I really dgaf about your citations. You cant break the laws of optical physics.

Back to topic.
I'm totally underwhelmed by the N9 and wont buy it most likely.

Ummm no? Pixel density is the amount of photoreceptors on a chip divided by the surface area of the chip (high mp count on a small sensor, like a smartphone's, for instance, means high density) .Because higher pixel density means less dynamic range and baaaaaaad high iso performance, both of which poke you in the eye when you even glance cursorily through a photo. That's why the best (and most expensive) cameras have humongous sensors, and that's why the low light photos from professional cameras look amazing.

Higer MP, on the other hand, need to be printed on ginormous sizes to make any difference. To be honest, I think that 8mp is about 2 too many on a phone. I have printed some amazing shots on A3 paper from my 5 megapixel Olympus E-1, with a manual focus lens. The quality of the sensor, the lens and, lets not kid ourselves, the skill of the photographer, is far more important than the sheer amount of pixels.

Attack BEFORE askin n confirmin? Attaboy!

(especially when you don't fully understand the opposition's argument... or you're just wrong and hardheaded )

You've got more spunk than sense, kid... that's a recipe for something...

CCD size is an important part of what makes a good image, but it doesn't mean that you should lower your pixel density - it means you should have a bigger CCD.

As the CCD becomes more dense it's true that each pixel will receive less photons, but they're still all recorded. Once the image is rendered and you compare it to a picture taken with a lower MP camera with the same size CCD you'll see a better image with the more pixel dense CCD because it has recorded more information with more precision. Yes, the image may be more grainy the more you zoom in - but with the lower MP camera it would be more pixellated, and that's worse.

It is true, however, that you may be better off having a lower MP camera with a larger CCD than the opposite - and there are forums all over the internet with arguments about the best compromise. It is also true that there are diminishing returns as you go up the scale - but theoretically it won't hit a wall until you're making CCDs with each pixel only one photon across - and AFAIK no-one is doing that yet

....a job at nokia?

I think that quantum effects start entering the game (and pooping on the tartan) long before we hit the size of a photon. And I don't think that we can even construct something so small on an industrial scale anyway; that's on the verge of femtotech.

i repeat.


no he hasn't, because in phones we aren't offered bigger CCD's, we are offered the same tiny CCD with more pixels, which means proportionally more sub-pixel grid, which means less surface area to collect light upon.

Besides, how would you define the size of a photon?

I ignored you once already, because it's a gross over-generalisation. Different phones have different sized CCDs - there isn't one 'mobile phone CCD' that everyone puts in their phones, so your point is moot.

Quantum sized Do we really need to start arguing about the scale of quantum objects? Can't we just take as read that it's much smaller than a pixel on any CCD currently? (Actually I'd love to see you prove me wrong on that one - such a pixel-dense CCD would be really cool to toy with).

Photons are point particles, I think, so they have no "size". For the sake of this thread, I think that we can define the photoreceptors are 1 photon in "size" as long as, statistically, they absorb a single photon most of the time they are exposed to radiation (light). I'm no physicist, just a physics buff, so anyone more knowledgeable out there please correct/ advise.