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Comment by kevingessner | Hacker News Reader

16 megapixels packed into a 1/2.3" sensor? Ouch. That's the smallest sensor size on this image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sensor_sizes_overlaid_ins...

I hope DPReview does a review on this camera -- I suspect it's going to produce extremely poor photos.

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http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-camera-se...

this page has a convenient calculator for diffraction limit of a sensor given it's MPix and dimensions. it shows that a 1/2" sensor with 16MPix becomes diffraction limited at f/2.7, so this slightly bigger one would be limited at around f/3. lens is specced at f/2.8-5.9. results out of anything more than the widest end might be less than spectacular...

>> I suspect it's going to produce extremely poor photos.

Relative to what? Compared to an SLR? Sony's RX100? The iPhone 4? Other 1/2.3" cameras?

Keep in mind that a 1/2.3" sensor is still significantly larger than something like, say the 1/3.2" sensor in the iPhone 4. Scaled to real-world image sizes (i.e. Facebook, etc.) the downsampled images will probably be good enough for most snapshots.

What's the point of 16MP if you're only concerned about scaling to Facebook?

Exactly. Megapixels only really matter if you're doing photo-editing or photo-printing. If it's being down-scaled - and it is, if you are uploading it to whatever social media site - then a 5MP iPhone 4 camera will serve you just as well.

But if you're not ready to make the smartphone/data-plan plunge, or your smartphone has a crap camera...

Well, except for the part where high density, low area sensors tend to have more noise and poorer sensitivity. If you were to assume that the iPhone and this device's sensors were the same size (they're probably not), then the iPhone's images would generally turn out better.

They also matter if you do a lot of "digital zoom". While I'm not a fan of digital zoom, people seem to use it.

What's the point of 16MP anyway? I've been very happy with my Nikon D40 shooting at 6BP.

There really isn't much of a point to 16MP, but seeing how the camera comes with it, and how people will practically use it (i.e. downsample), there's really nothing you can do but accept that it's there.

Yup, it's a real shame. Imagine if they made it 5 megapixels, with BSI and full well? You could still make 8x10 prints (if anyone still does that...), but you could also take photos of your friends in a dark bar with no flash at f4. It would be amazing. But no one is doing it, and I have no idea why. Even the SLRs are now up above 20 megapixels. Why? I'm really anxious to see if Apple has the balls to keep the next iPhone at 8, or if they bump it up to 13.

Because most consumers aren't well informed?

If you buy into the notion that the ideal sensor pixel size is around 6 microns, the megapixel count on a 1/2.3" sensor would only be around 0.8 megapixels.

On the other hand, I recall one of the leading sensor designers (Eric Fossum?) stating that high megapixel counts don't necessarily sacrifice image quality or sensitivity.

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