Question: How long is it before the best cameras will be better than the best eyes

Andrew French answered on 25 Jun 2014:

Good question!

I think it depends what you mean by “Better”

The eye is awesomely good at sorting out lighting in light versus dark areas (e.g. you can walk from your lit home to a moonlit street without too much problem). Camera’s are not so good at this, but are getting better – more sensitive.

We are also good at ‘white balance’ – this means your brain adjusting for the colour of the light. For example, early morning light is very blue, and evening light very yellow (as are most indoor lights) – but if we look at a page of a book in all these conditions it still looks “white”. Cameras have to figure this out too, and sometimes they get it wrong and images look, e.g. yellow, (more expensive cameras let you select the “colour” of the light – so if you are taking a pic in fluorescent lighting, for example, it can correct for the colour of the light.)

Resolution is a tricky one. High end cameras can have hundreds of megapixels – probably more cells than there are in the eye, but resolution isn’t just about how many sensors you have, but also how well focussed the image is, and how clear the path of the light is etc.

One things for sure, the brain and eye are much more clever at interpreting pictures than cameras and computers are!!