We do build small(er) ones and fuse the images (using interferometry), that's what many large telescopes are these days. In the radio, we've been mostly doing it that way since 1978 (VLA).
... we use interferomers because we want the added resolution, not just the additional photons. If you don't want extra resolution, you can just add up the images from all of the smaller telescopes.
Light is a wave and a particle, and if you are getting wildly different answers from thinking about it as a wave and as a particle, and you're looking at a macro and not micro scale, then you're doing it wrong. That's why I answered your wave question with a photon count answer.
> That's why I answered your wave question with a photon count answer.
But how do you count photons without using probability amplitudes? If you count them by using a classical reasoning of photons being small particles falling from the sky, I'd say you're doing it wrong, because photons are not classical particles.
CCDs count photons in a particular fashion, and it happens to involve individual photons doing things. You might think of it as photons knocking electrons off of atoms, but it's actually semiconductors with a narrow bandgap, so CCDs work at much lower energies than needed for ionizing radiation.
