The Resolution of the Human Eye Tested Is 10MP
ipvm.com
ipvm.com
Some differences between the human eye and a typical digital camera:
- resolution varies hugely over the retina
- color sensitivity varies hugely over the retina (you can't see color outside of the fovea)
- the optic nerve has only about 1M ganglion cells (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optic_nerve#Structure), so there is significant 'compression' very early on ("In the fovea, which has high acuity, these ganglion cells connect to as few as 5 photoreceptor cells; in other areas of retina, they connect to many thousand photoreceptors.")
- bandwidth of the optic nerve is estimated at 10 megabit per second (https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-07/uops-prc0726...) (1)
- that is very soon further compressed; I can't find decent estimates for what can be consciously seen, but am sure it is less than 1kB/second (corollary: photographic memory doesn't exist)
=> "The eye is not a camera" would be a better answer.
(1) as with almost all of these estimates, a factor of ten is nothing.
The point is that the eye has the effective resolution, in terms of reading an eye chart, of a 10MP camera.
If you zoom in on those photos, you can see that the camera images entire lines of text at the same resolution. A camera can 'read' the entire chart in one snapshot.
The eye doesn't work that way. For example, it is anisotropic in resolution; at the fovea, it has more 'pixels', but away from it, it has way fewer. Effect? You cannot read a line from a Snellen chart without moving your eyes. The eye doesn't take snapshots.
Reason I point this out, notice how blocky the images in general are, especially with lower light? Take any prosumer/pro digital camera of the same resolution and you'll get significantly better results, especially at 1 lux.
To reword the title to be a lot more accurate, "the resolving power of the human eye is roughly equivalent to a 10MP IP camera in a well lit room". Definitely wordier and less click baity, but accurate to the "analysis" they did.