To many Pixels is counter-productive!

I would not even pretend to think that I have a handle this subject. In fact I had a silly little discussion the other day of whether the light gathering abilities of a sensor should be analogous to slicing up a pizza into smaller pieces or should it be consider as dividing up a certain finite amount of marbles.

But it’s understandable why all this is an issue. It’s really not that many years ago when increasing the pixel count on a sensor from say 1 megapixel to 4 made a huge improvement in picture quality. It was just so obvious.

However there did come a time when that slowed down, trouble was the momentum of pixel counting was still going on, we all know this. I remember when I bought my Fuji F30. None of the staff at the photo department of London Drugs seem to understand what a little gem it was. I almost didn’t buy it because of their opinions. And they weren’t the only ones not to see it.

Anyway, for some years now people have been debating this issue because it’s become obvious that pixel density is not paying dividends the way it once did. It’s just seems that camera manufactures are simply cashing in on the general public’s perceptions of the issue – and why not. They are not here to educate the public.

I’m of the opinion that if r&d had gone into making higher quality sensors of the same pixel density that we would be farther ahead. But who the hell am I? Just another guy with an opinion. I can even quote form a site like this
http://www.howtogeek.com/107163/htg-explains-everything-you-know-about-resolution-is-probably-wrong/
“The trade off is this—your sensor has photosites, little tiny receptors that capture light. When you pack more and more photosites onto a sensor to create a higher megapixel count, you lose the beefier, bigger photosites capable of capturing more photons, which will help to render more detail in those low light environments.”

or this one

http://www.dallasartsrevue.com/resources/Cameras-n-Lenses-I-Use.html
"Putting more than 10 megapixels on pinky-fingernail-sized sensors small as P+Ss have in current technology actually reduces quality"

Sure they make arguments supporting my view, but we know that they are not light and sensor engineers.

However http://www.image-engineering.de/ does seem to be a *reasonable* place to quote from. Unfortunately your right this is not current info. High density compacts can hold their own. However is it because sensor engineering is overcoming the pitfalls of pixel density or is there no pitfalls?