Is there a meaningful megapixel equivalent for human vision?

Question

People sometimes compare the eye to a camera and ask how many megapixels would be needed before an image looks indistinguishable from real life. Is there a useful way to estimate this, or does the comparison break down because vision depends on viewing distance, field of view, and how the brain processes what we see?

printing human-vision resolution megapixels perception

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

13y ago

user2481 · Answer

Question about thing like frame rate, resolution or dynamic range of the human eye and how they compare to cameras always have the same problems:

The "picture" you see isn't a "single exposure", the eye is constantly moving and adjusting.
The part of tee brain that handles vision is really good (and pretty big), it constantly combines the "frames" is gets from the eye and fill in the blanks.

Basically, every image you see with your eyes is an HDR panorama that was fixed with content aware fill (and just like with a camera, when you get into HDR panoramas you can make them at any arbitrarily high resolution and DR)

Also, the eye/brain actually only works on the part of the scene you are concentrating on, you get amazingly high resolution for the tiny part of the world you are thinking about right now - for the rest of the scene you don't really "see" it at all, you only really have to notice things if there's anything dangerous heading your way (that is why movement at the sides is so distracting).

Is there a meaningful megapixel equivalent for human vision?

2 Answers

Your Answer

Related Questions