Why a 16MP camera is better than 12MP

[flyingkytez]

Honestly from the pictures presented as 'evidence' while both are horrible quality, they can still be read, and that's the point for me. Doesn't matter if one is a bit sharper, because you're not using it as a telescope. If I take a picture of something, I don't take it with the intention of cropping it later. This is a camera with digital zoom.

So overall I'd still pick the 12mp because the difference I can see is inconsequential.

The 8MP wide angel was significantly lower in quality than the 13MP that was upgraded from the V30. The reason why the 8MP sucked was because when you zoom in, everything will look pixelated and blurry, but otherwise the 8MP wide angle looked pretty good on the V20. The 5MP front facing camera sucks and everyone dislikes it because the resolution is too small. Again, going back to the tiny dots on the image that make it the entire photo. Who crops photos? I crop group photos, the heads and faces, typically using them as profile pics.

 

[Itsa_Me_Mario]

Tiny dots make up an entire photo. Less tiny dots on a 12MP photo. Objects from far away will have less dots, therefore the object will not be clear enough to see when zoomed in. Explain why a switch to 8MP or even 10MP from a 12MP would create a significant outcry.. because the resolution will be very small and images will not look good.

You were mostly right on the first two sentences of this, but after that it took a dive into the same things the first 6 pages had wrong. 12 MP and 16 MP, if everything else were "equal" (which isn't a concept that makes sense), would have a similar result in what you are assuming .... but it'd still not be exactly 1:1 like that. The problem is that MP themselves have almost nothing to do with the quality of what those pixels display.. on a mobile device they only have an impact on how many pixels there are. That in itself is not enough to make the difference in quality that you have convinced yourself that you are seeing. I believe what you are actually seeing is an increase in artificial sharpening that LG likes to do on the software side of their imaging, while other OEM's may spend more energy on making things more accurate with less artificial fabrication.

 

[flyingkytez]

This is the most amazing thing about this discussion. Google has taken the conversion from microns and megapixels to almost entirely being about software. Obviously their software is meant to work with their hardware, so applying it on a different device isn't going to yield the same results... but it's amazing how much better it actually is despite that obstacle. Until phones are able to house hardware that can legitimately challenge traditional photography on its own terms, software is going to rule mobile photography. The main takeaway? Screw the spec sheet, and possibly even screw the number of lenses... look at who is writing the software and what kind of results they are getting.

Too much reliance on software... The iPhone X takes great photos however they look VERY artificial to me.. same with the Pixel 2's post processing. Colors look unreal. The bokeh effects look too fake and ugly actually. Hardware is important too. I'll take Sony's 19MP anyday over a 12MP's tiny resolution.

 

[flyingkytez]

Well, my wife had a S7 for a long time, and hated the camera pretty much the entire time. I have tons of comparison shots with the S7 and S7E and my 6P and Samsung chewed up photos... I don't think they managed to handle the dual pixel sensor properly... Remember that each pixel is actual to photo diodes that team up when it's picture taking time... You can almost view it as a oversampled 24mp camera with 0.7 micron pixels.

Now, the pixel 2 utilizes the same sensor family, but they also have the luxury of having, by a wide margin, the best photo processing system going... The V30 took much better pictures with the Google camera than LG's... They still weren't on par... But it goes to show that hardware is almost inconsequential when it comes to mobile photography at this point.

The S7 sucked, I honestly think the S6's 16MP was way better IMO, who cares about low-light it wasn't even that great anyway. I might be the only person that immediately noticed the reduced quality on the S7, when someone took a picture of me, my face looked pixelated. Google has the smartest brains in Silicon Valley.. while Asian manufactures have hardware making power. Google doesn't actually make any phone, it's pretty much OEM, buy the parts and add their own software and slap their logo on it. Every camera is pretty much a Sony sensor. I really like how Sony uses a 19MP on their Xperia, however their phone sucks.

 

[flyingkytez]

I can still read it (from both examples) -- both are still absolute awful quality once zoomed in / cropped.

I'll try to get a S7 and test again. Didn't own my S7 for long, hated the camera, it was WEAK.

 

[flyingkytez]

You were mostly right on the first two sentences of this, but after that it took a dive into the same things the first 6 pages had wrong. 12 MP and 16 MP, if everything else were "equal" (which isn't a concept that makes sense), would have a similar result in what you are assuming .... but it'd still not be exactly 1:1 like that. The problem is that MP themselves have almost nothing to do with the quality of what those pixels display.. on a mobile device they only have an impact on how many pixels there are. That in itself is not enough to make the difference in quality that you have convinced yourself that you are seeing. I believe what you are actually seeing is an increase in artificial sharpening that LG likes to do on the software side of their imaging, while other OEM's may spend more energy on making things more accurate with less artificial fabrication.

Don't think that's true, LG uses the least amount of post processing.. after the complaints they started to use more post processing on the V30. I used to have a Galaxy S6 with 16MP and personally can tell the difference with the 12MP from the S7 and S8.

 

[Almeuit]

I'll try to get a S7 and test again. Didn't own my S7 for long, hated the camera, it was WEAK.

That is fine if you feel that way about the camera but I am simply talking about your claims of cropping. You claim it was unreadable on a S7 and readable on yours because of the 12MP VS 16 MP .. yet .. all of your own examples prove your own theory to be incorrect. Both were readable and both were awful quality once cropped.

There still has yet, in 7+ pages of this thread, to be an example that lives up to what you claim. Even your own examples.

 

[Itsa_Me_Mario]

and personally can tell the difference

Just as an FYI, I can easily prove that what a person perceives and what is real are not the same thing, both from a psychological and neurological standpoint. Your brain is much more interested in showing you what you expect to see than having to go through the work of producing what is actually there.

At any rate, given that there are a ton of people in this thread who know quite a lot about mobile photography and that you know almost nothing about mobile photography, it may be a good idea to defer to their expertise rather than continually assuming that they are incorrect because their conclusions do not match your assumptions. Disagreeing with the consensus of the more educated doesn't necessarily mean that they are right and you are wrong - but it does mean that it's time to take a closer look at your position to determine what it is you might be missing. You haven't read any of the links or details of the posts that they have provided to try to help you understand where your assumptions fall down, so I don't realistically think that you're going to take this advice either - but in this case, you are wrong, and by a lot, about how this works and it's actually a really simple concept to understand if you decide to take the time to read through what @Almeuit and @D13H4RD2L1V3 and @LeoRex and @Mooncatt etc are saying. Otherwise we will just go on another 8 pages of posts and there's no reason for any of it.

 

[Mike Dee]

Tiny dots make up an entire photo. Less tiny dots on a 12MP photo. Objects from far away will have less dots, therefore the object will not be clear enough to see when zoomed in. Explain why a switch to 8MP or even 10MP from a 12MP would create a significant outcry.. because the resolution will be very small and images will not look good.

12,000,000 dots on a tiny sensor is already more than adequate. By your theory we should make a 36 megapixel camera because more is better.

 

[LeoRex]

Don't think that's true, LG uses the least amount of post processing.

Oh, I have to disagree here... I've had both a G3 and G4 and LG used noise reduction and sharpening like a cudgel. They dialed it back quite a bit in the V30. The amount of processing artifacts were distracting. Those cameras were designed to make pictures look great on a small screen... Look at them on a monitor and they were garbage.

And I agree on the S7... I was far from impressed when I got my wife's S7 and played with it a bit before giving it to her (which was a strategic mistake on my part, should have just got her a 6P)

 

[flyingkytez]

12,000,000 dots on a tiny sensor is already more than adequate. By your theory we should make a 36 megapixel camera because more is better.

More is better. If you are printing a poster, you need a higher MP camera. Either that or stretch it out.

 

[flyingkytez]

That is fine if you feel that way about the camera but I am simply talking about your claims of cropping. You claim it was unreadable on a S7 and readable on yours because of the 12MP VS 16 MP .. yet .. all of your own examples prove your own theory to be incorrect. Both were readable and both were awful quality once cropped.

There still has yet, in 7+ pages of this thread, to be an example that lives up to what you claim. Even your own examples.

Again, I no longer have the phone so I can't really show it. But speaking from experience, the reason why I hated the S7 because the resolution was too small and photos look pixelated when cropped. Also I tried zooming in with the 12MP to see the whiteboard from across the room and the 12MP couldn't do it.

 

[Almeuit]

Again, I no longer have the phone so I can't really show it. But speaking from experience, the reason why I hated the S7 because the resolution was too small and photos look pixelated when cropped. Also I tried zooming in with the 12MP to see the whiteboard from across the room and the 12MP couldn't do it.

Still hard for me to believe it since you showed pictures from the S7, you cropped it, and then posted it. I could still read it (the 12 MP) just as much as I could read your 16 MP examples.

Both were readable. Both were crap quality. You keep repeating your theory "You can't read it" still has no ground or any actual truth to it since you seem to be the only person who thinks you can't read it when we all said we can. Every example you have provided has gone against what you claim to happen.

 

[Mike Dee]

More is better. If you are printing a poster, you need a higher MP camera. Either that or stretch it out.

Wrong....just wrong....you reach a point of diminishing returns

 

[Itsa_Me_Mario]

More is better. If you are printing a poster, you need a higher MP camera. Either that or stretch it out.

False. Posters are typically made with low res cameras.

 

[Mooncatt]

More is better. If you are printing a poster, you need a higher MP camera. Either that or stretch it out.

Normal photos are often printed at about 300 dpi, but you view them close up and need that. For a 24x36" poster at that pixel density, you'd need a 77.76MP image. But posters aren't meant to be viewed up close. Drop that to 150 dpi, you'd need a 19.44 MP image. A 16MP image would give you about 135dpi, and a 12MP camera would give you about 115dpi (assuming native resolutions without cropping, so real world would likely be less after formatting correctly).

Calculations can be played with here.
https://www.pixelcalculator.com/index.php?lang=en

As you can see, at poster sizes, there wouldn't be a lot of quality difference between 16MP and 12MP. And unless you're standing close and basically pixel peeping, you probably wouldn't even notice in the real world. Depending on how you plan to display it, you may even get away with 75dpi, and only 4.86MP.

Larger prints does not mean larger needed resolutions. To give you an idea of what you really need, this article has a chart showing what you can effectively see at different distances.

https://fstoppers.com/originals/how-many-megapixels-do-you-need-print-billboard-220239

 

[Mike Dee]

False. Posters are typically made with low res cameras.

I've made giant stage projection sized prints for a video with a 6 megapixel Minolta....lots of detail

 

[D13H4RD2L1V3]

More is better. If you are printing a poster, you need a higher MP camera. Either that or stretch it out.

Okay dude.

If I showed that to the dudes at F-Stoppers or PetaPixel, you'll seriously get laughed at by the dudes who do photography for an actual living.

More is not always better. By that logic, we should be buying a Sony Alpha a6500 over a Sony Alpha a7S Mark II because the former is 24MP while the latter is 12MP or an a7R Mark II which is 42MP and completely ignoring the advantages of the a7S.

It's also worth noting that people who have used the a7S have zero issues with using it to print posters. I've seen them and I have never thought "Boy, they should've used an a7R Mark II for this".

Look, you preferring more MP for cropping is fine, but don't go around trying to say like it's some sort of fact. More MP is not always better as so many of us have been trying to say. Like, it's one of those things that will make the eyebrows of photographers raise up in confusion.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

 

[Itsa_Me_Mario]

From that source, "Unfortunately, it's all a myth because the number of megapixels (MP) a camera has has very little to do with how the image looks. Even worse, plenty of lower MP cameras can make better images than poorer cameras with more MP."

 

[Mooncatt]

From that source, "Unfortunately, it's all a myth because the number of megapixels (MP) a camera has has very little to do with how the image looks. Even worse, plenty of lower MP cameras can make better images than poorer cameras with more MP."

Case in point, this was shot on an 8MP DSLR and resized to about 2.8MP for uploading to Facebook. (I'd have to break out my laptop to go find the full sized image.) Even at this small resolution, I still get lots of compliments on it.