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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · High MP Cameras...some new (old?) thoughts on the matter..... | |
If you could image a world in which cameras were identical as to price, size, speed of operation, ISO performance, cost of storage, and all the rest... except that you could have any number of photo sites on the sensor that you wanted, few would choose fewer photo sites.
Or, the same debate about whether it was better to stick with a lower MP sensor that was perhaps faster and had higher sensitivity, etc or to go with a higher MP sensor has been going on for well over a decade now. Back in the day the "question" might have been whether or not photographers really needed, say, 8 MP, and the idea that perhaps 6 MP "was enough."
Yet, few (but some, yes) today would settle for 6MP and the advantages of increasing MP count are fairly clear, as long as this can be accomplished at a reasonable cost and without otherwise impairing the functionality of the camera.
In the big, long-term picture there are advantages to higher MP cameras (eventually no need for AA filters, better rendering of gradients, what noise there is would have nearly invisibly small "grain size," etc.), ancillary equipment (like post-processing software, data storage, computers) also improves in ways that make the bigger files not a problem, and costs stay roughly the same or decline when corrected for inflation.
However, in the immediate present, photographers who have different needs will select different cameras from those available at the present time so that they can get the optimal performance in the areas that matter most to them and/or the compromise among performance points that they think will be ideal.
Dan
arbitrage wrote:
I was just reading a thread over on the Nikon board about the choice between a D3x and D800E and a very good reply by Steve Perry got me to thinking about all this high MP discussion that is everywhere these days since 2012 and the D800 introduction.
Most of the time it is the landscape shooters that seem to be really clambering for the high MPs in most of the threads about this. They always want to print big and want every available MP.
However, I started thinking about the differences between landscape shooting on a tripod and perfect latitude to frame most shots exactly how you want them to make use of the full image circle/sensor. Then I was thinking about my type of shooting of Wildlife and Birds. In that type of shooting we almost always have to crop and I often present images on the N&W board that are very close to 100% crops without anyone even knowing.
So I was thinking that it should actually be the Bird and Wildlife shooters that crop like crazy that should be the ones clambering for more MPs and that actually the Landscape shooters would maybe even be happy with FF 16-24MP range as they can usually fill the frame with their image and would still be able to print up to 24x36 or even greater from those resolutions.
I realize that DR is a whole different issue and then the D800 would be very valuable or any Sony/Nikon sensor for that matter and that could be valuable equally for both types of shooters. I guess I was just thinking that the high MPs wouldn't actually matter as much for Landscape despite it being the landscapers that usually chime in with the demand for a high MP camera??
Am I missing something here in my reasoning? Does anyone agree with this line of thought or am I just crazy loco
If you read this far...thanks for sticking around.
Geoff...Show more →
Edited on Jan 08, 2014 at 11:44 AM · View previous versions
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