[MossyRocks]

While a bit of a tongue in cheek with thread title it does seem to crop up from time to time. Last month Sony announced that it now has a 48 megapixel mobile sensor. I had intended to post it here but had forgotten until my mind got jogged this morning. It the pixel size is .8 microns across and the sensor has a diagonal of 8mm which looks to put it somewhere near a 1/2" sensor size. It is claimed it captures 4k video at 90fps as well.

When I saw it posted last month I saw a bunch of people claim that this was going to mean the death of DSLRs now that a cellphones will be able to have this super high pixel count. I do wonder how noisy the red channel will be given that the pixel size at 800nm is only slightly larger than the bottom end of the red spectrum around 750nm.

[BigMackCam]

I'd be impressed by a lens that's capable of resolving sufficiently well to make good use of that sensor. The pixel density must be eye-watering, and extremely unforgiving of optical performance...

[08amczb]

Megapixels are only one parameter. Small sensors can be as good as a DSLR sensor in some aspects, but not in all in the same time. In general the laws of physics limits the small sensors. Of course AI can do a lot artifically, thats not limited... Also you can have more different sensors in a mobile and merge the images with AI.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 had 40MP, don't worry DSLR will stay with us for now.

[FozzFoster]

Doooooomed !

[robiles]

There was a time when i had a "better camera" on my phone (8mp iirc) than my camera was(6mp K100D. Guess which one got more serious use (hint: it did one thing but did it good)

[victormeldrew]

At this pixel size the number of photons hitting each site would be low enough to make granularity quite a significant issue...

[ChristianRock]

Megapickles...

And yes it will probably generate some annoying articles.

[RobA_Oz]

The day a manufacturer makes an ILC in a phone is the day things will get serious. Even then, making it work in a compact form will be a challenge, so I really don’t see it happening. The present add-on lenses are handy, but I can’t believe they make a good match for the phone optics.

[MossyRocks]

I'd be impressed by a lens that's capable of resolving sufficiently well to make good use of that sensor.

When I first saw it I pointed out the lens issue. For it to not be diffraction limited it would have to be something like a f/.5 lens or there about (maybe it was f/.7). That will give a very shallow DoF. This also assumes that it is an ideal lens and cheap cellphone lenses are pretty far from that.

The pixel density must be eye-watering, and extremely unforgiving of optical performance...

Couldn't agree more. Also they are starting to run into hard limits put in place by physics. To get the resolving power they need a very wide open lens which will help with light gathering but will give an ever shallower DoF. They are getting closer to having pixels smaller than wavelengths of visible light so there will be photons that just miss the tiny wells.

I just realized something that is rather sad. We are talking about being diffraction limited at apertures greater than f/1 yet with pixel dense DSLRs it is somewhere between f/8 and f/11.

[Aberrator]

Pixel count is just marketing gimmick at this point. It's multiple lenses and AI powered computational photography that is making pressure on big cameras.

---------- Post added 2018-08-31 at 17:12 ----------

The day a manufacturer makes an ILC in a phone is the day things will get serious.

Samsung has already tried this. Didn't catch on.

[monochrome]

Doesn’t matter how many pickles there are I still can’t manage to hold a thick index card in one hand, keep my fingers away from the lens, see the screen outdoors, squeeze fingertips to zoom and touch to focus with the other hand, touch tiny icons to adjust flash and adjust exposure, hold it steady, and touch to release.

On a 6s no less. And I can’t hold up an iPad Pro with one hand at all.

[iheiramo]

I've had 41Mpix cellphone for about 6 years. 48Mpix seems like a quite a small step. Pixels are usable on providing zoom for the phone, but that's about it. I have set the phone to downsample automaticly to 5Mpix to get jpg's in usable size. Downsampling reduce noice nicely, but about same could've probably been achieved by large pixels. What's important for IQ is the sencor size, which is larger than typically in cellphones.

[HoutHans]

This looks more like a gimmick than what will kill dslrs. The image quality and versatility (try doing a true tele capture with a phonecam) of dslrs will ensure their continued existence.

[MossyRocks]

The present add-on lenses are handy, but I can’t believe they make a good match for the phone optics.

Hey there is this glowing review of one of them:
"So I very gently, very reluctantly, recommend this total piece of junk $35 lens because it sort of almost works"

I have gotten better results using one of the worst 2x telephoto converters ever made from the 70s with an ultra telephoto from the 60s.

[gaweidert]

In 2017 I went to Yellowstone with one of my sons. He declined my offer of using my K3 in favor of his cell phone. It was a brand new one with a lot of megapixels. When he got home and tried to do anything more than rudimentary post processing he came to regret his decision. He also found out that electronic zoom is not all it is cracked up to be if you want to enlarge an image.

i think that dedicated cameras will be around for quite awhile. I think that film will be too.