Reply With QuoteNo, what you're saying is basically incorrect. If you have 2 sensors the same size, the one with the more megapixels is going to have smaller individual pixels which is bad. The sweet spot for aps-c sensors seems to be about 12mp, and if you go and look at the chart I posted above, you'll see how much larger an aps-c sensor is compared to a phone one. The way to justify putting more megapixels on a sensor is to either make the physical sensor bigger or develop ways to keep individual pixels large (canon has gap-less microlenses and then there's back illumination etc)
I haven't even seen what jobs has said about it, that information comes straight from my experience with digital cameras technology. if Jobs has said something about the current state of camera phone megapixels being too high, he's actually right. Examples of what I've been saying in the real world:
Olympus SLR boss announces 12mp is enough:
"Twelve megapixels is, I think, enough for covering most applications most customers need," said Akira Watanabe, manager of Olympus Imaging's SLR planning department
We have no intention to compete in the megapixel wars for E-System," Olympus' line of SLR cameras, he said.
Increasing the number of megapixels on cameras is an easy selling point for camera makers, in part because it's a simple concept for people to understand.
For one thing, smaller pixels can mean more noisy speckles at the pixel level and can reduce the dynamic range, so brighter areas wash out and darker areas become swaths of black."
Canon reduces megapixels in it's flagship compact camera:
"When Canon came up with a new model of G11 which replaces the G10, they decided to reduce the megapixel and improve the image quality. What they found was that while increasing megapixels was making the customer feel that they are getting something better, it wasn’t adding any much value other than increasing the file sizes. In fact it was generating more noise at higher ISOs, resulting in poor photo quality."
