would reducing mpx improve iso handeling on a compact

saxk

saxk

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Brad 'Electron-Don' Foster
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right i may be barking up the wrong tree with this but here goes.

we all know that a small compact camera will suffer from noise in comparison to a DSLR even a entry level, due to the fact that the pixels (if 10+) are crammed on to a tiny sensor and this creates noise at high iso.

my question is... If you reduce the size of the image, in the camera menus from 15mp to 7, would this help noise, due to the fact its taking a smaller image, is the sensor using every other diode, or is it using them all, or jsut the centre cluster.

as if it was using every 2nd diode then surely this would remove the cramming and result in a better noise handling.


am i making any sense ?

or am i jsut missing somehting and being a great big spazzer:nuts:
 
I think that most little cameras will take the cheapest and easiest option to produce smaller files and that's to downsize as part of the RAW-JPEG conversion they do for you.

It's a good idea though isn't it. I think any of us that have even the slightest idea of how sensors work would rather have smaller files and better IQ from our compacts.
 
ahh ok i get it, so most take the image in RAW and jsut shrink it when they convert to JPEG and then save.

i guess that makes sense.

it would be so much better if it jsut used less pixels, why they all get so wrapped up in the MPX race.
 
downsampling will improve the noise, I read some maths on it a while ago explaining how it worked. So perhaps the camera is better off shooting the max and then downsample PP. But I do agree with you that (say) 6MP would be plenty for PnS.
 
saxk said:
right i may be barking up the wrong tree with this but here goes.

we all know that a small compact camera will suffer from noise in comparison to a DSLR even a entry level, due to the fact that the pixels (if 10+) are crammed on to a tiny sensor and this creates noise at high iso.

my question is... If you reduce the size of the image, in the camera menus from 15mp to 7, would this help noise, due to the fact its taking a smaller image, is the sensor using every other diode, or is it using them all, or jsut the centre cluster.

as if it was using every 2nd diode then surely this would remove the cramming and result in a better noise handling.


am i making any sense ?

or am i jsut missing somehting and being a great big spazzer:nuts:
Click to expand...

If it was to do this then you only get Green.
Not sure how its done I asked Canon this question about small RAW files on the 50D when I was at Focus on Imaging.
He said he did not know
 
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