[Causality1]

Something that's fascinating to me is that at 1:1 display size, the output of modern cameras doesn't look that much better than the pictures out of old 0.3Mpixel still cameras of nearly twenty years ago. The dynamic range is better and the colors are more vibrant, and the noise floor is lower for dark scenes, but on the whole it still looks pretty crappy at full resolution. Why is that? Could we fix it by using larger CCD/CMOS sensor pixels and sticking to lower total pixel counts?

[petascale]

With higher resolution sensors, small imperfections are more visible. To extract the most from a high-megapixel camera, you need spot-on focusing, a higher quality (more expensive) lens, and more care (e.g. higher shutter speed or tripod) to avoid camera shake during exposure.

If you nail all these, I wouldn't call it crappy even at 1:1.

But there is a residual imperfection from the Bayer pattern on the sensor, since each pixel records only one color (R, G, or B) and the other two values for that pixel have to be guesstimated from neighboring pixels, so the de-bayering process isn't perfect.

One way to fix it is to use a monochrome sensor and color filters, taking 3-4 exposures (luminance/mono plus R/G/B) and stack them.

A few cameras on the market have a pixel shift feature that can do something similar - multiple exposures, shifting the sensor one pixel between exposures so each pixel get a true R/G/B sample, and stack them in camera or in post.

Edit: Forgot to mention the anti-aliasing filter. It sits in front of the sensor and deliberately blurs the image at the pixel level. This is done to avoid aliasing and moiré artifacts, but obviously has the side effect of not-so-great image quality at the pixel peeping level. The fix for this is to get a camera without an AA filter, many modern high-resolution cameras don't have them.

https://www.outdoorphotographer.com/photography-gear/cameras...

[opencl]

Part of it is just that "1:1" is misleading because of how camera manufacturers count pixels. A "pixel" on a monitor is a set of R, G, B subpixels but camera manufacturers count every subpixel separately and essentially 2/3 of what you're looking at is interpolated data at "1:1" view.

[ryacko]

Lens quality, focusing, time to compress the image, etc. People want to take a few photos in quick succession, which has it’s own issues.

Film is superior to digital for those issues, for now.

[solarkraft]

> whole it still looks pretty crappy at full resolution. Why is that? Could we fix it by using larger CCD/CMOS sensor pixels and sticking to lower total pixel counts?

Indeed amazing things can be achieved through that. Sony has released a camera called a7s with 12 Megapixels (while its resolution-focused counter part a7r has 42), that is crazy sensitive. You can film at night and have the results look like you filmed at day.

[pvg]

What images are you comparing? 20 year old digital cameras were around a Mpixel. A modern camera with a decent lense produces much better images. In both cases you'd have to do some work to make sure the thing you're blowing up is exactly in focus.