Don’t fall into the megapixel trap. A cell phone’s camera is no better than another just because it has more megapixels, other factors such as the size of the sensor or the efficiency of artificial intelligence in processing the image are far more important than squeezing pixels as if they were on. bathing its a beach Benidorm.
The struggle to have more megapixels in a camera as a way to quantify photographic quality is not new, but it is not real as many others influence that quality decisive factors that can ruin the photos you take with your smartphone.
Throughout the year I have tried many, many cell phones and I have been able to verify for myself that the irrelevance of a camera with 200 Mpx – like that of the Xiaomi 12T Pro – or 48 Mpx if there is no set of factors behind that figure.
Ultimately, math and physics conspire to paint marketing departments in a bad light, earning a standing ovation for turning the irrelevant into the essential.
12 Mpx, the magic number for mobile photography
Have you ever wondered why some of the best phones of 2022 only have 12 Mpx cameras?
I’m talking about models like the Samsung Galaxy S22, like the iPhone 14 or like the Sony Xperia 5 IV. They all have 12-megapixel cameras and compete – and in most cases far outperform – with phones with 108 or 200 Mpx cameras. The secret is that even those phones with hundreds of megapixel cameras eventually deliver 12 Mpx photos.
There is a technology called pixel binning which sounds awful in english cool, but it is actually a simple pixel binning where the sensor driver groups adjacent pixels by registering the group information as a unit. Union create strength.
In this way, a 108 Mpx sensor is able to reorganize its pixels into groups of 3 pixels vertically and 3 pixels horizontally, forming a “large super pixel” with 9 small pixels that capture more light than working individually.
Surprise! If the math doesn’t lie, the result is a 12 Mpx photo (108 Mpx/9 pixels=12 Mpx). So many laps to finally have the same megapixels as a mobile with a 48 Mpx sensorlike that of the iPhone 14 Pro, which applies a 4 pixel binning to get that magical 12 Mpx.
Whatever they say, size matters
The law of 12 showed us that really the number of pixels is not the most important if eventually they need to be grouped together to form one with a larger size. Which brings us to the second question: the sensor size and pixel density. Here lies the crux of the matter.
The larger the base on which the pixels are arranged, the larger those pixels can be, eliminating the need to group them together as the camera has a lot of work to do to keep us looking fresh in the morning selfies.
The sensor size: It’s one of those data that usually goes unnoticed in camera specs and that is, 48Mpx of course isn’t the same on a thin sensor as it is on a nearly 1″ sensor with pixels the size of fists.
If you look at it more graphically, imagine that you put 12 friends in your room, and now imagine the same situation with 48 friends, and that in order to be quite wide and not take up so much space, each of them 4 friends on a piggyback had to carry his back. Hey, I have a terrible lower back for those efforts and I guess the pixels aren’t for those jogging either.
It doesn’t matter the sensor, but how you use it
We have already seen that when determining the photographic quality of a smartphone, one has to take into account not only the number of megapixels, but also the pixel size and sensor size. That as far as the hardware is concerned. But what about software, nobody thinks about software?
The image processing It is decisive in today’s mobile photography. is what they call computational photography and hide your bad heart rate, lack of light or make you look like a Hollywood star photographed with a thousands of dollar camera instead of being a selfie in the elevator. Almost a miracle, wow.
Not all photo processing systems are the same, nor do they all use the same thing. I have been able to verify it with my own eyes when analyzing several mobile phones that mount the same sony imx766 sensor -one of the best current sensors and by far my favorite- but then again depending on the processing it has produced very different results.
For example, I liked the photo processing I saw on the realme 9 Pro+ or the Oppo Find X5 Pro, but there was room for improvement on other models like the OnePlus Nord 2T or the Nothing Phone (1). What is better proof of? importance of computational photography then take pictures with the same sensor and get such different results.
These algorithms depend on whether the colors look vibrant and bright or dull, whether the cropping in portraits is spectacular or whether you look like a doll glued to cardboard, or, almost more importantly, whether the photos have detail and texture or look like a painted painting. with watercolor.
Surely, the 200 Mpx matters, but not as much as they want to sell us of the marketing departments. The truth is out there and you just need to snap a picture of it to see it.