Since the invention of cameras, there has been an ongoing race to invent the highest megapixel camera on the market. Brands like Apple and Samsung are infamous for being able to jam the most megapixels into their smartphone cameras; the trail camera market is not significantly different.........
Camera resolution - megapixels
Since the invention of cameras, there has been an ongoing race to invent the highest megapixel camera on the market. Brands like Apple and Samsung are infamous for being able to jam the most megapixels into their smartphone cameras; the trail camera market is not significantly different. In the previous years, the race is focused on creating the next level of technology, crossing every boundary in the way.
41 Megapixel camera phones are an industry standard now, along with 50.6 DSLR cameras. It is looking like that we are on the verge of having maximum ISOs inside the current generation, given the rate of progress of sensory advancement. Now the camera manufacturers are stressing to have an improved resolution, while fixing the sensors’ size. In this article, we will unfold some basics of camera resolution.
Camera Resolution: How is it affected?
In modern photography, camera resolution is linked to many things.
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Print Size: It is regarded as the most essential reason. In simple words, more resolution means a more significant print size. Printing photos from a computer is measured in Pixels Per Inch (PPI). High quality, industrial grade printers print at approximately 300 PPI. The area of any specific print is then measured by focusing and multiplying height and width and then divided by the PPI amount. If you want to have crystal clear printing on non-commercial printers , that is possible, but for that either you have to lower the PPI amount significantly or make use of third party equipment.
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Cropping varieties: With a big resolution, you have more potential to crop the image. Cropping is basically to highlight one specific thing or area in the picture, but it should be noted that many photographers avoid cropping the picture. When you crop a picture or image, the resolution decreases. For this reason, it is vital to start at a high resolution, so you can decrease the PPI and still have clarity in your prints
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Down sampling: A high resolution provides many advantages for your picture. One of these is that you can resize your picture without compromising too much on the quality of the image. While most advanced high resolution cameras are not dramatically different when compared with low resolution cameras, the benefit of having a high resolution one is that it can be down sampled to low resolution in order to minimise the noise ratio.
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Display Size: In the previous decade, there has been much advancement in display technology. Devices such as phones and monitors are now equipped to display images in high resolution, and the increase of size of these devices ultimately led to more detail being captured and displayed in the images. With 4K technology creeping its way into the market, there is now more pressure on camera companies to produce even higher resolution pictures.
What is the difference between Megapixels / Interpolated Megapixels?
Interpolation can be thought of as the addition of extra pixels into an image by the use of software. Interpolation algorithms add extra pixels into the image to simulate higher detail. Please note that this does not mean that the image actually IS higher detail. No camera on the market has a native megapixel resolution (without interpolation) over 5 megapixels, but advertisers use interpolation software to inflate these megapixel numbers, and that’s how we get to ridiculous amounts of megapixels listed on cameras.
Resolving power / Lens Sharpness
Having a large number of megapixels isn’t needed if your lens is not capable to give you the required information per pixel on the sensor. For example, the Nokia’s 808 PureView has a 38 megapixel resolution, but what matters is how much information you will be able to see on the picture. How will it fare against the 36 megapixel D810, which has a solid full frame lens with it? The answer is that the 808 will lack behind in the category of resolution, as the details in the image will be closer to a 5 megapixel camera or maybe even less than that.
The main reason behind the drawback is that you can’t correlate a part-time small sensor camera and a small lens with a full fledged DSLR that has a high-end lens with astonishing resolving power. There is another difference of diffraction. Small cameras have limited diffraction with huge aperture, which also affects the resolution and sharpness of the image.
When you are seeing alike sensor cameras with unlike resolution, you should bear in mind that the camera with high resolution will give additional stops on the lens. When you have a 12 megapixel camera, your lens will perform but it will totally fail to give enough information on a 36 or 24 megapixel camera. With a higher resolution camera, you will also have to deal with more processing time and space to store the images.
With super high resolution cameras, you should also have the ability to capture the moments. Because without ability, there is no use of these high end cameras.
