Will a compact 15 Megapixels sensor come out anytime soon?

The 14.7 Megapixel cameras have been out for quite a while. When will the next generation of CCD sensors come?

I would speculate that 14.7 is it. There's no reason for going any higher since you can't really get anymore detail.

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But why would you want a 15mp compact camera? Are you only interested in the number of megapixels and not image quality or other features?

Pascal Parvex said:

The 14.7 Megapixel cameras have been out for quite a while. When will the next generation of CCD sensors come?

Click to expand...

--
People who claim to be open minded never see it my way.

Folk who are mesmerized by the number of Mega-pixels should reflect on the fact that Canon reduced the number of sensor pixels in their latest compact G series camera - this was not a mistake or cost cutting exercise but an attempt to regain better image quality.
--
Keith-C

Image quality from the Canon G11 is decidedly inferior to the G10 except at high ISO. All things being equal, more megapixels means higher resolution, it is not just a amrketing ploy.

It is not just coincidence that the best IQ from FF, APSC, and compact cameras comes from sensors with the highest number of pixels. Of course all other factors need to be taken into account such as the associated electronics and lenses, but you cannot extract detail from a RAW file or JPEG unless it is there in the first place.

Graystar said:

I would speculate that 14.7 is it. There's no reason for going any higher since you can't really get anymore detail.

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Click to expand...

False

Chris59 said:

Image quality from the Canon G11 is decidedly inferior to the G10 except at high ISO. All things being equal, more megapixels means higher resolution, it is not just a amrketing ploy.

It is not just coincidence that the best IQ from FF, APSC, and compact cameras comes from sensors with the highest number of pixels. Of course all other factors need to be taken into account such as the associated electronics and lenses, but you cannot extract detail from a RAW file or JPEG unless it is there in the first place.

Click to expand...

Exactly, I'm so tired of the megapixel bashing.

People need to educate themselves instead of spewing out these knee-jerk reactionary statements.

It's not only Canon, the best (and more expensive) compacts from Panasonic, Sony, Casio, Ricoh also stop at around 10 megapixels, focusing on quality over quantity.

Yes, some DSLRs offer more pixels, but they also tend to have matching optics so you don't waste all the pixels on blur. The newest high-end DSLR from Nikon, D3S, has 12 megapixels, or 1.4 MP/cm². The newest 14 megapixel compacts have as much as 50 MP/cm², so a comparable DSLR would need to have 430 megapixels before the pixels were as small as on a 14 MP compact camera.

The MegaPixle war hasn't ended, it just slowed down a little.

Serious small sensored cameras, like the Panasonic LX3 and the Canon G11 and S90 stopped at 10 MP. Becasue their target market is more concerned about image quality than having the most megapixles in their camera.

But the mass market $200 digicams could continue to race towards higher MP counts, because this is a marketing method that impresses total novices. I have actually wittnessed a Best Buy salesman tell a customer that "this camera is better because it has 12 MP and the other one only has 10 MP," as a group of other customers nodded their heads in agreement.

But lets be honest. If the salesman had said "this model has less chromatic abberation" no one would understand unlesss they launched into an explanation of what chromatic abberation is. So they stick to the simple "more is better" sales technique.

I actually have tracked the increase in sensor MP size from Dpreview's camera timeline. And here's what has happened in the past 13 years...



I suppose there are practical limits to how many megapixles you can stuff onto a very small sensor.

The average MP count is up 13% from 2008, but the huge increases may be over. If you look at the change from year to year, it seems to be flattening out.



--
Marty
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marty4650/sets/72157606210120132/show/
http://www.fluidr.com/photos/marty4650/sets/72157606210120132
Olympus E-30
Zuiko 9-18mm
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Graystar said:

I would speculate that 14.7 is it. There's no reason for going any higher since you can't really get anymore detail.

Click to expand...

While I would agree with you on the second part (and even go so far as to say 10-12MP was sufficient), I have to disagree with you on the first part. Mainly because the manufacturers will need to sell something new to the buying public and more MP seems to rate high in the minds of consumers. Witness the OP's question.

--

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler

aman74 said:

False

Click to expand...

What I said is true...you cannot get more detail.

That's not to say that having more pixels doesn't do other things for you. More pixels should help with aliasing and false color. But more detail? No.

Consider the G10. With a pixel pitch of 1.7um, it's just barely diffraction limited at f/2.8 with an Airy Disk of 3.8um. So it is impossible to get more detail out of a larger pixel count.

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GodSpeaks said:

While I would agree with you on the second part (and even go so far as to say 10-12MP was sufficient), I have to disagree with you on the first part. Mainly because the manufacturers will need to sell something new to the buying public and more MP seems to rate high in the minds of consumers.

Click to expand...

Well you got me there...if a features sells then I guess you just keep selling it.

They're have to change their marketing material though...can't show crops with greater detail. Oh wait...they can just take the marketing images with a DSLR

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Yes, at least for compact cameras, this is all marketing hype.

But when they hit the wall with MP, then what comes next?

It's already happening:

• More ways to detect a face. (Smile, Face, Frown, Blink, Intelligent. Smart, etc.)
• More in camera editing. (Art Filters, Magic Filters, etc.)
• Robo Cameras, like that (Sony Party Shot)
• Cameras that come in 400 color combinations (Pentax Kx)
• Cameras with front LCDs (Samsung TL220)
• Cameras that project images (Nikon S1000)

Clearly, very few are competing with image quality, because that is the hardest and most expensive way to compete. So they resort to style, fashion, and gimmicks.

While all of the above are essentially useless features for anyone who values image quality, thre is one interesting trend worth noting. The competition is heating up among waterproof shockproof cameras, and those are pretty useful for beach goers, boaters, and people with very active lifestyles. Plus, they are virtually indestructable, so they make a good camera for a child.
--
Marty
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marty4650/sets/72157606210120132/show/
http://www.fluidr.com/photos/marty4650/sets/72157606210120132
Olympus E-30
Zuiko 9-18mm
Zuiko 14-54mm II
Zuiko 40-150mm I
Zuiko 70-300mm
Zuiko 50mm f/2.0 macro

KEITH-C said:

Folk who are mesmerized by the number of Mega-pixels should reflect on the fact that Canon reduced the number of sensor pixels in their latest compact G series camera - this was not a mistake or cost cutting exercise but an attempt to regain better image quality.

Click to expand...

No. Image quality was increasing as the pixel count increased, up to the G10. The G11 took it to another level with lower read noise mainly through higher QE. The first implementation of lower noise technology always starts out with slightly bigger pixels, and then later gets miniaturized. Look at the 5D2 - it was a leap forward for Canon in high-ISO performance, better than the 30D at the pixel level with the same size pixels, and less noise per unit of sensor area than the 50D, but then the 7D comes along with smaller pixels, and as good or slightly better than the 5D2 per unit of area. There will most likely be 18MP 1/1.7" sensors with less than, or the same image-level read noise as, the G10, in the future. Read noise doesn't have to exist at all, as cameras start counting photons instead of digitizing charges.

--
John

KEITH-C said:

Folk who are mesmerized by the number of Mega-pixels should reflect on the fact that Canon reduced the number of sensor pixels in their latest compact G series camera - this was not a mistake or cost cutting exercise but an attempt to regain better image quality.

Click to expand...

This is not quite what they've done (or at least, what Sony did when they designed the sensor). What appears to have happened, from reading the sensor specs, is that an oversize pixel has been used for the size of read transistor. The effect of this is to make the sensor more 'sensitive', i.e. it produces a larger output for a given exposure, or, thinking of it another way, it's base ISO is higher. The higher base ISO gives better performance at higher ISO's. This is a similar trick to the one Nikon pulled off withe the D3, to give their not-quite-as-good sensor tech better performance at high ISO's than its Canon competitors. The downside to this trick is that the sensor cannot collect the same absolute number of photons, so it cuts DR at low ISO's. For the D3, this didn't matter a lot, since a FF camera has DR in hand. For a compact it is more of an issue, and the G11 is noticeably inferior to the G10 at low ISO's, according to DPR's tests.

I don't think better high ISO performance can be described as 'better image quality' in general.

Graystar said:

aman74 said:

False

Click to expand...

What I said is true...you cannot get more detail.

That's not to say that having more pixels doesn't do other things for you. More pixels should help with aliasing and false color. But more detail? No.

Consider the G10. With a pixel pitch of 1.7um, it's just barely diffraction limited at f/2.8 with an Airy Disk of 3.8um. So it is impossible to get more detail out of a larger pixel count.

.

Click to expand...

Although you are certainly getting into the "law" of diminishing returns, it is incorrect to think that you do not get more detail just because a pixel is the same size as an Airy disc.

Think about it. The shape of an Airy disc is a disc with fringes of alternating dark and light rings and a pixel is a sharply defined square. You need hundreds of pixels before you even remotely accurately have enough to create an image of an Airy disc.

Certainly the amount of useful detail you can extract from an image is limited as you increase the pixel count, but at no point does it become zero. Also, as you point out, there is the potential for less aliasing and less colour fringing. You can also add, that with enough pixels you can do away with the AA filter altogether, and you can apply more sharpening and more noise reduction without visibly increasing artefacts and losing detail respectively.

Canon made a backward step when it reduced the pixel count on the G11 and the difference in resolution can be easily seen in the DPR tests even at the f stop used.

Pascal Parvex said:

The 14.7 Megapixel cameras have been out for quite a while. When will the next generation of CCD sensors come?

Click to expand...

Regards,
Rachis
---------------
I am an Amateur / Enthusiast / Hobbyist / etc… not a Pro = I can be wrong

Cautions:
I may when the mood suits me become a pixel peeper!

Marty4650 said:

The competition is heating up among waterproof shockproof cameras, and those are pretty useful for beach goers, boaters, and people with very active lifestyles. Plus, they are virtually indestructable, so they make a good camera for a child.

Click to expand...

Yes indeed, and good to see too. I bought the Canon Powershot D10 last year and it has been a lot of fun to use (my gravatar was shot with it). Now if only they would continue the waterproof camera trend AND work on improving the image quality of these cameras.

Hey Nikon... where is my digital Nikonos??? (with HD Video, if you please).

--

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler

Marty4650 said:

Yes, at least for compact cameras, this is all marketing hype.

But when they hit the wall with MP, then what comes next?

It's already happening:

• More ways to detect a face. (Smile, Face, Frown, Blink, Intelligent. Smart, etc.)
• More in camera editing. (Art Filters, Magic Filters, etc.)
• Robo Cameras, like that (Sony Party Shot)
• Cameras that come in 400 color combinations (Pentax Kx)
• Cameras with front LCDs (Samsung TL220)
• Cameras that project images (Nikon S1000)

Clearly, very few are competing with image quality, because that is the hardest and most expensive way to compete. So they resort to style, fashion, and gimmicks.

While all of the above are essentially useless features for anyone who values image quality, thre is one interesting trend worth noting. The competition is heating up among waterproof shockproof cameras, and those are pretty useful for beach goers, boaters, and people with very active lifestyles. Plus, they are virtually indestructable, so they make a good camera for a child.
--

Click to expand...

I agree. I might become interested again if a good, tough camera comes out. As it is, I've got a couple of old Canon models here, both 5MP, and more than sufficient for what I use a P&S to do. I had a little Ryobi here for a bit, 8MP, and it was something of a stone ax of a camera, but fairly tough and could produce good photos. It totally lacked a viewfinder, though, and I've spent 60 years using an OVF of one kind or another, so I had trouble with it and passed it on.

Some years ago, I tried a 7MP--I forget the brand--and discovered my Pentax *istD gave me much better pictures, as it should have, even though the MP count was lower.

--
Charlie Self



http://www.charlieselfonline.com

Chris59 said:

Graystar said:

aman74 said:

False

Click to expand...

What I said is true...you cannot get more detail.

That's not to say that having more pixels doesn't do other things for you. More pixels should help with aliasing and false color. But more detail? No.

Consider the G10. With a pixel pitch of 1.7um, it's just barely diffraction limited at f/2.8 with an Airy Disk of 3.8um. So it is impossible to get more detail out of a larger pixel count.

.

Click to expand...

Although you are certainly getting into the "law" of diminishing returns, it is incorrect to think that you do not get more detail just because a pixel is the same size as an Airy disc.

Click to expand...

You're right. But if you where to calculate it yourself, or maybe just read what I wrote , you would see that the pixel is half the size of the Airy Disk. At that point you cannot get any more detail.

You can "think about it..." all you like...science say you can't get any more detail.

.