430MP sensor?

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No not anything to do with AI Gigapixel but just a comparison with the sensor size on my Canon 1Ds MkII (16.7MP) and the new iPhone XS which has an "active area" of around 5.6 x 4.2 mm (24 sq mm approx) for 12MP.

This is an insanely small sensor for any kind of photography and if my Canon 1Ds MkII had the same pixel density it would give an image of approx 430MP!

I must admit I have had some prints sent to me (postcard size) from mobile phones and at that size they look fine but whenever I've enlarged images from mobile phones I have been distinctly underwhelmed by the lack of quality.

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No not anything to do with AI Gigapixel but just a comparison with the sensor size on my Canon 1Ds MkII (16.7MP) and the new iPhone XS which has an "active area" of around 5.6 x 4.2 mm (24 sq mm approx) for 12MP.

This is an insanely small sensor for any kind of photography and if my Canon 1Ds MkII had the same pixel density it would give an image of approx 430MP!

I must admit I have had some prints sent to me (postcard size) from mobile phones and at that size they look fine but whenever I've enlarged images from mobile phones I have been distinctly underwhelmed by the lack of quality.

.

Yeah I'm happy with my phones camera (Xiaomi Mi Mix 2) as far as having a camera for quick snaps on me at all times but as soon as you look a little deeper/closer they are indeed horrible. I wonder what the file size for an uncompressed 430mp raw file would be haha
 
It's hard to know where you're going with this, but MP does not dictate the quality of an image.

Without any kind of comparison, I assume the Sony A7S at 12MP offers a considerably higher quality image than the Nokia Lumia 1020 which produces a 40MP image.
 
No not anything to do with AI Gigapixel but just a comparison with the sensor size on my Canon 1Ds MkII (16.7MP) and the new iPhone XS which has an "active area" of around 5.6 x 4.2 mm (24 sq mm approx) for 12MP.

This is an insanely small sensor for any kind of photography and if my Canon 1Ds MkII had the same pixel density it would give an image of approx 430MP!

I must admit I have had some prints sent to me (postcard size) from mobile phones and at that size they look fine but whenever I've enlarged images from mobile phones I have been distinctly underwhelmed by the lack of quality.

.
I think it gets more difficult to achieve high pixel density as the sensor size goes up, not that I'd need that sort of resolution anyway or for that matter achieve it with any of my lenses.

I did manage a 50MP+ image from my old 3MP digital microscope in the past - panoramic stitching work really well for that :)
 
The point is simple though, the lack of quality of the iPhone xs would just create a 430mp low quality image. Photosite size and quality really matters and that’s why some older lower mp cameras beat some modern cameras for ultimate iq*

*would it be cynical of me to suggest that the emphasis on DR and ISO invariance is to detract from the fact that we’re not actually getting massively better IQ for our money.
 
I make that the same sensor pixel size as deep red light's wavelength (when you take into account you have 4 sensors to each 3 colour pixel). That can't be a good thing.
 
*would it be cynical of me to suggest that the emphasis on DR and ISO invariance is to detract from the fact that we’re not actually getting massively better IQ for our money.

I've thought that for a while now, even with such as the D850 which I believe has far too many pixels for 99% of its buyers (my % figure not Nikon's lol)

I Judged a print comp last week where images were captured on cameras from 16-35mp and there was no discernible difference between any of them that could be matched to pixel numbers, the best were just PP'd better

Dave
 
The lens used is also a big differentiator. The smaller a sensor the better a lens needs to be. Phone lenses aren’t great but to provide decent acuity to a tiny sensor size they probably are ‘fantastic’ just to produce your typical mobile phone ‘mush’;)

Pixel count is largely irrelevant as your simply upscaling mush.
 
I did a test about a year back of my Fuji compact and my then Galaxy phone. I actually honestly tell the difference, even pixel peeping. It was so close I had to look at the file names to check.
Phone cameras have got better but they are not a match for a real camera.... yet ;)
 
The lens used is also a big differentiator. The smaller a sensor the better a lens needs to be. Phone lenses aren’t great but to provide decent acuity to a tiny sensor size they probably are ‘fantastic’ just to produce your typical mobile phone ‘mush’;)

Pixel count is largely irrelevant as your simply upscaling mush.

True. While it's commonly thought that more pixels means better image quality, it really has only a small effect once you're into double-figure megapixels. It's physical sensor area that drives image quality, on two fronts. 1) Larger sensors collect more light, especially important in shadow areas, extending dynamic range and reducing noise. 2) Smaller sensors require more magnification, which demands greater lens resolution, and as resolution goes up, so image contrast goes down (basic optical physics). Image contrast contributes more to perceived sharpness than resolution, once a fairly modest basic level is reached.

The sensors and lenses in modern smartphones appear to defy the laws of physics, given how tiny they are. Of course they can't do that, but with the extraordinary amount of R&D that goes into them, relatively speaking they're far more advanced than 'normal' camera sensors. And there's more to come as multiple cameras are combined in 'computational photography' to mimic all aspects of larger sensor performance.

Basically, with clever software it's possible to combine images from multiple cameras to create the same effective sensor area as larger formats, but with a lot of added benefits when the phone uses complex algorithms to compare the images and apply digital enhancements. Smartphones with three cameras are now common, with more to come, and the software is still at a very early stage of development. In principle, there's no limit to how many cameras that can be combined in this way. The Light L16 camera https://light.co/camera has 16, though its way ahead of its time and woefully short of proper development. This technology potentially threatens everything we know and love about 'real' photography.
 
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