Yakim Peled
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 p.20 #5 · Sony A77 & A65 & Nex-7 Announcements Today | |
denoir wrote:
Jeff, those are all valid arguments, but there's a dimension missing: time. A current camera that is more than enough for 1400px wide web shots on the current generation of monitors may not be so in a couple of years. Printing is a very developed technology and high quality prints are 300 dpi or even more. Computer displays are not yet there.
I made a post about it a while ago in another thread, illustrated with historical examples. Here's a cross post of it
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There's one thing we haven't mentioned in these discussions and that is the problem of future proofing your images.
Even if you don't print large and mostly look at photos on your computer there's no avoiding the facts that monitor resolutions increase over time. Today's monitors are actually rather poor in terms of PPI (pixels per inch) and they will definitely improve - as they have been improving. A standard display (24", 1920x1200) has ~95 PPI while an iphone 4 has about 330 PPI. That means that a 24" monitor with the pixel density of the phone would have a resolution of 6720x4200 (=27 megapixel).
Now, the highest resolution small format cameras on the market are the Nikon D3X and the Sony Alpha 900 - both with ~24.5 megapixel. So you couldn't even cover a 24" high res screen with one. And because those cameras have hefty AA filters you don't want to look at an image at 100% (of course at 330 ppi it may not be as much of a problem). In reality if you really want max per pixel sharpness which and roughly the same resolving power as the 24 megapixel beasts you'll have to go for the 18 megapixel Leica M9 - which doesn't come close to covering the needed 6720x4200 pixels. So your choice today if you want to look at your images in full screen on a 24" monitor a couple of years from now is to future proof your shots by using a medium format digital back.
If this sounds silly, let's take a walk down the memory lane:
The year is 2001 and I've bought my first digital camera - an Olympus C2. It's a 2 megapixel point and shoot. It wasn't a terribly expensive or advanced camera - I was a student with very limited funds and little interest in photography. However, it wasn't cheap either. Digital photography was relatively new and even P&S cameras were rather expensive. You could probably get a good m4/3 kit for that money today.
Today, 10 years later, I'd like to share a picture with you, web sized. Will it work? Is the image quality good enough for a web sized shot (1200px wide as I usually post):
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Err...no. That looks pretty awful. So I've got a bunch of images that are not really usable today unless I want to look at them in thumbnail size. Not a massive loss as I wasn't particularly interested in photography back then but still, there are pictures of friends & family that would have been nice to be able to look at today.
The year is 2004. I got myself a brand new camera, the Konica-Minolta Dimage Z3. The megapixels have doubled to an impressive 4 megapixel. It's not a P&S but a bridge camera and I love it. It sparks my first interest in photography. It's a great camera and produces really nice colors. I still have very fond memories of it.
Can I share a web sized picture today?
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No, unfortunately not. And this time I'm not happy about it. I've got some nice shots with it that are unfortunately unusable because of the low image quality. Back then when I had a 1024px wide 17" monitor it was no problem, but today on a 1920x1200 - not to mention a 2560x1440 monitor it's just unusable.
The year is 2005. I got my next camera, a Canon 350D. Again the pixels are doubled. That camera managed to kill my interest in photography before it really started - primarily because I didn't know how to use it. I had no idea about aperture or any other technical stuff. The Z3 was far easier to use as it had live view and exposure simulation. But I digress.... By then I had a 1600px wide 19" monitor and the 350D provided enough quality for that. And the 350D was my camera until late 2009 when I got a 7D. Initially I used the 7D for video only and actually kept using the 350D until early 2010.
Can I share a web sized picture today from the 350D today?
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Yes, that sort of works, doesn't it? Ok, it could be much better, but we're at an level of what we might call 'acceptable' quality. And I've got nearly five years worth of pictures taken with this camera.
How future proof is it?
Well, let's look at a 100% crop - the full image is 3456 pixels wide:
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Usable at this size? No. The quality is considerable worse than the resized image.
What about 1920px? I have two 1920x1200 monitors hooked up to my workstation at home. Could I get a full screen image with sufficient quality?
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Again, no. It's not as good as the 1200px image.
What about 1600px?
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Alright, that's better. If I resize the image to 1600px width, then I get an acceptable image quality.
Now, what do I get with a high end modern system like a Leica M9? Here's the full scene, resized to 1200px of the same subject with the same angle of view:
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The M9 is an 18 megapixel camera which outputs 5212x3468 images. How do things look at 100%?
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I'd call that acceptable. It's not perfect but I would have no problem using it as is. That gives me a future proofing until we've got monitors that can do > 5212 pixels in horizontal resolution.
There's more to it though - the increase in future resolution is not unlimited. There is an optical limit after which we can't distinguish two pixels. Where that limit is depends on viewing distance, visual acuity and so on, but the limit that is usually quoted is around 300ppi at medium close viewing distances (~0.5 meters). You can look at this for a further discussion on the resolution limit topic.
So, as far as the future proofing goes, I know that as long as I have a technically well executed image (no more blur than desired) and I have not cropped it, I can view it full screen on a monitors with 300ppi up to a size of ~21". Sure, it's not 24" or larger, but it still isn't thumbnail sized. So I can be certain that my images are future proof - even though I may not have the need for that full image quality right now.
My NEX-C3 on the other hand is far less future proof. I need to resize it's 16 megapixel image to about 8 megapixels before I get the same per pixel quality as the M9. This gives a max horizontal resolution of ~3400 px which in turn means that once we have 300 ppi monitors I'll be able to see the images in full quality on a monitor no larger than ~12"-15".
The point of all this is that even though a camera might fulfill your needs right now as far as image quality goes, that estimate probably won't hold forever. You may find yourself with photos with simply insufficient image quality to work on higher resolution monitors - as happened to my Z3 pictures. This is unfortunately the largest I can post/view before the image starts falling apart and the low IQ becomes distracting:
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There followed a discussion where people raised many good points, but the bottom line is that we're basically at a pivotal moment in camera resolution right now. A camera like the 50 megapixel Pentax 645D is future proof for digital display on large monitors. An M9 or a D3X is almost but not quite there if you want to display things in full screen on monitors in the 24-30" range in the same resolution as you get in print. All the NEX cameras (with the possible exception of the NEX-7) fall below that limit as do all current m4/3 cameras.
For those that primarily print it makes no difference - we already have high res print today and if you can print a 20X30" print today, you can probably do it in 100 years as well....Show more →
A friend of mine has a signature: "Look at the picture, not on the pixels". I agree with it in general but I think it fits here well. You take some beautiful pictures (shown here and elsewhere) but I think you're obsessed about the pixels.
EDIT: pictures removed at request.
Happy shooting,
Yakim.
Edited on Aug 29, 2011 at 09:27 AM · View previous versions
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Seriously.