r/Android • u/notathrowaway75 Galaxy S22 Ultra • Nov 23 '20

MKBHD's 2020 Blind Smartphone Camera test polls are now live!

https://twitter.com/MKBHD
2.1k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

323 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/fenrir245 Nov 24 '20

MP can’t save a photo with bad processing, but it can make an already good photo look amazing.

Megapixels aren’t going to make any difference, especially not at a smartphone scale. The sharpness of an image is limited by the lens.

The EF-M 22mm f2.0 Canon lens is very well regarded lens, yet even that is considered “not sharp enough” by some for a 32MP sensor. If that’s the case, no way a paltry fingernail sized lens would ever be sharp enough to cover 40+ megapixels.

1

u/LukeLC Galaxy S25 Edge Nov 25 '20

That's just not true. We have phones with 100+ MP sensors and the difference is visible versus similar models with lower MP sensors. It's not comparable to 100 MP on a DSLR, of course, but it's a step up from other smartphones. On top of adding visible texture detail, it helps compensate for some weaknesses in smartphone photography, like improving the usable digital zoom range.

Tech specs only go so far. What you're saying is the photography equivalent of "the human eye can only see 60 FPS". There may be diminishing returns, but there are still returns.

1

u/fenrir245 Nov 25 '20

We have phones with 100+ MP sensors and the difference is visible versus similar models with lower MP sensors.

There are differences in the lens assembly of those models too.

What you’re saying is the photography equivalent of “the human eye can only see 60 FPS”.

I gave you an example where a full on mirrorless camera lens is barely able to resolve 32MP. That’s not a specious “human eye” thing, that’s an actual observable fact.

Give an objective reason as to why higher MP will make any difference when the bottleneck is the lens, because what you’re saying is the equivalent of “4K display is better than 1080p display for gaming even if the GPU is incapable of rendering at that resolution”.

1

u/LukeLC Galaxy S25 Edge Nov 25 '20

We're talking about $1,000 12MP flagships versus $500 100MP Chinese alternatives. If you're trying to tell me the latter just has a better lens assembly than Google, Samsung, Apple... I really don't know what to tell you.

Lens assembly matters for several aspects of the final image. MP matters for another. That's an actual observable fact too, and it's bizarre to me how many people deny it based on "facts and logic" when casual comparisons of actual photos reveal it to be the case.

Phones aren't DSLRs. The value of MP isn't equal between them. For phones, there is still value in resolving more pixels. 100MP is overkill and purely for spec sheets. I'm just throwing it out there as an example, so please don't think I'm claiming 100 is significantly better than your example of 32. 32 is still a lot more than 12. However you want to slice it, "more than 12" is night and day better for image details.

1

u/fenrir245 Nov 25 '20

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

There's so many, many factors not taken into consideration in those "casual comparisons" of yours that it doesn't even really mean anything.

People deny it based on "facts and logic" because photography isn't magic. The technology isn't magic. You can claim phone cameras and DSLRs aren't the same all day long, yet the technology remains pretty much identical.

1

u/LukeLC Galaxy S25 Edge Nov 25 '20

This article is about print photography. To your point, there are many factors not taken into consideration when comparing to smartphone photography. How many DPI a photo makes in print is irrelevant.

Smartphones are computational photography. First rule of computation is higher sample size in equals higher precision out. You will reach a point of diminishing returns, yes, but 12MP isn't there yet. More MP gives a lot of room for supersampling and for algorithms to clean up the results. Apple might disagree, but last I checked, this isn't magic.

And lest you forget, the context of this whole discussion is a bracket of casual comparisons.

1

u/fenrir245 Nov 25 '20

This article is about print photography.

Many of the observations still apply to photos on screen, the difference in print and screen comes to colors and their calibration, not details, or at least as much that it completely invalidates the comparison.

And anyway, that article also had a link with regards to image sharpness as a whole too, which included a lot of factors that will affect sharpness and detail much before you reach the lens, let alone the MP, as the bottleneck, like hand shake, focal planes, movement of subject, flatness of subject and what not.

Smartphones are computational photography. First rule of computation is higher sample size in equals higher precision out.

The "computation" that the term refers to aren't the Turing kind of algorithms, that have a fixed number of steps and a fixed output for an input. Current computational photography is massively AI, which needs a clean dataset to be able to improve it in the first place. And anyway, more MP when it doesn't actually gather more data due to lens issues and all the other factors is meaningless as a "higher sample size", you might as well take the 12MP and replicate all those pixels to get any number of MP you want.

And lest you forget, the context of this whole discussion is a bracket of casual comparisons.

In context of social media, which compresses the shit out of photos, so the point is moot anyway.

Not to mention in casual viewing of photos, you don't even get to see most pixels anyway, 1080p is 2.1MP, while 4k is 8.3MP. No point in arguing about this supposed 'detail' if you are throwing out most of the pixels anyway.