More Megapixels, Better Camera?

Not necessarily! If you find that pictures from your 10 megapixel camera phone don’t stack up against those from your pal’s lower megapixel digital SLR camera, here’s why…

Sensor Size

How a digital camera works is: light lands on a sensor where pixels collect light and converts it into data. The more pixels packed onto a sensor, the higher the image resolution. The sensor size and pixels in a mobile phone is way smaller than the sensor found in a DSLR camera – bigger sensors have bigger light-catching pixels. To achieve a high resolution, camera phone makers pack as many tiny pixels as they can onto tiny sensors. The pixels in these point-and-shoots are not the same as the high-quality pixels found on DSLR cameras.
Noise

When you’re taking pictures at night under disco lights with your camera phone, a lot of heat is created, which is one of the ways “noise” is generated – not the audio sort, but it’s the rainbow­ colored random grains you sometimes see in pictures taken in a dim setting. A lower megapixel count with a bigger sensor on the other hand will produce cleaner images. Advanced digital camera models tone down the grains with noise reduction functions, a feature you normally won’t find on a camera phone.

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