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Comment by mikewarot | Hacker News Reader

Long ago, I listened to his advice and bought a Nikon D40 (6 Megapixels) instead of a D40X (10 Megapixels). His argument was that the sensors were the same physical size, so the light gathering per pixel would be less, and thus images would have more noise in the D40X.

I never owned a D40X, but I loved the heck out of that D40. I got a lot of great night time shots with it, and it worked very well indoors without flash. I used it so much, I actually wore out the shutter.

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> and thus images would have more noise in the D40X

I've never understood this argument.

In insufficient light conditions, noise will be identical between the two, because resizing the 10MP image to 6MP will give the same result as the 6MP camera. (But you still get the choice of more-noise-but-more-resolution at 10MP.)

But in sufficient light, noise is drowned out by signal, and so the 10MP camera truly produces a 67%-better-quality image.

It turned out to be very useful for getting shots nobody else could get inside a fairly dim Church.

I'd go so far as to say most photography situations don't involve sufficient light, you're always pushing the ISO up to make up for a lack of light. Only daytime outdoor shooting would really benefit from the extra pixels.

That's exactly what I'm saying though -- inside a dim church, the 10MP camera takes pictures that, when scaled down to 6MP, are identical to what the 6MP takes in the first place. You need to be a little more aggressive with ISO but the "extra noise" disappears upon downscaling.

While with daytime outdoor shooting, the 10MP genuinely gets you 67% better quality.

If it's not worth the extra $$$ then fine, but the idea that only sensor size matters (and not resolution) is just false.

You are absolutely correct; but if you pixel-peep, it's easy to mislead yourself / misunderstand what you're looking at and "see more noise".

That's a prime example how Ken's logic sounds intuitively correct but is technically incorrect and will lead you down the wrong path.

Mind you, nothing wrong with d40; it was my first DSLR too and I loved it to death; also, back then, there WAS some additional noise due to additional electronics between 6mp and 10mp which meant that less light actually reached the sensor, so he wasn't completely wrong :)

Unfortunately, that misconception caused much rage throughout the decade, for example when Nikon released d800, which was 36MP compared to it's beloved predecessor d700 12MP. Internet went bananas on "where's our low light camera". To this day, there are people who firmly believe d700 had "better low light". (I've owned and used both side by side professionally and while I loved my d700 and enjoyed couple of UI/UX choices better, there's no comparison; d800 has better images, period).

Yeah, the time that Bill Gates said that you only needed 6MP... ;-)

I wonder if that advice was correct, but I have no way of proving my gut feeling that the D40X was the better choice in most situations.

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