48 vs 12 Megapixels from the Nikon D300
So, the image on the left is a crop of a standard 12 megapixel shot from the D300, part of a bracketed series I shot on 12/17/08.
It was shot at f4.2, 1/6 sec, 11mm, roughly 6 meters from the tree, at ISO 200, and is cropped at a 200% zoom. You can clearly see some nice pixelation and noise going on in the photo.
The image from the right is a crop of a 48 megapixel version of the same shot on the left, taken from exactly the same point, with exactly the same exposure, iso, aperture settings, sensor size, lens, etc, but this photo clearly shows much more data teased out from the scene...clarity on the pipes, the tree lights, and less noise on the ceiling.
The final version is 8564x5688.
The basic idea here is that at any given moment, when you happen to take your photo, only a certain percentage of photons from the scene happen to hit your camera sensor. If you take the 'same' photo again, you're seeing different photons, all part of the same continuous stream. If you sample and resample and resample, you get a more coherent version of the scene (more signal, less noise.) The net effect is a higher quality shot (although this example does have some artifacts near the lights.)
48 vs 12 Megapixels from the Nikon D300
So, the image on the left is a crop of a standard 12 megapixel shot from the D300, part of a bracketed series I shot on 12/17/08.
It was shot at f4.2, 1/6 sec, 11mm, roughly 6 meters from the tree, at ISO 200, and is cropped at a 200% zoom. You can clearly see some nice pixelation and noise going on in the photo.
The image from the right is a crop of a 48 megapixel version of the same shot on the left, taken from exactly the same point, with exactly the same exposure, iso, aperture settings, sensor size, lens, etc, but this photo clearly shows much more data teased out from the scene...clarity on the pipes, the tree lights, and less noise on the ceiling.
The final version is 8564x5688.
The basic idea here is that at any given moment, when you happen to take your photo, only a certain percentage of photons from the scene happen to hit your camera sensor. If you take the 'same' photo again, you're seeing different photons, all part of the same continuous stream. If you sample and resample and resample, you get a more coherent version of the scene (more signal, less noise.) The net effect is a higher quality shot (although this example does have some artifacts near the lights.)