Why More Megapixels Is Bad On Compact Cameras

This is an article explaining why the trend and hunger of customers, and thus, manufacturers, for more and more megapixels on compact digital cameras is actually a bad thing.
Most people that don’t have a technical understanding of the digital photography technology are fooled to believe that the more MP a digicam has, the better its image quality. This was true in the beginning of the digital photography era, but especially nowadays, is totally wrong.

I experienced it myself, having a Sony DSC-P73 from 2003, with 3MP on a 1/2.5″ sensor. It produced images that were actually better than the Sony DSC-H9 I bought in 2007, having 8MP on the same size sensor. I knew then that more MP on a small sensor is indeed bad, but I trusted that technology and know-how had evolved over those years, being able to compensate for the increase of noise. Boy, was I wrong.
The difference was not so much there with pictures taken outdoors on very bright, sunny days, but was definitely noticeable on cloudy days, indoors, etc… At the time of purchase, the P73 cost about €250 if I recall correctly, while the H9 at its introduction cost around twice as much !

I was shocked with this, and it made me totally disgusted with any camera that had a small sensor and more than 6MP.

I think it was only two months after I bought that H9, that I went to search for a second-hand Sony DSC-R1 (which has an APS-C size sensor), and the image quality of that is on par with an SLR camera in combination with very expensive glass.
I now own two of them, and I practically haven’t touched my H9 since I got the first one.

» Best picture quality with 6 megapixels! [ 6mpixel.org ]

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Tags: megapixel, mp, dsc-p73, dsc-h9, dsc-r1, digicam, camera sensor, image quality

Sony DSC-H9 Arrived Today

w00t!
I received my H9 this noon. Really looking forward to using this new camera. Still have to work for about an hour until I can try it out though. But the good part is that I had the chance to fully load my battery, otherwise I would be trying to shoot stuff with a battery capacity of 0.01% 🙂 That would be frustrating!

Once I get used to the camera, I plan to put up seperate web albums containing all sorts of (hopefully) beautiful pictures I have been taking. I’ll be trying to get some serious photography techniques down, so stay tuned.

BTW, we plan to go to Slovenia [ en.wikipedia.org ] for our yearly vacation. This will happen somewhere in early September, so expect some fantastic landscape shots in a few months. We’ll probably start off in Bled [ bled.si ], and make our way through western Slovenia, all the way up to the coast for a visit to Italy’s Trieste. Probably 🙂

Update: I activated the Flickr widget, which you see here in the sidebar of my blog. It presents a view of the 5 last photos added to my Flickr account. For complete photo albums, I will still be using Google’s Picasaweb. Too bad WordPress doesn’t seem to be able to handle the RSS feed URL, otherwise I could show you this live feed in the sidebar as well 😦

Technorati Tags: DSC-H9

Cyber-shot DSC-H7 and DSC-H9 announced by Sony

Finally! 🙂

Yesterday, Sony officially announced the successors of the H2 and H5. Some very welcome improvements are introduced, while the prices are more or less the same as for the old models.

Unfortunately, they won’t be in stores until April…

Read the press release here [ dpreview.com ]

Technorati Tags: cyber-shot, DSC-H7, DSC-H9