High Megapixel issues

According to Tony:

End the Megapixel War! 100 MP: Is it a mistake?

that is wright end the war, go back to film and that well solve all the problems out there as-well determent who are the real photographers from the want a bees, this is a one man's opinion from the old school of thought, real film still rules, when you never looked at a slide on a light table through a loupe then you should try it some time, it's an other color world out there.

THANK-YOU
PETER

I love my 42 mpix camera and don't think it is in any way a detriment to my shooting. Of course you must have IBIS to make it shine and have the self control to cull images to not load up your memory. 12 fps really can eat into your memory but sd cards are cheap. I can't wait to see what is going to come forward.

Remember when 16mp was a mistake, and the 24mp was a mistake, and then 32mp was a mistake, and then 50mp was a mistake...

Thinking selfishly as a wildlife photographer, I think 36MP is my sweet-spot and instead of having more MP I'd much rather have improved ISO/DR performance and a camera that can pump out raw images at 20FPS with laser-like autofocus. If landscapers or studio photogs need more MP there's always medium format.

Every aspect of digital photography has increased in capability almost beyond belief in a relatively short time.
The one function that really hasn't come along is dynamic range, pretty much the same as 25 years ago.
Please, please, before I get deleted.

bartley123 wrote:Every aspect of digital photography has increased in capability almost beyond belief in a relatively short time.
The one function that really hasn't come along is dynamic range, pretty much the same as 25 years ago.
Please, please, before I get deleted.

DR has increased tremendously in the Sony sensors (just compare the 900 to the sony 99II).  The next generation will be 16 bits which I think you will find interesting though anything over 12 bits really is difficult to discern.

bartley123 wrote:Every aspect of digital photography has increased in capability almost beyond belief in a relatively short time.
The one function that really hasn't come along is dynamic range, pretty much the same as 25 years ago.
Please, please, before I get deleted.

I'm totally with you with regard to dynamic range, Don. Got a good long belly laugh out of your "...before I get deleted" comment.

Original EOS 1D had about 6 stops of usable Dynamic range, today's sensors have 10-14.  I'd say we've come a very long way on that front in 25 years.

E.J. Peiker wrote:Original EOS 1D had about 6 stops of usable Dynamic range, today's sensors have 10-14.  I'd say we've come a very long way on that front in 25 years.

Except that it's only been slightly less than 17 years since the original EOS 1D was released. And just shy of 20 years for the Nikon D1.

Anthony Medici wrote:

E.J. Peiker wrote:Original EOS 1D had about 6 stops of usable Dynamic range, today's sensors have 10-14.  I'd say we've come a very long way on that front in 25 years.

Except that it's only been slightly less than 17 years since the original EOS 1D was released. And just shy of 20 years for the Nikon D1.

OK, but the point is still that the comment above where the poster says that there hasn't been any advancement in dynamic range in 25 years is not even remotely factual.  In fact as you point out, we have dramatically increased dynamic range in just 17 years....

Here is a comparison of photographic dynamic range of the D1 (blue circles) and the D850 (black circles).  A doubling of dynamic range while at the same time more than 10x increase in pixel count.... By the way, today's cell phones have more dynamic range than a DSLR did 20 years ago...

Hi,

I don't know from personal experience, but I've heard that cameras with 50+ MP must be kept rock-solid during an exposure or they will record any movement. I use an 18 MP camera.

Have Fun,
Jeff

Jeff Colburn wrote:Hi,

I don't know from personal experience, but I've heard that cameras with 50+ MP must be kept rock-solid during an exposure or they will record any movement. I use an 18 MP camera.

Have Fun,
Jeff

Yeah at the pixel level that's true.  But if you downrez the files to the same size as your 18MP camera the steadiness rtequirement is the same so it matters what output size you are talking about when making these claims.  Of course the main reason to get higher megapixel cameras is to allow for the possibility of bigger output.

It's the primary reason that all of the newer high mp cameras have the option of shooting with an electronic first curtain because even the shutter curtain causes enough vibration to blur the image at the pixel level, not just the mirror if talking about a DSLR.

E.J.,

Very interesting. A camera that can get blurry images from the shutter curtain is something I wouldn't want to deal with.

As for output, I can do 24x36, but most people buy 11x14 or 14x21 prints from me. If I need really big prints, I'll use something like Perfect Resize or On1 Resize. That software is a lot cheaper than a 100 mp camera, and would meet my needs.

Thanks for the info.

Have Fun,
Jeff

My Pentax 645Z is susceptible to shutter-shake blur with certain focal lengths at certain shutter speeds. Like every other limitation in photography, it's something I've learned to work around.

As for whether 100 MP is a "mistake", I've heard it all before. I don't buy it now any more than I did earlier. I see the fallacy of "nobody needs more than XX MP" every week at the print shop. Yes, I can and do make things like a 48 x 48 inch print from a 4 MP iPhone shot. That client was happy enough, after I spent several hours making it look the best I could... which wasn't all that good in my terms. There's no denying the incredible presence of the 20 x 30 inch print I made from a Phase IQ3 100 file with hardly any effort on my part in terms of enlarging. Can other systems produce tremendous results at various print or electronic output sizes? Of course. But as they say in performance circles, "there's no substitute for cubic inches".

For myself, I can't wait for the Fuji 100MP camera. Shooting with the Pentax 40 & 50 MP cropped 645 camera system since 2010 has been a great boon to my work, but I do run up against resolution limits from time to time. I also run up against other limits that the Fuji camera will address as a side effect of stepping up to a current generation sensor. Things like fully electronic shutter, IBIS, etc. I'd also really like pixel shift for improved colour fidelity at each pixel. I would take a new 50 MP 645 class camera that had all those things, but one will not be made because Sony is stepping up the resolution at the same time as providing platform support for other stuff I would like. So I'll happily take the extra resolution too.

Others' mileage will vary. Everyone has their individual level where "enough is enough". I've gotten ~9 years out of the 40 - 50 MP range with Pentax. Perhaps the Fuji GFX 100 will last me the rest of my life. But I doubt it...

If you watch the video, a lot of what they talk about the need to do all the other stuff, great lenses ($$), perfect stability, focus accuracy, depth of field and diffraction and even atmospheric haze. To me the message of the video is the average man in the street probably won't get the advantage from the all those MP. The very experienced people posting on here can and will because they have the knowledge and the will to work around the limitations. The man on the street - probably not.

I'm shooting mostly underwater these days and there you have water and an air-water interface between you and your subject. It is becoming clear to me that maybe 20-30 MP is the maximum you can make use of. One new thing being developed is water contact optics and the premise there is that a 20 year old Nikon 28-70 lens produces better results with the water contact optics that act as a field flattener and also expand field of view to get you closer will out perform the latest, sharpest, for example, 16-35 lens behind a dome port. You might say well put the 16-35 behind the water contact optic, but they are limited to smaller sizes of front element due to optical considerations, to constrain the size and weight of the optics. A specialized field I know but I find it interesting where the limitations come from and I think really understanding the limitations is important.

So. Higher Res sensors have shallower DoF? ISO3200 is pointless mush and looks better on 8MP sensors? Which 8MP sensors?

What the heck did I just watch?

Chris, yeah, that's all true. Of course, these cameras are not designed for or marketed to the "man on the street" anyway. I think that's pretty clear. So saying "this camera not designed for the man on the street, and which the man on the street won't pay for, does things the man on the street doesn't care about or need or can't even make use of" isn't particularly insightful commentary by Tony & Chelsea Northrup.

The man on the street doesn't need 14+ FPS of big RAW files with a deep buffer and super fast motion-tracking AF, as another example of a feature set from top-end, expensive cameras. Perhaps Tony & Chelsea should make a video slamming the "FPS wars" and saying that higher frame rates are a mistake. The man on the street doesn't need HDR 4K video let alone 8K, and wouldn't have the knowledge or processing power to grade and transcode such video files prior to uploading them to their Facebook timeline. So Tony & Chelsea can make another video slamming the "video resolution wars" and say that building digital cameras with hi-res video support is a mistake. Same with big, fast glass. Same with your examples from underwater work. Etc.

And yet, all of the advances like sensor size, resolution, dynamic range, FPS and even optics can fuel big benefits to computational photography, which Tony does say in this video is his "next big deal". I also tend to agree with that, given my long history working with techniques like HDR stacking, stitching, focus stacking, super-resolution, etc. The key thing with computational photography, however, is that IMO it's all about oversampling the available light so you can grind on the captures with fancy software and make something cool out of it. Which even the man in the street will benefit from when it's buried in his camera phone.

At the end of the day, of course, the audience for videos like the Northrups' is not a lot of us on here, as you say. For myelf, I hope at least a few mainline manufacturers keep pushing the envelope. I want the majority of the creative limitations to come from the very reality I'm dealing with, not from the tools I'm using to capture and work with it. The more I can capture and work with, the more material my imagination has to play with.

I broadly agree Royce, though there are plenty of people around (not on here generally) who will buy a 42MP Sony and put a kit lens on it.  Yes there's a place for that type of camera but go in with your eyes wide open.  The video is not perfect by any means but would probably help people who think they need more MP (and not all the stuff that needs to go with it) and they are still around.

I see examples all the time, like someone who bought a Z7 and UW housing, took some OK- nice pics  but had no clue how to resize an image to post online and was wondering why he had trouble with uploading the tifs.  Maybe $10,000 worth of equipment, maybe more or less depending on housings and port chosen.