Way, Way Better Than 4K

Although most people think bigger means better, it’s not always the case when it comes to the megapixels in your camera. Sensor size and lens quality make the true difference in the world, but megapixels won’t hurt either. That’s why Canon’s new 250 megapixel APS-H sensor is mind boggling.

Don’t get me wrong, 250 is a very high number, but Canon created their new sensor cleverly. APS-H conveys the actual size of the sensor, which, for those wondering, is a bit bigger than the sensors on consumer DSLRs and a little bit smaller than the sensors on professional cameras. Basically, Canon packed all these megapixels into one tiny little space.

What exactly does 250 megapixels mean? It means that when you open the photo on your smartphone or laptop, you could literally zoom for minutes and everything would be crystal clear. And if you took a video, the frame size would be exactly 30 times better than 4K - which is massively impressive.

Obviously, this sensor needs to be paired with a lens (a massively expensive one, at that) in order to take advantage of all the megapixels, but in the photography world, this is a pretty cool breakthrough.

Canon says that with a picture size of 19,580 x 12,600, you could read the letters on an airplane from 11 miles away. Apparently, the sensor has “enhanced signal-processing technology” that manages to reduce the noise that otherwise complicates big images.

It’s unlikely that we will see this kind of sensor any time soon on your digital camera (or smartphone) but probably we will see it soon in other areas - Canon predicts for “specialized surveillance and crime prevention tools, ultra-high-resolution measuring instruments and other industrial equipment, and the field of visual expression”. That might make it a little bit creepy, but still cool.