Photography Forums UK

[JR1]

At what stage do more megapixels become redundant
I remember talking to a Canon technician two years ago who said that whilst they may cram more and more MP onto a chip you also need to take into account the resolving power of the lens, and that only a handful of the "top" lenses could in fact make use of 20+ MP.

This may have been incorrect but I do wonder just when it becomes pointless apart from a sales thing in even more.

Surely with more in the same area you lose out to noise, which is why my astronomical camera is cooled.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

[chris Hodgson]

I'm a firm believer in anything above 16MP is excessive, unless you intend on printing MASSIVE for most of your shots.

[Bob]

To quote Ken Rockwell:

Film, like digital files, comes in many resolutions. 35mm is an amateur format, medium format (120 or 6x7) is for head shots, and large format (4x5" and up) is for landscapes.

Rubbish.

[richardthesane]

More MP - for most people - is pointless.

My 7D will capture 18mp. Until I stepped up the quality of the glass I was using I honestly could not see any difference between the details resolved in my 18mp files versus the 15mp 50D I had. IN reality there is not much in it anyway.

Now for the sports or wildlife photographer, using excellent glass, I can understand the desire for more pixels. Simply - cropping. I know I can throw away 30% of the pixels and still hold more than sufficient detail for decent resolution web shots or prints.

[JR1]

More MP - for most people - is pointless.

My 7D will capture 18mp. Until I stepped up the quality of the glass I was using I honestly could not see any difference between the details resolved in my 18mp files versus the 15mp 50D I had. IN reality there is not much in it anyway.

Now for the sports or wildlife photographer, using excellent glass, I can understand the desire for more pixels. Simply - cropping. I know I can throw away 30% of the pixels and still hold more than sufficient detail for decent resolution web shots or prints.

I should have said "without cropping" after all even if you use 6x6 fuji velvia, scan and crop you lose detail in the end so as a side by side like for like comparision, no crop straight photo where and when will more MPs stop making any REAL difference to people who never go above say an A3+ print.

Ideally I would like a full frame camera, 24 MP, and a frame rate of perhaps 12 per second, speaking personally any more would be pointless for anything I do, and I cover many aspects of Photography.

[Bob]

I did a six feet square print on one occasion from a 5/4 negative. What would the equivalent be nowadays to get to that size?

[richardthesane]

Depending on the print viewing distance, I reckon I could pull one that size out of my 7D Bob.

With prints though, that is definitely the key. Viewing distance.

[Kenny]

I find this totally confusing because last year at uni some of the students used large format cameras with lightphase digital backs and they as far as I know were only 6.5 megapixel but were I think 5.25 inch format. one person got HUGE images out of them and when printed they were stunning and gained her the highest marks ever in an exhibition....so I dont know what to think about this mega pixel thing. Her images IIRC were A0 in size

[J1974alo]

Simple mathematics when your questioning quality like this.

The more points you can capture like with a sensor using the same lenses, the more imperfections you can capture from the other parts involved like the lens (rather then them being blurred over a few pixels).
Reason I look at the soon to be released D800 and think its an insane option that is driven at techno junkies and I have pro glass and with that I am pretty sure its not up to standard to accommodate 36Mp as it can produce soft images at 12mp let alone 3 times that.

Thats the selling point still held by the likes of a Hasselblad, HUGE sensor, less electronic distortion (leave the finer details of that one to those qualified) and an equally huge chunk of prime glass to work best with the sensor.
Its not a product designed to do all but to fit a certain purpose (aka a controlled environment mainly).

The points about viewing distances are important too, never seen a poster printed at 300 DPI, more along the lines of 20 DPI.

[JR1]

Simple mathematics when your questioning quality like this.

The more points you can capture like with a sensor using the same lenses, the more imperfections you can capture from the other parts involved like the lens (rather then them being blurred over a few pixels).
Reason I look at the soon to be released D800 and think its an insane option that is driven at techno junkies and I have pro glass and with that I am pretty sure its not up to standard to accommodate 36Mp as it can produce soft images at 12mp let alone 3 times that.

Thats the selling point still held by the likes of a Hasselblad, HUGE sensor, less electronic distortion (leave the finer details of that one to those qualified) and an equally huge chunk of prime glass to work best with the sensor.
Its not a product designed to do all but to fit a certain purpose (aka a controlled environment mainly).

The points about viewing distances are important too, never seen a poster printed at 300 DPI, more along the lines of 20 DPI.

This is what I suggested in my start of the thread,

I remember talking to a Canon technician two years ago who said that whilst they may cram more and more MP onto a chip you also need to take into account the resolving power of the lens, and that only a handful of the "top" lenses could in fact make use of 20+ MP.