The TRUTH about High Megapixel Noise

High megapixel cameras like the Sony a74 the Canon R5 the Fujifilm xh2 they have better image quality in good light for things like Landscapes right but if you've got to shoot low light events something like that you need a low megapixel camera like the a7s series the Canon R6 the xh3 with the lower megapixel sensor right right everybody's been telling me this even the camera manufacturers it's not true I'm going to test it with science we're going to take side by side pictures at high isos and you can download them in the description do the science for yourself please and let's bust this myth once and for all first let's compare the 60 megapixel a7r 4 to the 12 megapixel a7s 3. this is not actually the camera I'm filming with the A7 S3 but let's look at the pictures here's the two pictures straight out of camera the 12 megapixel a7s3 on the left and the 60 megapixel a7r4 on the right let's zoom into an empty base and just compare the amount of noise clearly the lower megapixel image has less noise but wait let's hand over to a place with some detail you can see here Lightroom is scaling them both to 400 percent and thus the high megapixel image is much larger these are not scaled the same when you zoom back the entire image is scaled to the same size but when you zoom in by default the pixels are scaled one to one which doesn't make any sense so let's scale them to the same size and still the high megapixel image clearly shows more noise the grain is heavier but it's also far more detailed in Lightroom the noise reduction slider trades detail for cleanliness as I slide it to the right the detail disappears but so does the noise every photographer will tweak this setting before publishing an image finding the perfect compromise between noise and detail the color slider here is important too if I drag it all the way down we see a lot of color noise pop up and I'm going to drag it just to the point where that color noise disappears I'll do the same for the low megapixel image but the settings won't be the same because these settings Define a radius in a number of pixels and thus a high megapixel image will get similar results with higher value settings you can't simply copy and paste the same settings between pictures with different megapixels and here the two images have been processed just like you would in the real world to get the best possible results and clearly the high megapixel image is better it has similar amounts of noise but so much more detail you can read Paris you can read Barcelona and on the low megapixel image you just can't High megapixels means more detail different processing but it does not mean more noise okay that's a sample size size of one maybe it's something about these two particular copies maybe it's the Sony sensors well Nikon uses Sony sensors so let's try it with two Canon cameras the 20 megapixel Canon R6 versus the 45 megapixel Canon R5 here's two Canon sensors released at the same time the Canon R6 with 20 megapixels and the Canon R5 with 45 megapixels enhanced here I've adjusted the noise reduction so the Canon R5 is actually cleaner it shows less noise and it still shows more detail look here I can read the words English Channel on the high megapixel camera on the 20 megapixel camera you can barely see that the words are even there the Canon R5 is better in low light consistent results from Sony to Canon but there's another the Fujifilm cameras have x-trans sensors which have a little bit of a different layout so let's see if the 26 megapixel Fujifilm xt4 has better low light quality than the 40 megapixel xh2 here's to Fuji x-tran sensors a 26 megapixel xt4 versus the 40 megapixel xh2 enhance the visible noise is similar but the xh2 has United Kingdom clearly readable here whereas you just can't read it on the lower megapixel xt4 again the high megapixel version looks better even at ISO 12800 on an aps-c size sensor all these cameras had consistent results but it's not just this these results are consistent with every camera we've tested for about the last five years or so once sensor technology kind of leveled off but people still have this misunderstanding and I totally get it because when you look at the marketing material for the low megapixel cameras they specifically talk about having better low-light capabilities but you can see it is simply not true here's a metaphor it's raining outside you are dying of thirst which you think would gather more rain nine one foot square buckets or one nine square foot bucket the answer is they would gather the same amount of rain of course right because the ability of the buckets to gather rain is defined by the total surface area that is collecting water not by the number of buckets or how the water is divided up and the same holds true for sensors the noise you see in an image is a product of the signal to noise ratio and all modern sensors have a pretty similar Baseline for noise thus reducing the noise just means increasing the signal and having more small pixels still gathers the same amount of light as having fewer bigger pixels it is exactly the same but and this is a big butt the Sony a7s3 does have an advantage over some other cameras in low light let's take a look at the Sony a7s III versus the Sony A7 R4 both are capable of shooting full width 4K video here's 4K video samples from a 12 megapixel and 60 megapixel sensor zooming in the 12 megapixel sensor definitely looks better why would this be that's because the 60 megapixel sensor is skipping lines or skipping pixels so they're both Gathering proper 4K footage at the 60 megapixel sensor pixels are smaller and it's skipping a whole bunch of them so the surface area is actually much less leading to reduced image quality so the lower megapixel camera actually does produce better quality images if it's being compared to a camera that is simply disregarding a bunch of the light that it's Gathering not all cameras are like that if I were to compare the Sony a7s3 versus the Sony A1 that's 12 megapixels versus 50 megapixels well the A1 is capable of processing every single one of those pixels and we end up seeing pretty similar results indeed the difference in that last 4K video example was not because of the megapixels of the sensor but because the a7r IV cannot read out or process the data fast enough and it does take more power to process 60 megapixels than it does 12 megapixels that also builds up heat and that is the reason we are filming this right now on a 12 megapixel Sony a7s III because it's not generating much heat it's not doing much work because it doesn't have to combine the data from multiple pixels it can just run reliably and forever so that is a better benefit but do I think I'm getting better low light quality because of the lower number of megapixels no I didn't fall for that trap despite the fact that the marketing material explicitly says that now this is a hard lesson to teach because I have to unteach something so many of you learned in the past in fact it's especially hard because many of you made purchasing decisions based on the misinformation you received you bought a low megapixel camera like the R6 or the Sony a7s3 to take Stills in low light some of you actually did that because you thought it would be better in low light and it might be a little disappointing to find out that it's not but please don't shoot the messenger I am here to guide future buying choices and this has been our message for many years we've produced this video many years ago preaching these exact same things looking at the sample pictures that we created these are scaled to the same size that's the a7s on the left and the D810 on the right and to my eye the da10 is noticeably cleaner we have never found an exception to this rule High megapixel produces better image quality in good light but even in low light and this is actually great news for everybody this means you do not have to feel like you are making a compromise by buying a high megapixel camera buy that R5 buy that Sony a7r buy that xh2 and feel good about it no matter what the shooting conditions are now that we've shattered that myth you might be asking how do I get better low light performance the answer is easy you gather more light you could add a flash you could just turn up the lights in the room you could go out during midday you could get a faster lens instead of shooting with an F4 lens get a fast F14 Prime that will make a huge difference or you could use a longer shutter speed that gathers more light at a given f-stop bigger sensors will produce cleaner images than smaller sensors but at the equivalent f-stop they will be exactly the same so if you were comparing a small sensor versus a big sensor camera first compute the equivalent f-stop of the lens that you plan to use for low-light photography and in that case the lower number will basically always produce better low light images and if what I just said didn't make any sense to you you can watch these videos at this link and that will clear it right up if you have any questions write a comment down below and I'll do my best to answer it and don't forget to subscribe for more free tutorials bye

Channel: Tony & Chelsea Northrup

Views: 203,074

Keywords: megapixels, how many megapixels do i need, camera megapixels, how many megapixels, do megapixels matter?, are more megapixels always better, should i get a camera with more megapixels, 3 reasons more megapixels are bad, are more megapixels better or less, image quality, are more megapixels worse for low light, megapixels low light, are more megapixels better than less

Id: VSFqCnzIe9M

Length: 9min 38sec (578 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 07 2023