nathanlake wrote:
1. Image quality is already viewed as being very good.
2. The average consumer knows nothing about cameras except how to turn them on and push the shutter button.
3. Mp have been the major marketing focus for several years now.
4. The competitors will undoubtedly inccrease their Mp count.
How's it really relevant to this conversation, which is about dSLRs? Canon is escalating the MP wars, not Nikon. Canon is resorting to more MP because it's easier than really improving the bodies, or the flash system, etc.
lindabrowne wrote:
Fast forward ten years and do you really think this topic will make any sense?
Well, assuming that the existing lens systems for 35 mm have been around for quite a while, with an impressive total user-base to boot, it seems kinda unrealistic to assume that, in 10 years time all that will have been replaced with something with a bigger projection circle. The economics of such a move are very adverse. Lenses that project to a bigger image circle, while retaining their resolving power, cost more. Contrary to the crop lenses, which can be made cheaper than lenses for 35 mm.
So a move to a system beyond 35 mm will cost dearly. Every adapter of the new system will have to get new lenses, each of which will likely cost more than it's 35 mm counterpart. That's a big hurdle to take.
Tentacle wrote:
So a move to a system beyond 35 mm will cost dearly. Every adapter of the new system will have to get new lenses, each of which will likely cost more than it's 35 mm counterpart. That's a big hurdle to take.
I agree, it would be very expensive to buy new lenses for a new system with a sensor larger than FF, but that didn't stop Canon from making all FD-mount lenses virtually obsolete in 1987 when they moved to the new AF system called EOS - and it didn't even have a larger image size.
Yes, but the plus side is that every EF lens has fitted and worked with every EOS camera ever since. Nikons lens line-up looks great on paper as much older lenses continue to work on more modern bodies, but the truth remains their mount is a mish-mash of lenses with varying amounts of crippled functions on different bodies, to the point its actually a nightmare trying to keep tabs. The D40 fiasco was just ridiculous, for example.
In addition, the EF mount is modern and adaptable. After all, you couldn't fit a 50/1.0 or an 85/1.2 to the Nikon mount, but you can fit virtually anything to an EOS with an adaptor, including almost every Nikon lens.
The EF mount was a brave decision and a correct one.
Sam Bennett wrote:
How's it really relevant to this conversation, which is about dSLRs? Canon is escalating the MP wars, not Nikon. Canon is resorting to more MP because it's easier than really improving the bodies, or the flash system, etc.
Its just as easy to say that Pentax and Sony started the war with 14mp plus sensors and its a fair bet the D400 will follow suit. Canon were criticised for offering only 10mp with the 40D while Nikon had 12. Now they're in front, they're criticised for having too many mp. Can they ever win?
I don't think it will ever stop. Just like if you compare the pocket digitals of today to the ones 2 years ago, megapixel numbers will continue to increase while relative image quality will stay the same or degrade slightly (due to overhead). There's just too many people who buy based on the numbers out there. 10 years from now Canon's newest entry-level DSLR camera might have 60 megapixels with the same crop sensor and relative image quality no better than a Rebel XSI.
Hey Mick. I'm not saying that EOS wasn't a great move. I'm just saying that people shouldn't expect that a corporation won't go in a new direction simply because it would be expensive for the consumers of their products.
Sprout Crumble wrote:
Its just as easy to say that Pentax and Sony started the war with 14mp plus sensors and its a fair bet the D400 will follow suit. Canon were criticised for offering only 10mp with the 40D while Nikon had 12. Now they're in front, they're criticised for having too many mp. Can they ever win?
there are way too many people who just walk into a shop and say, "which is better?" to the salesperson, and the words they listen for are "megapixels," and "new."
canon knows this, and that's why they are releasing what they're releasing - bodies that fulfill the sales-speak requirements that consumers are reporting they want to hear.
Here is an interestingly ambiguous statement from that review:
"As we've mentioned previously in this review, in terms of per pixel sharpness the 50D cannot keep up with its older sibling and shows only very marginally more detail (despite the fact that Canon told us the strength of the AA filter remains unchanged for the new model)."
Does that mean the AA filter is the same as the 40D and cuts it off at the same spatial frequency? That is what it sounds like to me. That means you could not expect any better per pixel sharpness than the 40d.
Would listening to opinions from people uninvolved with the engineering development of digital cameras have ever steered us through all the engineering advancements to where we are today?
We have little idea what technological advancements are coming, what design trade-offs may be available, or whether a game-changing advancement is already in prototype testing and is scheduled for release next year.
Tentacle wrote:
One more way to postpone the resolution limit is to move into Foveon territory again. Of course, you have to compensate for the weird way Foveon counts pixels (each of the three layers gets counted).
A little OT here, but Foveon had to respond to the Bayer folks calling a sensel that detects only one color "a pixel" - that was where the weirdness started. Up till then, e.g. a 1024 x 768 pixel color monitor (quite big for those days) had 786,432 pixels which had unique RGB values but they didn't call them 2.4 MP displays...
Sam Bennett wrote:
How's it really relevant to this conversation, which is about dSLRs? Canon is escalating the MP wars, not Nikon. Canon is resorting to more MP because it's easier than really improving the bodies, or the flash system, etc.
I don't see anywhere in this post that limits the discussion to DSLR.
And you can accuse Canon of "escalating the MP wars", but I don't see it as a war. It is a normal progression caused by competitive pressures.
there are real challenges starting at about 2 micron pitch due to the wavelength of light and other factors... a few years ago folks said that the MHz race would go on forever but it didn't and computer performance is growing by other means.... same will happen with cameras and P&S marketing will focus on face detection/video/better IS/direct print to facebook button/ blah blah blah... for the dslr crowd there will be better sensitivity, dynamic range and color a bit at a time as well some completely new non-SLR designs
nathanlake wrote:
I don't see anywhere in this post that limits the discussion to DSLR.
Well, you already clearly delineated them as different markets, so I'm not sure where the confusion would arise.
nathanlake wrote:
And you can accuse Canon of "escalating the MP wars", but I don't see it as a war. It is a normal progression caused by competitive pressures.
It's a war when companies focus on numbers instead of functionality. If you look at Nikon's general approach over the last few releases - the D3, D300 and D700 there has been a very clear demonstration of Nikon looking at the prosumer and professional line as a "system" instead of a handful of unrelated cameras. Canon seems to be in a much more reactionary position "Well, Nikon can now (finally) compete in terms of noise performance (since they're using CMOS instead of CCD) - what do we do now? I know - give us more MP so we look better on paper! Oh, and we'll say that we support ISO 12,800 even though it's useless!" If you look at introductions like the 50D, it's clear that the introduction of a 15MP sensor didn't come from a desire to make a fundamentally better camera, it came from a desire to draw eyeballs back on their products to avoid dollars going to the competition. 15MP, 12 months of development instead of the usual 18... if you think differently, I'm sorry but you're completely deluded.
Sam Bennett wrote:
... it's clear that the introduction of a 15MP sensor didn't come from a desire to make a fundamentally better camera, it came from a desire to draw eyeballs back on their products to avoid dollars going to the competition.
