Thread: N86 Camera vs. N900 Camera
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attila77 is offline attila77
2009-11-08 , 10:25
Posts: 3,319 | Thanked: 5,610 times | Joined on Aug 2008 @ Finland
#46
Originally Posted by titan View Post
aperture size is independent of optics quality, which also limits the line resolution.
The N900 may have a higher-quality Carl-Zeiss lens and I don't want to defend their
specific MP recommendations based on 2007 technology but there are definitely
physical limitations.
The fact that you CAN take good pictures in broad daylight suggests that the optics quality is just fine. If it was a lens limitation, the images would be no good regardless of lighting conditions.

Even the Canon marketing dept has realized that and reduced MP from 14.7 (G10) to 10 (G11) for a 1/1.7" CCD sensor.
That is unrelated to lens quality, it's the diffraction limit that is being overrun. With ~15Mpix per 1/1.7", the Canon is already diffraction limited at f/2.6. The lens is 2.8-4.5, so it's quite clear that nominal resolution images could not be recorded even if it had an optically IDEAL lens.

It took that number from a current c't magazine article, which compares new sensor technologies. It is the ratio of incoming photons to released electrons.
That's not thermal (?) noise. That's just one factor of many in the noise equation. What about readout noise ? What about A/D resolution/quality ? What about the bayer array ?

The bottom line is:
A lower megapixel number does not automatically result in higher quality images. Image quality is a result of the imaging system as a whole.

The anti-megapixel crusade is doing the same thing as the megapixel rush did - making it a story of megapixels ONLY. There is far too many factors involved than to be able to distill such a conclusion.