10 Mega-Pixel cameras - the truth...?
Discussion
Currys are advertising a 10 Mega Pixel compact digital camera from Samsung at a seemingly silly price (£129 for a brand new camera, discounted from £299). Seems like a great deal...
FiL is a keen photographer, and he says to avoid such 'powerful' cameras as the manufacturers are playing a numbers game. He says that the CCDs are the same as before, and the difference is that the pixels are smaller and can gather less light. In order to generate a 10Meg picture, they need to amplify the light collected and this creates noise.
Does anyone know anything about this?
Mrs Puggit is planning on visiting the nearest emporium tomorrow to acquire said camera (she broke our's on Christmas Eve...) and I need some facts
FiL is a keen photographer, and he says to avoid such 'powerful' cameras as the manufacturers are playing a numbers game. He says that the CCDs are the same as before, and the difference is that the pixels are smaller and can gather less light. In order to generate a 10Meg picture, they need to amplify the light collected and this creates noise.
Does anyone know anything about this?
Mrs Puggit is planning on visiting the nearest emporium tomorrow to acquire said camera (she broke our's on Christmas Eve...) and I need some facts
I'd be interested in comments on this subject as I'm toying of upgrading my Casio Z4 up to the new z10 (4m pixels up to 10m pixel).
I have no need to have any fancy manual features just a great very small and robust (metal cased) point and click camera with a large screen on the rear, which imho the Casio is the best available.
Its whether the 10m is going to be much better.
Talking of a bargain, check this out. I've been informed you can get this with a 256mb SD card and a bag for under £40. I have no idea what the camera is like though.
www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Search?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&searchTerms=5605613
It's certainly not an argument without merit. Some of the early high MP cameras were very noisy. That being said, the latest chips are managing higher pixel counts (handy if you want to print part of a frame, for example) with reasonable noise levels.
The Samsung S800, from the same 'Point and Shoot' range as the D103 that Currys are offering, is rubbish. Barely more than a 'party camera' in quality, with a cheap lens, horrible noise problems, dodgy colour balance, and menus that were designed by Pete Doherty. On a bad day.
For similar money, I'd have this- in fact, I'm very tempted to buy one myself
The Samsung S800, from the same 'Point and Shoot' range as the D103 that Currys are offering, is rubbish. Barely more than a 'party camera' in quality, with a cheap lens, horrible noise problems, dodgy colour balance, and menus that were designed by Pete Doherty. On a bad day.
For similar money, I'd have this- in fact, I'm very tempted to buy one myself
The other relevant questions to ask yourself about Megapixel counts are:-
- Can the lens resolve sufficient information to put anything useful on all those extra pixels?
- What will you do with that resolution?
It won't give you better quality pictures and the files will be larger (whcih makes transferring from the camera and handling before you print or send slower).
The extra resolution is useful if you intend to blow up your pics to HUGE prints - any normal needs (including A3 enlargements) will be catered for by 5MPs.
Also potentially useful if you intend to crop into your pictures a lot. But if that's the case, you may find the lens quickly limits any usable quality and if you're dong that a lot, you'd be better off getting a camera with a bigger optical zoom and fewer MPs.
There are lots of questions to ask yourself about buying a digi-camera but unless you have specialist needs as above, once you get over 4 or 5MPs, how many MPs is not one of them.
Check out some of the review sites for example pics also - I find Steve's digicams to be useful, but I don't think he has reviewed this model. There may be other good sites. DPReview has a review of a more expensive sister camera to this one which appears to use the same sensor. Their review may give you some clues.
www.dpreview.com/reviews/samsungnv10/
Stuart
- Can the lens resolve sufficient information to put anything useful on all those extra pixels?
- What will you do with that resolution?
It won't give you better quality pictures and the files will be larger (whcih makes transferring from the camera and handling before you print or send slower).
The extra resolution is useful if you intend to blow up your pics to HUGE prints - any normal needs (including A3 enlargements) will be catered for by 5MPs.
Also potentially useful if you intend to crop into your pictures a lot. But if that's the case, you may find the lens quickly limits any usable quality and if you're dong that a lot, you'd be better off getting a camera with a bigger optical zoom and fewer MPs.
There are lots of questions to ask yourself about buying a digi-camera but unless you have specialist needs as above, once you get over 4 or 5MPs, how many MPs is not one of them.
Check out some of the review sites for example pics also - I find Steve's digicams to be useful, but I don't think he has reviewed this model. There may be other good sites. DPReview has a review of a more expensive sister camera to this one which appears to use the same sensor. Their review may give you some clues.
www.dpreview.com/reviews/samsungnv10/
Stuart
stuart b said:
The extra resolution is useful if you intend to blow up your pics to HUGE prints - any normal needs (including A3 enlargements) will be catered for by 5MPs.
While you can make a good A3 print from a RAW file from an SLR at 5MP the jpeg output of the majority of 'consumer' compacts and their relatively high noise makes an A3 print look very artificial. My 'prosumer' G5 will just support A3 prints (add in Genuine Fractals and it will go beyond that, but I don't know that people who buy compacts in Currys are terribly interested in spending hours in front of the PC.)
Aside from that, I couldn't agree more, the pixel arms race is a pointless distraction.
Amount of pixels is very misleading. Generally more = better, but there are HUGE differences between size and quality of CCDs, lenses, metering, build quality etc. If it seems too good to be true, it usually is.
It's mostly a way of manufacturers saying 'mine is better than the competition' (which it often isn't)
I have a 12 mp camera and it will print out comfortably to A2. If the camera you mention can do that for £125... I WANT one (mine cost £3500 without a lens)
puggit said:
FiL is a keen photographer, and he says to avoid such 'powerful' cameras as the manufacturers are playing a numbers game. He says that the CCDs are the same as before, and the difference is that the pixels are smaller and can gather less light. In order to generate a 10Meg picture, they need to amplify the light collected and this creates noise.
That matches with the research my dad did a couple of years back when he bought a Powershot A75 (3.2MP), not the A85 (4MP) for £20 more...he said it was the same sensor just 'tweaked', and hence noisier.
havoc said:
puggit said:
FiL is a keen photographer, and he says to avoid such 'powerful' cameras as the manufacturers are playing a numbers game. He says that the CCDs are the same as before, and the difference is that the pixels are smaller and can gather less light. In order to generate a 10Meg picture, they need to amplify the light collected and this creates noise.
That matches with the research my dad did a couple of years back when he bought a Powershot A75 (3.2MP), not the A85 (4MP) for £20 more...he said it was the same sensor just 'tweaked', and hence noisier.
Hmmm . . .
Seeing as a sensor is manufactured onto a piece of silicon wafer (just like a microprocessor) and has a certain (say 3M) number of pixels at manufacture time . . . how would one be able to change that number (to , say, 4M) without physically changing the sensor ?
In any case it's not number of megapixels that cause noise it's the physical size of the pixels in the sensor array.
A 10cm square 10Mp sensor will have a very different noise profile to a 1cm square 10Mp sensor.
A 10Mp compact camera sensor may be smaller than a 10Mp SLR sensor . . .
Then you have to look at lens quality, meter accuracy, power supply stability, temperature (hot sensors are noisier), sensor pit depth, sensor microlens design, etc, etc, etc . . . so comparing megapixels is effectively pointless . . . add into that mix that every day the sensor fabrication process gets better and lower noise higher resolution sensors will continue to appear . . .
All this will remain true, but in 5 years time 10Mp will be low resolution and the noise created will be 1/10th of what it is today . . .
My 2Mp canon ixus has a lower res than my 'phone . . . but it still takes better pictures because it has a real lens . . . not because it has lower number of pixels . . .
Fd
fergusd said:
A 10Mp compact camera sensor may be smaller than a 10Mp SLR sensor . . .
You betcha. Look at the dpreview site for such a comparison. Canon 350D, 400D, 30D , 40D have sensors which have a "crop" factor of 1.6. This means that a normal 50mm lens on the DSLR will have the same angle of view as an 80mm on a film camera. A lot of compacts have 5mm to 25mm lenses which are equivalent to say 35mm - 225mm on a film camera. On a DSLR, the equivalent lens would be say 22mm-110mm.
Canon use CMOS sensors in their DSLRs which are inherantly less noisy than their CCD counterparts.
A dSLR croped sensor is APS sized (as in APS film), smaller than a full 35mm frame but stil huge compared to P&S sensors.
There is a limit to how much light a photocell can gather, and how much noise you get when cramming to many pixels onto a sensor. Couple that with cheap optics on P&S cameras and you have poor quality pixels for sure , especialy in low light.
The only reason for havinvg more than 6 or 8mp is large printing (a4+) heavy croping or pro use. Anything else just wasts space and creates noisy images.
If you print standard 8x6 pics or use purely for web then a 3mp camera will be fine.
There is a limit to how much light a photocell can gather, and how much noise you get when cramming to many pixels onto a sensor. Couple that with cheap optics on P&S cameras and you have poor quality pixels for sure , especialy in low light.
The only reason for havinvg more than 6 or 8mp is large printing (a4+) heavy croping or pro use. Anything else just wasts space and creates noisy images.
If you print standard 8x6 pics or use purely for web then a 3mp camera will be fine.
The kit lenses on low and even mid-range SLR's are the weak point of the package, not the CCD's sensitivity, so I'd have thought that this was far more the case on a low-end compact. There are a huge number of factors at play in image quality, the MP rating is just a headline marketing statement, not the be-all.
I had a £250 Kodak 4MP camera purchased a couple od years back and it was so disappointing for landscape use (I sometimes took it on mountain biking holidays) I went back to using a lightweight, cheap film SLR and (an OM2) and 28mm prime lens and slide film. A DLSR is too heavy/breakable for mountain biking! Scanning the best ones on a £200 slide scanner gives similar quality to the output from my 20D.
I'd be amazed if this £120 10MP camera had half-decent image quality.
I had a £250 Kodak 4MP camera purchased a couple od years back and it was so disappointing for landscape use (I sometimes took it on mountain biking holidays) I went back to using a lightweight, cheap film SLR and (an OM2) and 28mm prime lens and slide film. A DLSR is too heavy/breakable for mountain biking! Scanning the best ones on a £200 slide scanner gives similar quality to the output from my 20D.
I'd be amazed if this £120 10MP camera had half-decent image quality.
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