Question about quality

[mjkamjka]

I am interested in the A1100 as a backup camera to keep around for certain situations and have a general question. This camera packs 12.1 MP on a 1/2.3 sensor. Basically I was wondering what that actually means. Are there 12.1 MP on the sensor itself or could you improve the picture quality by lowering the actual image to ~9 MP? I've heard some say that the image quality on some cameras with high MP's aren't as clear as their older cameras which effectively have the same size sensor but offer less MP's. Thanks for any help.

[DeCeccoNET]

While I cannot comment on lowering the MP to increase quality, I will say that fom my limited experience will say that the A1100 and the 1000 before it both offered a good value and quality that I have on occasion recommended them as a low cost pocket camera.

[Jon]

There are a usable 4000x3000 pixels on the sensor. The complaints about IQ you'll see at high pixel densities are due to sensor noise, which is strongly correlated with the sizes of individual pixels. A sensor with only 9 MP on it, but of the same absolute size would have less noise assuming equivalent electronics. But using only 9 MP from the existing sensor wouldn't give you any benefits. Neither would resizing the image to about 9 MP, because then you'd be creating "pseudo-pixels" by averaging surrounding pixels (each pseudo pixel will be made up from about parts of pixels totaling to 1-1/3 real pixels).