Question: How many megapixels does a human eye have? fiona

Fiona Heesen answered on 11 Mar 2014:

Hi eviejoiner,

Thanks for the very interesting question! The human eye is not made up of megapixels – Pixels are a physical point in a digital image – the more pixels that are used to represent an image, the closer the result would represent the original – So if you were looking at an image of an eye, the more pixels there are, the more likely it will look like the real thing.

In terms of vision, the human eye does not really ‘see’ in terms of pixels or megapixels – we have rod and cone cells in the eye for vision that are in the retina and allow for light perception and vision including colour differentiation and depth perception. From what I can tell, the eye works more like a video camera rather than a still one, and we process and interpret the images flooding in through the brain.

Many studies have tried to find out what resolution the eye can see in, or what is the equivalent megapixel number that it has, in relation to a camera for example, but it appears that there are many debated answers! Something perhaps to investigate yourself as a scientist 🙂

Hope that answers your question,

Fiona