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Yesterday I was taking some photos with my old phone, the Nokia C3-00. It has a 2 megapixel camera and usually creates images somewhere between 400kb - 800kb in size. Yesterday, though, it produced an image with more than 2 mb size of image, not just one but 4-5 images. Although all the images are corrupted and didn't open properly, the size of the images are 4-5 mb.

Is this possible? What could have happened here?

Joanne C
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Waseem
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1 Answers1

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A 2 megapixel camera produces 6 mb of data- 1 byte per color * 3 colors / pixel * 2M pixels. However, file sizes are much smaller because of the jpeg compression applied.

The reason why the corrupted files were so large must be because there was a very high degree of randomness due to the corruption, and more randomness means less possible compression.

JenSCDC
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    Not exactly true. Since RAW data are single luminance values only for each pixel, most RAW files are approximately equal to the sensor resolution (i.e a 20MP camera has RAW files that are around 20MB). Colors aren't introduced until demosaicing when the file is also converted to jpeg, tiff, etc. – Michael C Oct 02 '14 at 08:00
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    @MichaelClark - I very much doubt the asker old cellphone produces raw files, the only files you can get out of the phone are processed image files, so I think this answer is right – Nir Oct 02 '14 at 13:54
  • @MichaelClark- I said "data", not "information", so it is correct.

    OTOH, saying the resolution is measured in MP is very much "not exactly true" ;)

     – JenSCDC Oct 02 '14 at 21:37
  • @Nir The original question is "Can a 2 mp camera produce a 2 mb sized file?" The specifics in the body of the question mention the Nikoia C3-00, but the question itself as asked casts a far broader net. I think the crux of the question is about how file sizes and resolutions of photos are related in cameras, not just one specific cellphone camera. – Michael C Oct 03 '14 at 00:08
  • @MichaelClark yes it is not just about the specific cellphone I asked I mentioned it just as an source. – Waseem Oct 04 '14 at 04:47
  • @MichaelClark I think Nir is also right, my cellphone produces a processed image and my resolution is set to 1600*1200 and it saved images as .jpg format. – Waseem Oct 04 '14 at 04:52