When do megapixels stop mattering

Soon I will purchase a D for the reasons you have outlined. You forgot to mention what the difference is. I am curious about that. Could you explain and maybe upload some samples? Like getting 2 lenses in 1. When will people learn that the amount of mega pixels has no direct influence on ISO performance. Within a chosen sensor size the total amount of light gathered stays the same, regardless of the amount of pixels. It seems to me that it's been turning up in discussion on sites all over the place, lately, as the camera manufacturers try to "squeeze the lemon" by introducing more and more models with more and more pixels.

And cameras these days are so class to "perfection" that the camera manufacturers will now have one hell of a struggle on their hands, trying to convince their market that "new" is somehow "better".

Part of that struggle is more pixels. And ever more after that. Another part is adding more features to their latest model. But there it is. As far as I'm concerned, the primary reason for "more pixels" only works if you crop the image, or if you make a large enough enlargement print of it.

Commercial photographers have no choices - they are usually told by their clients what is acceptable. If I had a nickel for every time this same Megapixel article has been written over the years I could go buy myself a Hasselblad H6Dc.

WELL other situations mandate mp or more; YOU need to decide for yourself if you use your experience it will become quite clear. Due to moving the camera back eliminating the need to shoot too many stacked shots. Landscape heck you can crop like hell and still have a very large file left to print big. The other reason and maybe more important is including the discussion of sensor size along with MP this alone giving you 15 stop of dynamic range and 16bit files is worth the ticket!

BUT compare for yourself go to a camera store take your camera shoot some images, then borrow there mp camera and shoot the same images ok.

Look at them side by side then you will know what I know and why it works for me. You might be happy with what you have only I'm warning you if you go the distance you wont want to go back unless you just post your images to the web. But I do use my 5Ds for one client which puts photos floor to ceilings in some of their hallways where people are right up next to it, and the extra resolution is very helpful there. An example is taking a photo over say a 1 hour period so that you make best use of the crazy light for sunset but also best use on the foreground and in different areas.

Shooting a panarama would mean moving the camera which would make re-aligning the images a pita. Also having a 50mp camera doesn't stop you from taking panoramas either. I've done the head-to-head comparisons. I own medium and large-format cameras. I own a high-end drumscanner. I own a large-format printer. I've compared the quality from my previous breadwinning equipment medium format film scanned by drumscanner to my current breadwinning equipment full-frame digital Canon 1Ds and the digital kicks film ass.

That's why it's my current breadwinner. Bye-bye film. The best camera for you is all about what you intend to do with it. A camera is just a tool. Pick the right one for the job.

Because of this, most professionals have, on average, more than 3 different camera systems. So, decide what you want the camera for, and the rest of the decisions about it's suitability get easy.

The most important factor is usually not sheer resolution and image quality. It's about usability of design and ease of handling. If it were all about resolution then most photographers would be using 8xinch view cameras. But we realize that a stunning, mega-high-resolution image is useless if the important moment we wanted to capture was missed due to slow camera operation.

So, pick a camera that feels good, is understandable to operate, and doesn't get in your way. The single most important equation for making better photographs is forethought x volume of action. In other words, think about what you want to achieve with your images, then shoot as much as you can, and hone your results. This is really where digital capture shifts paradigms. Once you go digital, ANY digital, your visual experiments cost you nothing.

With film, every time you want to try something new, you are still paying for film and processing even if you own your own darkroom. This means, effectively, that film and processing are an economic tax on your creative growth. So, as long as you stay focused on what you want to achieve rather then just shooting because you can , buying ANY decent digital camera will yield you better results then sticking with film, and it's use tax.

Almost all DSLR's have what is called a focal length multiplier - tends to be 1. This means that your "normal" 28mm lens ends up being a 42mm lens for 1. This is great for tele shots - i. All point-n-shoot digicams show the 35mm "equivelent", but in actual fact, that is NOT their focal length.

With all else equal, the small the size of the imaging pixels, the more noise that can be present, and this tends to go up dramatically if ISO is turned up first thing I do on a point-n-shoot is turn OFF the auto-ISO and force is to the lowest setting.

Yea, under photoshop, that DSLR shot is just super-silky smooth, but on the 10X15 print, I bet you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.

I've only scratched the surface here - the article talks about a lot of the above, but most of the Slashdotter's seem to have blown right by this stuff.

Flower shots from my folks Garden [backplane. The shots were taken hand-held in AP mode using F4. This particular lens produces ultra sharp results at F4. Insofar as all the discussion goes, from my point of view it all comes down to three things: Lens Quality, Sensor Quality, and Dynamic Range of the exposure. SLR's like the 10D have gotten good enough that I don't use film any more. Film is dead, digital rendition at 11!

And I tend to agree with the few other obviously experienced comments verses the bozo comments from people that don't know jack about taking photographs. You first need to know how to take a picture before you can take a good one. Then comes lens and sensor noise. A lens hood is important, and a good flash articulated for bounce shots and also be sure to have a diffusor handy is very important even when you don't think you need it. The flash was used primarily to fill in some of the shadow one way to correct for limited dynamic range but it also makes the shots look a lot better.

Foveon cameras have one three-color sensor per pixel, but for PR purposes, they, too, count R, G, and B as separate pixels.

For example, the Sigma SD mentioned in the article has an imager x pixels, but is listed as a " For Foveon units, divide by 3.

This eliminates one of the main effects that makes "digital" look worse than film. There may be more comments in this discussion. Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead. Try the CryptoTab Browser. It works like a regular web browser but mines Bitcoin for you while you browse!

Works on all devices. Do you develop on GitHub? You can keep using GitHub but automatically sync your GitHub releases to SourceForge quickly and easily with this tool and take advantage of SourceForge's massive reach. Follow Slashdot on LinkedIn. TheTechLounge points to this " first of a three-part series of editorial articles examining current digital photography hardware, as well as the author's views of what is to come. This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Beyond Megapixels More Login. Full Abbreviated Hidden. More Login. Why were MP ever such a big deal? Score: 5 , Interesting. Most people didn't care about resolution in the analog world. The fact that many people considered APS cameras to be better than 35mm is simple proof of this. This seems analogous to consumer computer makers moving away from advertising GHz and MB.

It's what you can do with it that counts. Share twitter facebook. Re:Why were MP ever such a big deal? Score: 5 , Insightful. I agree that there's much more to it than megapixels.

Excellent images can be produced with the 4 MP Nikon D2h, for example. That said, I still prefer film to digital. And I can't think of anyone who prefers APS to 35 mm. People certainly do care about resolution in the analog world. It's why people use medium and large format cameras. Parent Share twitter facebook. Heh, when I was taking calsses at a CC, I met a guy who worked as a photo tech at a drug store. He told me that APS was just crap He also said there was some thru the mail company, seattle film, or something like that.

The quality on the film sucked because it was some different technology, and that you were locked into their scheme because you couldn't get it developed anywhere else.. Score: 5 , Informative. When I was a kid 10 yrs old, as opposed to 20 , my dad had me use that companies film in my cheap 35mm camera on our annual shopping trip to Marshall Fields in Chicago. If you ordered it, they'd send you back a bootable floppy disk that would run a slide show of your pictures.

Something not many people did back in Score: 3 , Insightful. APS had the advantage of allowing the cameras to be quite a bit smaller than 35mm before good quality digital cameras were affordable.

Of course, these days, anyone wanting a small camera will get a pocket sized 2MP digital camera. Because APS was as good for small as prints as 35mm was. Some digital camera still don't product pictures that look as good as 3x5 film prints, so they are still chasing higher megapixels for that perfect image quality that they desire.

And with APS or 35mm, people didn't have the capability to crop and enlarge from the comfort of their own home, now resolution matters to them if it means being apple to crop grand ma out of a wide shot and print out a perfect looking picture at home.

The HP 8 ink printer produces prints which are superior to photographic enlarger prints. Having done extensive darkroom work I think that scanned film with a is currently the way to go up to 8. Are the inks expensive? Yes, is the paper expensive? Are the results superb? Why do I do my own printing? If I screw up my prints I have only myself to blame. For serious work I want at least a 6x6 cm negative, which is about equal to 64 megapixels.

For snapshots of people - which are never going to be enlarged bigger than 5" x 7" I suggest an inexpensive Argus D 35 mm point and shoot with an aspheric plastic zoom lens, built in automatic flash, motor drive and a 10 year warranty. For this type of photography I don't know of a digital camera which can come close to it for the money. Do I own digital cameras? Yes, but I don't think they are quite ready for primetime yet. Score: 3 , Interesting. Digital also has some real. With film enlargement, the choices of paper and film are what impacts the quality the most.

I would agree that the current digital workflow rivals film for quality and blows it away for control, but traditional enlargements can and do frequently look better.

I personally find HP's greens a little sickly. I don't trust any inkjet manufacturer when they claim their prints are archival just yet. Check back with me. Re:Professional Printers Score: 4 , Interesting.

Not to get too picky here, but the latest Noritsus and Fuju Frontiers are laser printers. Instead of exposing a selenium drum with an IR laser, they expose the photographic emulsion with red, green, and blue lasers. Some printers e. It's going to be a lot more than 5 years before somebody has an inkjet process that can spit out 4x6 archival prints in an hour for less than a nickel a piece. Score: 3 , Informative. More then speed is price per picture When I go to a wedding with a digital camera, I usually end up with hundreds of 4MP pictures.

I couldn't do that if I was buying film and paying for processing and developing for copies of the top pictures to send out to the family when they keep one or two pictures.

With digital, I can take hundreds easily, p. I have a 3 megapixel camera, and I've gotten pictures from it blown up to as large as 16x In fact, I have 2 of them on the wall of the room I'm sitting in right now. If I look at them from 6 inches away, I can tell there isn't as much detail as I would get from film. Same with the dozen 11x14s I have around my apartment. The ones I've gotten at 16x20 are Bryce Canyon [adirondack-park. Dana in Yosemite N. If I want a good picture for viewing on monitor I want it to be at least that big probably bigger since it's easy to make it smaller if needed but you can't make it larger without loosing quality.

He was interested in only a few things. Will I be able to burn cds with this? Can I do e-mail? Can I plug my camera into it? You just need enough power to be able to get the functionality you desire. Excess power is money wasted.

How was this guy stupid? He knew what he wanted to do with a PC and wanted the salesman to recommend a basic system for his tasks. Sounds like an average consumer with reasonable expectations. He seems much smarter than some guy who wants a 4GigaHurts machine with 2 GigaBites of RAM and Gig hard drive so he can "surf the web faster" on his dialup and "print photos faster" on his ink jet.

Going back to cameras, 4 megapixels are good enough for most people to replace their 35mm cameras. Since 4MP cameras are still expensive, there is the perception more is better. Just give it some time.

I think we have cornered a conundrum. My point is that APS failed in part because it lacked professional viability. There being no commercial use for the product, the consumer use was stifled. I wholly agree that pros can handle 35mm cartridges - hell they can handle - rolls most of the time.

The problem is in the sybiotic relationship betwen consumers and pros. Pros prove the viability of the system. Galen Rowel climbs a rock in yosemite and takes this awesome National Geographic cover on a 35mm Ca.

The hottest selling point and click was the Olypus Stylus - a 35mm Camera. It always No matter how many billions of pixels you fit behind it, the lens is going to determine the first determining factor of the photo quality. It's certainly not the last thus we move to 3 CCD systems etc.

Re:It always Score: 2 , Insightful. Score: 2 , Informative. And even with a sharp lens its easy to screw it up by not holding the camera steady. Score: 2 , Interesting. Lemmon writes:. An example of what the final image would be using a 4x digital zoom crop against the full sensor image. Click for Larger view. So why did I bring this up? Well, with cameras offering extremely high number of pixels, the digital zoom can result in closer images that still offer a high level of detail when it comes to printing or using on the web.

For instance, a 14MP image that is zoomed in at a 4x level still has 3. This can be a huge benefit for something like a smartphone camera which is restricted to a fixed focal length and cannot zoom in optically with lenses.

Based on what I have said so far, it is obvious that if you are looking to get a camera, you want the highest number of megapixels as you can get. This is precisely what the camera companies would like you to think because the first thing they always mention when talking about a camera or camera features is to bring up how many megapixels the sensor is.

The problem is that the size of the pixels can matter just as much as the number of them. An example of how a sensor red has four times the pixels than another blue but each pixel has only one quarter the area for less light absorption. The best way to describe this is to take a sheet of graph paper. Just imagine a small square of it that is four squares tall and four squares wide. Each square can absorb as much light falls within that square.

There is still the same total surface area on the paper but each individual square only absorbs one quarter as much because it is a quarter of the size. And when I compare their pictures and mine, taken side-by-side, I can see poorer detail in the 2e pictures.

I doubt OpenCamera will solve this problem. Is Teracube thinking about moving to a higher quality, more expensive sensor in the future? The rear cameras on the 2e are the front cameras on other phones. Of course, Apple pays more for their sensor. But Apple also marks up their phone more. To me, one of the many advantages of Teracube is that their markup is lower. Any idea what Sony gets for their 12MP sensor?

I of course have only been using OpenCamera since it seemed to be better at its job than the stock camera. Despite how many times I tapped, tapped, tapped the screen it did not perform a single focus sweep despite how many times I tried … I point the camera away, point it back it did not perform a focus sweep… , or when I closed and reopened the camera it STILL did not perform a focus sweep.

This is so incredibly frustrating, it has basically trained me to stop even thinking of taking photos with my phone. To get that back, I have to buy a new phone. I feel your pain. On my last phone I could tap on the screen and it would auto focus on that area. I have to wait until it decides to focus before I can take a picture, which takes a long time between shots.