Camera companies have long been trying to market their products using the “more pixels are better” approach. This ignores other important elements of image quality and makes the process of choosing the right camera that much more confusing for the average consumer.
It has been commonly known for some time that larger pixels will produce better dynamic range (range of tones from black to white) and less noise. It’s like this… Think of a pixel as a teeny, tiny rain gauge. It’s job is to collect light photons falling onto it which are converted to a digital image. A larger gauge will collect more photons and give a more accurate reading because it has more data to work with.
A larger pixel also takes more data to fill which is cool because an empty pixel represents pure black while a full pixel represents pure white and overfilling it causes highlight clipping or blown out whites. A smaller pixel produces a shorter range of data which makes an image with more contrast, more noise and less dynamic range.
The announcement of Canon’s newest entry into the venerable G series, the G11 http://bit.ly/2PsvXW will have an effective pixel count of 10 Megapixels, down from the 14.7 Megapixels of the G10. This is a really cool thing because the sensor size hasn’t changed meaning the individual pixels will be roughly 30% larger. Get the picture? I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these to see if it lives up to it’s billing. Look for it at the beginning of October.
Canon is marketing this change as a positive affect on image quality and I believe it will be. I hope we see more emphasis on better dynamic range and low noise capability from other companies as well. It’s long overdue.
Canon G11 is a move in the right direction – Less Megapixels