How much Resolution (Mega pixel) is good for a smartphone camera?
Simple answer is 192 to 200MP resolution.
To capture a good quality pictures we need cameras with high resolution and higher the resolution greater the picture quality, details and what not. This is the same case for video quality.
What is a good mega pixel number for a phone camera?
Answer is 192 to 200MP camera.
Ok, bad joke. Just kidding
In the present smartphone world the smartphone cameras are becoming more and more popular especially the resolution — 48, 64, 108MP, etc. and it is easy to get lost in these countless numbers but have you ever paid attention to the resolution of cameras used in flagships like Pixel, iPhone or Samsung?
As of now, the optimum resolution for a camera is 12MP, be it a professional camera or a smartphone camera. Even now, in the sea of numbers most flagship smartphones use 12MP cameras.
Why? Is more megapixels not great?
Not necessarily. More pixels means more details and here’s something that everyone should know.
More resolution isn’t necessarily means more quality. Resolution indicates the details in the picture. 12MP — 12 million pixels and vice versa. As the resolution increases the details in the picture increases as well but the quality of the picture doesn’t depend on this.
Quality of the image depends on so many factors -
- Hardware — Camera sensor, pixel size, lens, aperture.
- Software — Image processing.
In short, A good quality picture depends on good hardware and software processing equally.
Resolution vs Quality
Quality of a picture is how it looks after all the processing stuff. More resolution alone doesn’t increase the quality of a picture.
There are 2 reasons for this:
1. Resolution — We don’t need more resolution at all.
Take a Full HD display, it got a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels, then the total number of pixels the display has 1920 × 1080 = 20,73,600. A camera with 12MP resolution produces an image with 1,20,00,000 pixels.
It is clear that a Full HD display doesn’t carry the quantity of pixels needed to show all the details of a 12MP camera.
Now take a Ultra HD — 3840 × 2160 then the total number of pixels equals to 3840 × 2160 = 82,94,400. Even this display…………I think you got it, which constitutes to the fact that our viewing experience is limited.
Apply this to videos. If we are capturing a 4K video then the resolution turns out to be 8.3MP. The sensor may have 48 or 108MP resolution but all it can go is up to 8.3MP while capturing a video.
2. Quality — Now, take 2 camera sensors with 12MP and 48MP resolution. Here first sensor has less pixels indicating it can take more light in a single pixel whereas in 2nd sensor the pixels are 4 times more and the light is divided into pass through all the pixels.
This doesn’t show any effect in normal lighting conditions, but in low light, the picture produced by a 12MP camera will be sharp because more light is captured in the pixels whereas in case of 48MP camera more noise creeps into the picture. A decent 12MP camera with good image processing like Google or Apple will produce great picture.
Where high resolution is required?
In the above section I said 12MP is a lot as of now then why do we have more resolution sensors?
Take it this way — We use a brush to clean our teeth not to floor tiles.
Similarly more resolution sensors are used in some particular areas like advertising, fashion photography, etc.
Reason is simple — More details. In these areas they need to work on those pictures after capturing it like cropping. More the resolution more the details even after cropping the image.
Another area where resolution plays a major role is printing. If advertising agencies want to hang hoarding for advertisements or if someone wants to print a picture then for a crisp and sharper image we need high resolution cameras because the print size will be definitely larger than smartphone display.
So from a proper distance with good dpi a high resolution sensor is necessary. This entirely doesn’t depend on resolution again but also the viewing distance.
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Then what’s more important?
Nowadays, in smartphones we have as high as 108MP camera sensors to choose from. As discussed in the above software processing is as important as hardware and apart from these the most important factor in a camera is the pixel size or sensor size.
Pixel size — As the name suggests it is the size of an individual pixel. In the above section, I said that pixels in 12MP captures more light than 48MP’s because the pixel size in the case of 12MP sensor is large compared to 48MP’s. So manufacturers should focus on bringing sensors with large pixel size than a huge resolution sensor.
Sensor size directly depends on pixel’s size because all pixels combined a sensor is formed.
Are smartphone manufacturers really dumb using high-res sensors than going for large sensors?
Surprisingly the answer is No. Actually the smartphone OEM’s are smart because they use a technique called pixel binning in which they use 2 or 3 pixel arrays as single pixel to form a large pixel thus allowing to capture more light.
Even in high res smartphone cameras in default they capture pictures using pixel binning i.e. smartphone with 48MP captures pictures in 12MP by default.
That raises another question — Then why OEM’s don’t use 12MP with large sensor?
Simple answer — Number game. This high MP cameras is all about marketing because if one brand uses a 1000MP camera then the other companies do the same to increase their sales.
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