Canon's largest sensor can do just that, though it's still a little too big to fit inside your camera.

Since then, it's all about more megapixels, larger sensors, etc.

The very large sensor these backs use leads to enormous image sizes.

A larger sensor with the same number of pixels generally produces a better image than a smaller one.

For this reason, the manufacturing yield for large sensors is very low.

The larger sensors tend to have better signal to noise characteristics.

In recent years larger sensor digital compacts have become available.

Anything higher without a larger sensor would just degrade picture quality.

This is why I specifically said that larger sensors are "one of" the big reasons for the difference in quality.

This was the first time such a large sensor was incorporated into a bridge camera.