Sharp's tiny 8 megapixel digital camera sensor

Sharp just announced a new 8 megapixel CCD module for digital cameras. We know you're probably asking "So what?" at your computer screen, but the reason we're wasting your time on this is because this 8 megapixel sensor is the same size as the tiny 4 and 6 megapixel digital camera sensors found in plenty of the ultracompact digital cameras we're currently sweating. Expect to be drooling over plenty of tiny eight megapixel camera next year.

[Crunge @ Dec 19th 2005 12:05AM]

The problem with cramming more and more pixels on a small chips is that pixels become less sensitive to light as they get smaller. The two Mars rovers operating right now get fantastic pictures using 1 (yes, ONE) megapixel cameras. They use custom-made sensors that have huge pixels. The creators specifically didn't want to cram a lot of pixels on a chip, as you lose quality.

[syzygy @ Dec 19th 2005 12:05AM]

While you are correct that cramming more pixels into a small space hurts performance (see sony dsc-f828), you can't rightly compare it to the rovers cameras. The rovers 1 megapixel camera is black and white. To get a color picture the swap filters in front of the camera. This way you are *sortof* upping your megapixel count. Digital cameras count each light sensor as a pixel (ie red = 1, green = 1, blue = 1, and the extra usualy green or blue as 1 = 4 pixels. They basically assign a luminance (brightness) to each of the four pixels based on the brightness of each pixel. They then assign a chromanance (color) to all four pixels combined. So your megapixel count is all out of wack. This is also why you get the wacky megapixel counts from Foveon. They stack the colors to make one full color sensor in each 'pixel' location. They up their 'pixel' counts to 'compare' with traditional CCDs.

[dehak @ Dec 19th 2005 12:05AM]

The noise on this will be outrageous. That is why the DSLR's are so effective, they have high pixel counts but huge sensor areas.

[Mark Eichin @ Dec 19th 2005 12:05AM]

I'm not sure what good an 8mp sensor will do with what passes for lenses in cameras these days, though. (Oh, it'll still be cool, and with enough on-camera CPU a lot of things can be "cleaned up" on-camera with the extra pixels, but unless phones become more "lens oriented" cameraphones are still going to be stuck taking pictures that are "now" but not "good".

The scary bit is that carriers will probably push these, not because they're actually useful, but because if you can get people to take bigger pictures, they'll use more net, right?

[Greg @ Dec 19th 2005 12:05AM]

Exactly how many pictures are you going to store on your cameraphone at 8MP, 1-10? We're well beyond the point of dimineshing returns now.