Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

"46 MP is just way overkill"??? I don't even know where to go with that!

Canisdirus

Well...you can go where he can't...you can crop like crazy and still have a stellar image...

Flickwet Loc: NEOhio

It’s all about exceeding the nyquist limit to avoid using a filter on the sensor. Then downsize the 45mpx down and you suppress further any noise in your photo. It’s not necessary to use the full resolution unless you’re printing really really big

neillaubenthal

Despite Paul’s trolling responses…yes, MP are largely a marketing thing now. You need a minimum number of course…but if you’re not cropping in PP then 20 is really more than enough for the vast majority of people. That said…something up to 45 or so is nice because you can “zoom” in PP and still have enough pixels on subject for optimum IQ and sharpness. The problem with more MP is that they are then smaller pixels and hence noise is worse because of physics and low light performance is less…the way phones get away with it is a lot of computational photography techniques and they know that the vast majority or phone shots are viewed on a limited resolution phone or social media and not made into posters. Realistically…the 45 in my Nikons is mostly used to allow more cropping in post when needed…recognizing that this also increases noise in the final output…see Steve Perry’s excellent video on this…but with DxO or Topaz or the other NR apps we have today that’s easily dealt with.

neillaubenthal

There is that😄😄😄😄

JD750 Loc: SoCal

how are you calculating the frequency?

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

What I said was that "46 MP is just way overkill for much photography."

If you saw the excellent story about the James Webb Space Telescope on 60 Minutes last Sunday, you would have seen how important electronic zoom can be when exploring to see "what's out there." And I love having a high resolution camera when taking photographs of the night sky...it's the only way tp resolve large numbers of individual stars and galaxies. But I've done side-by-side comparisons with the two cameras, and there are many, many other situations in which it is impossible to determine which camera took which picture. It's nonsense to carry the overhead of the larger files in those cases.

cahale Loc: San Angelo, TX

I don't want any size picture of my kids or anyone else with chocolate on their faces. I don't find mess cute.

Bobsphoto

Somebody needs to sprinkle some pixel dust into this discussion.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

The Samsung S23 Ultra has a 200MP main camera. A mere 45MP is so old school. But does anyone really need more than about 25MP!?

My Sony A7R V has a 60MP full frame sensor.

bwa

tgreenhaw

The sensor size for each pixel is much smaller on a mobile phone. in fact with a 3 nanometer semiconductor process and assuming a 4X4 pixel array, 2 green and 1 each for red and blue a 4X6 millimeter sensor could have 166,667 megapixels. How you could handle that amount of data and how poor the low light performance would be is a different question, but it's clear that these sensors can get incredibly high resolution with state of the art chip making technology.

Small sensors reduce the low light performance of these lenses and also makes bokeh not nearly as good. Tremendous advances have been made on the software side of things on Apple and Android phones that reduce noise and simulate bokeh, but it isn't as good as what we enjoy with large sensor cameras. Because they sell so many of these phones, the amount of money spent on R&D for the sensors, chips and software for phones is why they are so advanced. I wouldn't be surprised to see this trickle down into newer mirrorless cameras that do things like what Topaz AI does on the fly in camera allowing useable ISOs over 100k, much higher sharpness and extremely high performance digital image stabilization..

MJPerini

Weather Horsepower or Megapixels or Frames per second, Marketers ALWAYS latch onto numbers, and so do consumers.
Sometimes More is Better, sometimes more is worse and the answer always depends on the users intended use.
In this age of miniaturization there is no end of fitting more stuff into smaller spaces, In computers it has made the smaller faster and cheaper.
With sensors and Phones vs cameras, the R&D dollars spent on Phone and other smaller sensors dwarfs the R&D budget for traditional camera sensors. As a result Phone sized sensors are getting better FASTER than Large sensor (although Both are getting better)
The answer has to be for each of us to focus on what we need to do the work we want to do, and not to worry too much about what if something else is 'Better'
How many of us have skills that far outstrip our equipment----- not many, and not me for sure.
But that does not mean camera sensor development should stop. My current camera Canon 5D4 30MP is about 6-7 years old, I bought it whenever it came out. Marvelous camera, but I am sure an R5 is 'better'. I do not feel 'camera limited' What has changed is that I use my iPhone 14 more than any other phone camera I have owned.
It is about getting the pictures you want to get.
So are Megapixels just a Marketing Ploy ? No more than they have ever been. Are they less important than they used to be for MOST photographers ? Yes. None of us is "Most Photographers" so more megapixels might be very important to YOU. And even if they are not, would any of us want development to stop?
So I say let them keep working, and If I see something that excites me, I'll buy it.

tgreenhaw

Holy fact check batman, the Xiaomi 12T Pro has a 200-megapixel camera believe it or not.

You raise an interesting point about how small a pixel can be. The wavelength of red light is typically considered to be around 620-750 nanometers (nm), which is equivalent to 0.62-0.75 microns (1 micron = 1000 nanometers). What is even more interesting to consider is that these pixels are usually a 4x4 array with 2 green are and a blue which makes me realize smartphones are at the limit already. Pixel size ranges from 1.1 microns in the smallest smartphone sensor, to 8.4 microns in a Full-Frame sensor. This makes me wonder if sensors with extremely small sensors would have less noise from ambient infrared heat.

CaptCurt

I remember the let down with the Nikon D6 having 20.8 Meg. I own one and love it. I also have a Nikon D850 with 45.7 Meg. The D850 is great for some shots, but having 400 photos at 45 Meg is a lot of data. And not needed most of the time. I use my D6 way more.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

The raw data are indeed in groups of 4 pixels, but the software demosaics that into 4 separate 3-color pixels.