As some companies race for fancy 108 Megapixel cameras, its easy to get lost in a sea of camera resolution numbers. Buy why has 12 megapixels (MP) been the standard in both “pro-consumer” video gear and in smartphone cameras?
Google and Apple– creators of some of the best smartphone cameras of all time have been using 12 megapixel sensors on the rear of their smartphones for sometime now. So lets dive deep and see why 12 megapixels is the optimum number for a smartphone camera.
Easier processing
As we’ve seen before, more pixels means more data to process, meaning slower processing times and shorter battery life, especially when using processor heavy camera modes like High Dynamic Range (HDR+), Night Mode and Portrait mode.
12 megapixels resolution is more that enough to look crisp on pretty much any display out there right now that most consumers are using– whether that being a smartphone, laptop, computer display, a smart TV or even projector. It still remains a small chunk of data compared to 48, 64, or 108 megapixels.
Social Media image compression
If everyone on this earth viewed social media photos on an UltraHD display– which they are not by the way, images would have to be only about 8.5 megapixels to fill the display and to look one to one pixel perfect, so anything over 12 megapixels is just plain over kill. In fact, it gets worse because most of these images are posted to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or WhatsApp and the amount of compression that goes on behind the scenes reduces the file size even more so. This is to enable you save on that data you use and the memory space used on these companies’ servers as well. The problem here is that it affects the quality of the images.
High resolution 4k video content is shot at less than 12 megapixels
Video also gets the same kind of treatment because it would it would take a tremendous amount of storage to store full quality video without compression on sites like YouTube. And, UltraHD 4K video which people are getting accustomed to these days is 8.5 megapixels. Please who watch UHD Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) 4k content are viewing 8,294,400 (~8.3 megapixels) of video which falls way under the 12 megapixels category that we call optimum. So you’ve definitely got enough resolution to shoot that video.
Fun fact, the main reason why phones went from 8 to 12 megapixels is actually so that they could utilize 4k UHD video recording. Once one company did it, everyone needed to follow suit and and they couldn’t do that if they were shooting on 8 megapixel sensor because it wasn’t enough to for 4k UHD recording.
There is more to photography than megapixels
The 12 megapixels camera is featured in many phones this year, including; the Pixel 4, the iPhone 11, and the Galaxy s10. But despite the similar sensors in these smartphones the difference in overall image quality is pretty staggering that’s because there are so many other pillars to a photograph than just pure pixel count or resolution.
HDR+ technology creates almost impossible images out of harsh lighting scenarios. Portrait mode aims to emulate the depth of a DSLR mirror less camera and color accuracy and color science means that your subject’s skin isn’t going to look horrible. RAW shooting ability also allows for more data to be stored meaning more room for more activities when editing your pictures in the editing software.
Software is key
There are also physical limits to the amount of resolution you can capture in a small smartphone sensor. Tiny pixels perform worse in low-light and you need a very high quality lens to make the most of the details captured. Being able to focus all of these pixels in such a tiny space takes an unreal amount of engineering on the lens front. Instead, manufacturers like Apple, Google and Samsung are much better off putting their focus and efforts into software.
This is evident on the quality of images taken by the different 12 megapixels sensors every year. The hardware is not much different but the software keep changing thanks for AI technology. Some of the improvements made to 3rd party camera systems just by using Google’s own camera app have been staggering.
Pixel binning
Sony’s pro-consumer professional camera the Sony Alpha A7S Mark II is known for having one of the best low-light photography only because they utilize a large 35 millimeter 12.2 megapixel CMOS lens which is full frame. This means the camera has very huge pixels.
Lets try to break this down.
Imagine you take two of the same sized pixels and divide one into 12 million blocks and the other into 48 million blocks. Each block needs to take in enough light to create a good image and the larger the block, the more light can be let in. Because the former has fewer larger blocks each can take in more light, creating an overall cleaner image in low light where photons are sparse.
That’s all well and good but most original device manufacturers are using a technology called pixel binning to create 12 megapixel images when they use a large sensor. In this case the block that has 48 million blocks will be combined in such away that it now 12 million blocks. That means that each of those blocks or photo-size is bigger anyway.
At the end of the day, it seems ridiculous to add more pixels and to go back to the original pixel count and size just by pixel binning. I think what the companies should be doing is investing in larger sensors and therefore larger pixels . With this is mind, its easy to see why 12 megapixels is the optimum resolution at least for now.
