Originally posted by Dana G This is getting silly!
I used a couple of MX bodes for 35mm work for many years, since they did the job intended. I still have my old Mamaiya RB67 Pro-S, a very old camera. I know people who have been using them in their studios for twenty years. If it works it works.
By the time you get to the K10D, you have the features and pixels to do any commercial job that could reasonable be expected.
Here's an example of rampant pixellitis in the industry:
My old childhood friend, John Manno, has a studio one block off Madison Avenue. He was using the Kodak DCS-14 back for the agencies, and they were happy. He paid a lot of money for it.
A year and a half later, they demanded the Leaf 22 megapixel back. The DCS-14 was just not good enough.
Not good enough to print on glossy stock on an offset press through maybe a 200 line screen? C'mon, who are they kidding?
It seems that the agencies have been hoist on their own petard. They are so intent on selling consumers More Pixels, they sort of swallowed their own propaganda.
Pixellitis is a disease that effects people who value equipment more than the end result. Think about it: how much more resolution will you get from 12 megapixels than from 10? You have to quadruple the number of pixels to double the resolution. The difference between 10 and 12? Don't even bother to mention it!
I have a bunch of pics taken on days out with my friends. Their equipment ranges from humble stuff such as Nikon D70's to the top of the range 1Ds and the most obvious difference between all of them is the person taking the darned picture.
With a decent lens and a steady hand its really quite hard to see much difference between the detail in an A4 print. In an A3 print you can JUST tell that the 10MP are inching away from the 6MP (sometimes) and the 1Ds has an edge over the 10MP (but not always) but its impossible to see much difference between 10 and 12 (yes even a 5D).
Only when you get really big or crop quite a lot (we are talking big now, close to a metre wide) does the IDs really start to show the others up and even then, from six feet away you cant always tell unless the subject lends itself to such comparisons.
People get all anxious about this nonsense but unless you regularly want to print poster size pics for a gallery of very detailed subjects (scenery particularly) do you see any appreciable difference and even then it makes no difference to the artisitic qualities of the result. A large print of a well conceived 6MP print can still look stunningly good and technique in both shooting and photoshop can make up a lot of ground....
Before anyone jumps on me, yes you CAN see a difference if you take a loupe to the print, but even a hint of camera shake renders such comparisons superfluous. Hence my point about the photographer being the key factor and the quality of the end result being pretty much independent of resolution.
And besides, resolution is a function of lens + sensor. An average lens on a 12MP sensor wont necessarily give you better results than a stellar lens on a 6MP sensor.
If you really want a visible difference and your line of work requires prints over 1m wide, then you really have to get into MF territory. A 24MP back will look appreciably better on such a large format. But how many of us EVER print that big?