Every camera manufacturer wants a bigger slice of that $42 billion digital-photography pie. So what do they do? They pile on bells and whistles. Smile recognition, anti-red-eye, blah, blah, blah.

Truly revolutionizing the field really wouldn’t be so complicated, though. All someone would have to do is stick a big sensor into a small camera, and then let the euphoria begin.

See, the camera companies would like you to believe that the megapixel count is the most important measure of a camera, but that’s just not true. Lens quality, circuitry speed, in-camera processing  lots of things are more important.

The best overall predictor of image quality, though, is the size of the sensor inside. Big sensors absorb more light, so you get better color and sharper low-light images. Small sensors pack too many light-absorbing pixels into too little space, so heat builds up, creating digital “noise” (random speckles) in your photos.