Theoretical discussion about CCD / CMOS
 

I changed the title, the first post has also become redundant so read from post #3 on...


Camera (pro)
8MP instead of 12MP? I dont care, quality has in this case nothing to do with
higher MPs.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Admirable effort but we dont really need another thread. A little tired of seeing so many N9 one's pop up.

No disrespect to you.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Note that the quoted 3.9" diagonal is misleading. The screen is about the same height as the N900's, just a bit wider. So if you found the N900 screen too small (I know I did) you won't like this either.

Actually it does, higher pixel density means lower quality.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Fixed that for ya ;)

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

If the estate of the ccd sensor doesn't increase at the same rate as the MP than it usually means LOWER quality, because it gets less photons per pixel and you get noise, esp in lower light environ.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Meh. It's got Swype, and I should probably start learning to use an on-screen keyboard. The world isn't gonna wait for us to be convinced of a technology most other people are happy with.

Can't get behind this one. I don't need my phone to have specs that only a small nuclear power plant could power for a day on. Harmattan looks snappy on the hardware, which should be enough. Good hardware design is about more than just specs.

Again, this is a trade off between good design and practicality - and I must say my phone battery only leaves its' slot when I've botched something and can't turn the thing off.

As you can tell, I'm pretty impressed by the N9. The keyboard is a disappointment, but I think it's time I accepted that touchscreen keyboards are a big part of the future of phones and tablets - and started to learn how to use them better.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Exactly. Ye canna change the laws of physics, Cap'n!

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Have you been drinking a bucket of Jobs-ade? A good big CCD is a plus, granted - a large 5MP CCD might outperform a smaller 8MP CCD, for example - but more pixels are also a plus. like for like, a higher pixel count on the same sized CCD wins out. Don't make me get out my citations ;)

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

I don't even know if you are joking or not, if not could you please explain since the idea I have about sensors, pixel count etc seems to be wrong.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

no he hasn't, because in phones we aren't offered bigger CCD's, we are offered the same tiny CCD with more pixels, which means proportionally more sub-pixel grid, which means less surface area to collect light upon.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

I really dgaf about your citations. You cant break the laws of optical physics.

Back to topic.
I'm totally underwhelmed by the N9 and wont buy it most likely.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Ummm no? Pixel density is the amount of photoreceptors on a chip divided by the surface area of the chip (high mp count on a small sensor, like a smartphone's, for instance, means high density) .Because higher pixel density means less dynamic range and baaaaaaad high iso performance, both of which poke you in the eye when you even glance cursorily through a photo. That's why the best (and most expensive) cameras have humongous sensors, and that's why the low light photos from professional cameras look amazing.

Higer MP, on the other hand, need to be printed on ginormous sizes to make any difference. To be honest, I think that 8mp is about 2 too many on a phone. I have printed some amazing shots on A3 paper from my 5 megapixel Olympus E-1, with a manual focus lens. The quality of the sensor, the lens and, lets not kid ourselves, the skill of the photographer, is far more important than the sheer amount of pixels.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Attack BEFORE askin n confirmin? Attaboy!

(especially when you don't fully understand the opposition's argument... or you're just wrong and hardheaded :D)

You've got more spunk than sense, kid... that's a recipe for something...

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

CCD size is an important part of what makes a good image, but it doesn't mean that you should lower your pixel density - it means you should have a bigger CCD.

As the CCD becomes more dense it's true that each pixel will receive less photons, but they're still all recorded. Once the image is rendered and you compare it to a picture taken with a lower MP camera with the same size CCD you'll see a better image with the more pixel dense CCD because it has recorded more information with more precision. Yes, the image may be more grainy the more you zoom in - but with the lower MP camera it would be more pixellated, and that's worse.

It is true, however, that you may be better off having a lower MP camera with a larger CCD than the opposite - and there are forums all over the internet with arguments about the best compromise. It is also true that there are diminishing returns as you go up the scale - but theoretically it won't hit a wall until you're making CCDs with each pixel only one photon across - and AFAIK no-one is doing that yet ;)

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

....a job at nokia?

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

I think that quantum effects start entering the game (and pooping on the tartan) long before we hit the size of a photon. And I don't think that we can even construct something so small on an industrial scale anyway; that's on the verge of femtotech.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

i repeat.


no he hasn't, because in phones we aren't offered bigger CCD's, we are offered the same tiny CCD with more pixels, which means proportionally more sub-pixel grid, which means less surface area to collect light upon.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Besides, how would you define the size of a photon?

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

I ignored you once already, because it's a gross over-generalisation. Different phones have different sized CCDs - there isn't one 'mobile phone CCD' that everyone puts in their phones, so your point is moot.

Quantum sized ;) Do we really need to start arguing about the scale of quantum objects? Can't we just take as read that it's much smaller than a pixel on any CCD currently? (Actually I'd love to see you prove me wrong on that one - such a pixel-dense CCD would be really cool to toy with).

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Photons are point particles, I think, so they have no "size". For the sake of this thread, I think that we can define the photoreceptors are 1 photon in "size" as long as, statistically, they absorb a single photon most of the time they are exposed to radiation (light). I'm no physicist, just a physics buff, so anyone more knowledgeable out there please correct/ advise.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Cool? The day we can manufacture stuff so small would be the day we say that good ol' nanotech is boring, have phones that are calling us dumb-users, have graphene bones that so that wolverine can cry his heart out, and incidentally, I just HAVE to forward this lol-genespliced-raptor pic to uncle Jimmy on Titan...

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Yeh. Photons aren't technically particles at all, so it would be pointless to give them a size. This is moving into quantum mechanics, which I only have a terse understanding of - but I do know that they're very small ;)

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

your call daddyo, i ain't wasting any further time on the matter.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

Stultifyingly ill-informed incomprehensible babbling.

By all means. Don't worry, I'll wait.

Re: Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread
 

I disagree. In theory, you are right. In practice not so. It's true that all the sensors in mobiles are not the same size but generally they all are WAY TO SMALL so more pixels mean less quality. My ancient minolta Z1 make far better photos than any mobile.
IMHO, 3MP is more than fullHD and enough for majority of consumers. But modern consumers are blind, stupid and have no idea about what they are actually buying but mantra "bigger number is better" is always present. :(

Re: Theoretical discussion about CCDs, formerly known as the "Nokia N9: The non-epic Pros and Cons Thread"
 

@ kinggo: It's just another "my schlong is bigger than yours" case of marketing that's pervading the tech industry. In its "finest" form, this brings us gems like a quad-core 1.5 ghz processor Tegra 3 aimed at smartphones, because the average joe demands to run mathlab and autocad simultaneously on his phone, or 4,5 inch phones, for the millions of elephantiasis-stricken football jocks out there. Generally, this levels out at one point (at least in non-smartphone analog of my examples, the dSLR and the desktop CPU speed space). Let's see what levels of absurdity the smartphone spec race will reach.

Re: Theoretical discussion about CCDs
 

Oh and I know nothing of CCDs, but you can certainly use the wavelength of light as a good reference for the scale at which problems appear.
As a pixel is roughly 1-5 micrometer wide and visible light wavelength is 0.4-0.8 micrometers, we can safely assume that quantum effects and all kind of related issues are already arising.

Re: Theoretical discussion about CCDs
 

First, this is NOT a CCD, it is a CMOS sensor. Different technologies, different results.
The more pixels you have, the higher the resolution. If you have 10 MPs or 2 MPs on a sensor of the same size, you will get more details, more resolution out of the higher MP sensor.
HOWEVER, resolution is not everything. Color accuracy, noise and dynamic range are sometimes more important.
The smaller the pixels, the lower the dynamic range. For those who don't know, dynamic range means being able to expose both the bright and the dark areas of the image.
So a 2MP camera will have more accurate colors, and will look less washed out than a 10MP image (assuming same technology and same sensor size). But the 10MP image will generally show more details if the scene is not a high contrast one.

Re: Theoretical discussion about CCD / CMOS
 

nice tags. hehe
on the argument of MP and detail... well you also have to put in the equation the direction by which the light is hitting the subject. :)
more detail will be seen, even on a lower MP cam, if the light hitting the subject is at an angle. that's based on my experience, not quantum physics. hehe

Re: Theoretical discussion about CCD / CMOS
 

Some details on the sensor size:

(I didn't check the math)

Re: Theoretical discussion about CCD / CMOS
 

Sample images here look about as good as can be expected with that sensor (ie, way too grainy even at ISO 100).