With 'Better images' people often mean today less noise and higher dynamic range.
While this is true, the returns are diminishing.
10y ago a 35mm sensor was 1 stop better than APSC, today a 35mm sensor is 1 stop better than APSC [1]. The difference is that 10y ago an APSC sensor was usable at 800 iso and 35mm at 1600iso, while today an APSC sensor is usable at 6400iso and 35mm at 12800iso. The usable range today for the smaller sensor is 7 stops (starting at iso 100) and 35mm is 8 stops, while it was 4 stops and 5 stops 10y ago. 35mm will always be 1 stop better for the same generation [2], but the increase of 1 stop in relation to the usable range (1/5 vs. 1/8) is going down. Same for dynamic range.
[1] Due to 35mm sensor being double the size of APSC and iso being log2
[2] And manufacturer
There's other quality issues in an image though, edge definition and depth of field for example. All things being equal a larger sensor with equivalent glass will always provide better edge definition, and having both 35mm and m43 chip bodies I would say the difference is noticeable. And for depth of field it depends what you want. I can isolate a subject much better with a large chip camera, but that's no use for a macro image where the small chip camera is better.
Bad lens, bad image, a larger sensor doesn't help in any way. Good lens, good image, a smaller sensor isn't worse.
If you want shallow DoF, you can get plenty of m43 and APSC (16/1.4, 56/1.2, 90/2) lenses for shallow DoF. If you want razor thin DoF - nose sharp, eyes blurred - you need <=1.4 35mm glass.
If you want full body portrait with blurred near background you need medium format lenses (or far away background).
If I build a lens that will cover a hypothetical 16MP sensor with good quality over the whole sensor, it will also cover a hypothetical 16MP sensor of half the dimensions. However the smaller sensor demands a higher optical resolution (line pairs / mm) than does the larger to resolve those 16MP with the same clarity, and so the smaller sensor will deliver lower effective output resolution (again, in terms of resolvable line pairs) than will the larger sensor given the same glass.
And if I'm searching for shallow depth of field, again the larger sensor has inherent advantages. Physics isn't your friend once you start trying to build arbitrarily fast small sensor lenses to replicate what's easy with a larger sensor lens.
I'd be delighted if these concerns weren't true; my m43 camera is much lighter to cart around than my FX one :) And yes, we can now get DR and noise performance from a smaller chip that we used to not be able to with a larger chip - but there are definite advantages still to the larger chip that won't go away.
Faster lenses help up to a point but since f stops of under 1 aren't really a thing, you're not going to replicate a large sensor with a fast lense with a smaller sensor.
Higher Resolution, yes if you need 50mp because 24mp is not enough to print 3m x 2m.
I shoot pics of my kid with a $3500 35mm dSLR and constantly save pictures to my phone. Whenever I show people the pics on my phone, they almost immediately say how amazing the photos are and ask what kind of phone this is.
I'm not some distinguished photographer, but with the right camera and lens, the color, contrast, bokeh, light, some minimal composition (not in that order) all come together very nicely.
Same holds true for video as well.
My point is, this comes up again and again, without any context that the pics weren't taken with the phone.
"Same holds true for video as well."
Which is the reason everyone seems to shoot with a GH5S and no longer with 5DMXs.
Also, and I think we agree on this, "better lens" doesn't need to mean "expensive", I can get very similar results from a cheap 40mm f/2.8 vs. and a 10x cost 50mm f/1.2 when the lighting is difficult and I can use a very high ISO.
As for the video part of your comment, let's agree to disagree.
I was trying to say that I get people commenting on how good my videos are because they're used to seeing video shot on mobile phones.
However, I'll take Canon color and 1.74x crop 4k over a 2x crop any day...shit 500mbps Canon codec be dammed.
I'm totally aware of the difference in quality between a decent camera and a phone.
An APS-C camera in capable hands is just as good as full frame.
You are correct, On a sunny day both types of device will produce similar looking 1000 pixel wide web-ready exterior landscape shots. Now take them into a dark cathedral with high stained-glass windows, try for a quick portrait of a priest walking by holding a candle, and the DSLR will still get the shot, and it will look great. Smartphones cannot do this...yet.
I'm not too hung up on shallow DoF - it looks nice for a portrait or picture of your meal but I think there's always room for higher resolution sensors capturing a world of visual information (provided they can produce great dynamic range which a lot of recent/new high resolution FF sensors do).
APS-C, similar to M4/3's 16-20 megapixel sweet spot, seems to be stuck at 24 megapixels for good dynamic range results.
The main difference would be the selection of lenses, but even with similar DOF/FOV, the 40D still produces better images IMHO.
Specifically, what is the reason multiple sensors with smaller pixels could not perform as well or better if their combine total sensor area was larger?
The L16 is an example. It had issues, but they mostly seemed like implementation problems rather than inherent limitations.
After all their challenges seeing that they still apparently raised 100MM in capital, it would seem to suggest something better is possible. https://spot.light.co
Also they have bigger hardware that today’s smartphones would want, but in principal I’ve never understood why smaller pixels are inherently worse as opposed to total photons collected.
The L16 has some low light and dynamic range problems, I believe owing to this very situation.
Correction: Shot noise[2] is related to the number of photons hitting the sensor.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(photography)#Reci...
Shameless plug, but every single photo on my Instagram was taken with the camera: https://www.instagram.com/mabunday/
It really is awesome and when friends ask for camera recommendations I always recommend something small because it's the only thing they'll carry around (and thus use) consistently. I know so many people that bought a DSLR as their starter camera that now permanently sits as a house decoration because "it's too heavy."
Sensor quality matters much less than it did at the beginning of the DSLR revolution, because the bottleneck in the image chain lies elsewhere. The vast majority of photographers rarely if ever print their images, so most of the advantages of a large sensor are rendered moot.
A 4x6 print didn't have crazy high resolution. They usually use 1800x1200px as input resolution (~2.2MP). Your iPhone X is actually slightly more detailed (2436x1125=2.7MP). And if you're talking about stops of dynamic range, print has always been less than a screen.
But if you want a photo to look crystal-clear on your iMac's slide show screen saver? That's 5120x2800px=14.3MP. It allows for stunning detail which consumers just never had access to before. (Even the iPad Pro is 5.6MP, more than double a traditional photo.)
But the real advantage, of course, in both megapixels and dynamic range is in post-processing: you can crop to the quarter of the photo that's interesting and bring out the detail in the shadows and it's still high-quality enough to use as an eye-catching retina-resolution header for your Medium post. Remember, phones don't have deep optical zoom lenses, so megapixels have to do that job instead.
Which is why most consumers used fairly crummy fixed-lens cameras with fast film and were perfectly happy with digital cameras with ~4MP effective resolution. You do need a whole bunch of resolution if you're printing to double-page magazine spreads, large-format fine art prints or billboards, which is why professional photographers (other than photojournalists) were relatively late adopters of digital cameras.
>And if you're talking about stops of dynamic range, print has always been less than a screen.
At your local photomat, yes. A good giclée print has about 11 stops of dynamic range. A normal 8-bit LCD has about six stops of dynamic range and a really good OLED has about ten stops under ideal viewing conditions.
My broader point is that pretty much all modern cameras are more than good enough for 99% of users. It's a tiny minority who will actually see the benefit of better cameras in the images they produce. Most people will only ever notice an improvement in resolution if they're pixel-peeping in Lightroom and will only notice an extra stop of dynamic range on the histogram. If you go out and buy an entry-level DSLR with a kit lens, you probably won't get noticeably better results than just using your iPhone. That's a good thing for consumers, but a bad thing for camera manufacturers.
See for example: http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/dynamicrange2/
Also, for any print that is intended to fit in an album or a frame, there is little benefit over 3 MP. For really, really big prints? Maybe 8, to err on the safe side. Like most analog reproduction media, prints tend to be very forgiving.
Someone viewing their 12 MP photos on a 500 ppi HDR mobile screen is pretty much getting the best comparable experience since the dawn of image capture.
Which of course doesn't mean that the tiny, faded black and white print from a hundred years ago you find in your grandpa's old wallet doesn't convey much more emotion.
Edit: Too slow, crazygringo beat me to it.
Yeah at night the software cheats like hell but still.
And while my mobile phone has tones of great features (super slow etc.) my DSLR is heavy and autofocus is okayisch.
I really expect something good from Canons upcoming 90D otherwise i'm not sure how long hobby people will keep using DSLRs.
Of course there are differences in bokey, low light performance, macro, tele etc. but i was very impressed what a Samsung S9 can do now already. I can't imagine that they will stop and you can do a lot with software.
Apart from that, loved the phone.
Actually, there is: improved sensor technology. A sensor is not just a passive collector of photons (which would make size the only thing that matters).
All other things being equal, newer sensors usually improve on thermal noise, dynamic range, etc over older sensors. When things are not equal, a 5-6 generations older sensor might still have worse low light than a smaller one.
"One reason for the saccadic movement of the human eye is that the central part of the retina—known as the fovea—which provides the high-resolution portion of vision is very small in humans, only about 1–2 degrees of vision, but it plays a critical role in resolving objects.[citation needed] By moving the eye so that small parts of a scene can be sensed with greater resolution, body resources can be used more efficiently. " from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade
The nerves that connect to brain are impressive tho, the thickest in our body.
I for one would love for Apple or Samsung or whoever to release a photographer’s smartphone with a micro 4/3 mount (it’s the only multi firm properly documented lens mount system and also seems to be the sweet spot for trading off image quality, sensor readout speed, and size) BUT the phone would be at minimum 20mm thick.
There are plenty of camera companies, mostly using Sony sensors or Sony fabs.
The lack of manufacturing diversity isn’t a shortage. It’s a different problem. Is there a shortage of cpus?
When it comes to ILC cameras, the role of processing is fulfilled by the photographer's editing software (e.g. Lightroom, Capture One Pro, Photoshop, RawTherapee, Darktable etc.). Especially these days, with the camera market being decimated by smartphones, the kind of person who uses a dedicated camera usually wants control over the processing.
> I'm sure in many cases a cellphone camera will shoot a better image than something like your RX100 due to this.
The out of camera JPEG on a smartphone might look nicer than an out of camera JPEG on an RX100M6 but after a bit of processing with the right software, the RX100M6 will blow it away. The resolution, dynamic range and noise characteristics are all much better. The RX100M6 can even shoot 24fps RAW for quick HDR brackets if you need it to.
Smartphones will definitely produce a nice image easier than a real camera but a real camera in the end, with the right work, still produces a better image.
They essentially can. The A7RIII and RX100M6 can both shoot RAW to their buffers at 24fps then write it out. A full bracket usually takes less than a second and works just fine handheld.
> Shooting HDR quickly has the benefit that while you want something to reduce rotational shake, you don't need to be much longer in the position than the exposure time itself dictates. You can use the time you need to move to a new angle/direction to compress and store the RAWs, as barely anyone has hardware capable of yanking the camera to a new angle in a few milliseconds, just alone due to the power density needed to have something able to do this compact enough for casual handling. Imagine it like a much, much faster clockwork, with the purpose to deliver dozens of kilowatts for a few milliseconds to accelerate the camera and slow it right back down. Almost no one has such a thing that would keep the device steady during the exposure, but permit very short spacing between exposures that change the direction it is pointing by more than 20% FOV. If you were to rotate the camera that fast at over 50fps, good luck with the light you need (hint: your lens can't provide DOF at the aperture you need to do this even in full sunlight (sunny 16 rule)).
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. It sounds like maybe you're after some kind of automtaed panorama bracketing or something?
The smaller pixel sensor will have a better resolution in lp/mm for example, if downscaled to the same resolution as a lower resolution sensor, in many cases you will end up with an image with better detail and less noise (due to averaging out the noise). This is why cameras like the Sony A7iii take a 6K readout and downsample it to 4K for video output.
My comment about computational processing still stands though. While a RAW file will give you much more ability to process, complex computational processing just isn't used to nearly the same level in any raw processor I'm aware of (DxO Photolab is probably the most advanced at this, but still is relatively basic), which does make it a valid comparison at the moment. The simple fact is that small sensors these days have closed the gap with larger sensors significantly, while there are areas they are inadequate in, there are other shooting conditions where the differences are minimal which is a statement I would have scoffed at when I started working with cameras 6 years ago.
I studied photography before digital and the same was true then: larger formats equalled higher quality particularly for landscape and scenes with specular reflections. The reason was explained to me like this: there is a tree with shiny leaves and these leaves have specular reflections (reflecting the sun directly) so there are extremely small but very bright points of light. These specular reflections hit the film/sensor and spread around a bit. If the grains/pixels are small the highlights will spill into adjacent grains/pixels and reduce sharpness.