaming for a huge upgrade.

 

[mrmez]

Welcome back to 2005 and the megapixel myth.

 

[AndrewJacksonZA]

Quick correction: It's the Sony Xperia Z3 and the Z3+, not the Z and the Z+.

 

[wiyosaya]

Here we go with another brain dead op-ed. I don't think that I need to echo the previous comments on the validity of adding more pixels to a crappy sensor with crappy optics, but I'll say does anyone at Tom's really know what they are talking about these days?

I'll stick with my 7D and L-lenses, thanks.

 

[Confussled]

Could someone explain exactly how you can see the better quality of more pixels on a 2 megapixel monitor (1920 x 1080).

Because resizing a larger image to a smaller size looks better than an image taken at that smaller size (if you arn't just doing a nearest neighbour resize anyway).

It's like downsampling in games or as Nvidia call it DSR and AMD call it VSR. They render the game at a higher resolution say 4k then resize it down to 1080p to fit monitor. The resulting 1080p image looks much better than if the game was just rendered in 1080p even without using any kind of AA.

Same thing if you resize a 6mp or 12mp image to 1080p using bicubic resampling, lancoz resampling or something, by essentially averaging out a larger number of pixels you get smoother lines and tonal transitions than if the photo was with a sensor that can only capture 1080p.

How does decreasing that diameter increase the number of photons each pixel can detect and therefore increase color accuracy and reduce noise?

It doesn't, the noise actually gets increased not reduced as you increase pixel count while maintaining the same physical sensor size which is why compact camera's particularly had to keep increasing how aggressive their noise reduction was after the 3MP mark until some later advances reduce it a bit but now we're back to the stage where processed images look more noisy the more MP they have.

 

[vider]

Could someone explain exactly how you can see the better quality of more pixels on a 2 megapixel monitor (1920 x 1080).

Because resizing a larger image to a smaller size looks better than an image taken at that smaller size (if you arn't just doing a nearest neighbour resize anyway).

It's like downsampling in games or as Nvidia call it DSR and AMD call it VSR. They render the game at a higher resolution say 4k then resize it down to 1080p to fit monitor. The resulting 1080p image looks much better than if the game was just rendered in 1080p even without using any kind of AA.

Same thing if you resize a 6mp or 12mp image to 1080p using bicubic resampling, lancoz resampling or something, by essentially averaging out a larger number of pixels you get smoother lines and tonal transitions than if the photo was with a sensor that can only capture 1080p.

How does decreasing that diameter increase the number of photons each pixel can detect and therefore increase color accuracy and reduce noise?

It doesn't, the noise actually gets increased not reduced as you increase pixel count while maintaining the same physical sensor size which is why compact camera's particularly had to keep increasing how aggressive their noise reduction was after the 3MP mark until some later advances reduce it a bit but now we're back to the stage where processed images look more noisy the more MP they have.

To add more to what Confussied added, I would say that the Nokia Lumia 1020 has that already incorporated into it's camera module. Correct me if I am wrong, but I read somewhere that the camera module does not take an image at it's max 41 megapixel camera (It is worth mentioning that it is possible to use all 41 mpix, there is an option on the camera app to allow this), it takes a shot at about 40.8 mpix (or so) and uses the data to create a smaller mpix picture with higher detail (by using the info from the original 40.8 mpix shot). The shots are quiet remarkable for a phone camera.

One could simply watch the following video and think that it was done professionally, yet the whole thing was shot with that phone model (Lumia 1020), have a look for yourselves.

https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=an4ySOlsUMY

 

[razor512]

The recommendations do not work since they are not enough to counter the smaller pixel size. if you cut the pixel size in half, then you will have to open the aperture by 1 stop, meaning a 1.2 aperture. That makes focusing extremely difficult. You can try a f1.2 lens with a camera with one of the most advanced auto focus systems (the Nikon D4s) and you will see it miss a lot of shots at f1.2

The wider the aperture, the more difficult it is to focus. It is also exponentially more expensive to make the aperture larger, as it requires more glass, and the yields are far lower in terms of getting multiple large lens elements without defects.


Noise reduction is never a solution to a sensor with more noise. The more noise you have, the less detail you have which is why you get less and less detail as you increase the ISO. Noise reduction, reduces the visibility of noise, but it does not add detail. You cannot recover data that was never in the image to begin with. (smaller details require a higher signal to noise ratio in order to display them.

There is no good solution around just having a larger sensor. more photons per pixel, means that there is more photons for the sensor to work with.

Megapixels mean nothing if the camera is unable to deliver on the resolution, this is why you can often get far more detail from a 5 megapixel DSLR than from an 8 megapixel smartphone camera.

If you look at many camera reviews, you will often see a resolution test which works to find the effective resolution. When done on smaller sensor cameras, e.g., point and shoot cameras, the effective resolution is often 1/3rd or less of the resolution of the sensor, while some of the higher end DSLR's can come within 90% of their sensor resolution.

As the ISO increases, the effectively resolution drops at an almost exponential rate

No camera today can deliver an effective resolution that is equal to the sensor resolution. Perfect is optimal use of each pixel to display as much detail as possible, and that is only attainable from a 3D render where everything can be made pixel perfect.

PS, if needed also look at some f0.95 aperture images, and you will see that it also distorts the image because it is incredibly difficult to make larger apertures.

 

[Ninjawithagun]

This article has so much incorrect information in it, that it would take several paragraphs to correct it all. For instance, DSLR's have an average of 1.2, 1.4. or 1.8 aperature rating, and no where near the crappy 2.2 equivalent of the iPhone6. Also, the lense technology of DSLRs can NOT be fairly compared to smartphones. It's a simple matter of using a zoom lense versus using digital zoom on a smartphone. Resolution during digital zooming is immediately lost because of the digital interpolation neeeded to zoom the original image on a smartphone. DSLRs don't have to do this and instead rely on the mechanical zoom capabilities provided by the lens itself, effectively eliminating any loss of resolution because on interpolation is required to artifically provide a zoomed in image. You get the idea. This article is terribly written and the author should be slapped on the head for not doing their homework properly.

 

[killerb255]

I do wonder why neither Apple nor Samsung has tried to match the Lumia 1020's camera (or even the 1520's camera)?