Originally posted by dtmateojr [/COLOR]The whole point of my post is that, say at f11, a D4 with 16mp will resolve exactly the same as a D800 with 36mp with the same lens. The D800 will have a bigger image and that's it. You can blow up the D4 image in PS to arrive at the same 36mp without loss of detail. The advantage of the D4 is that you are not wasting space, your canera can shoot faster, your PC can process the images faster AND on the pixel level, the D4 has an unfair advantage over the D800 because of the larger sensels.
Again, diffraction is a function of lens + sensor - your F/11 hard limit you seemingly pull from the air isn't even tied to a specific lens (which it needs to be, to have a chance of being true
). As I said before, you may be able to find a lens that has a curve that drops off so fast at f/11 that a 24MP and 36MP would give equal resolution - but that probably wouldn't be a lens you'd consider for landscape work, because it would be kinda bad.
Here's some graphed measurements from Lensrentals, 24MP D3X vs. 36MP D800, same lens:
As you can see, right at f/11 the 36MP D800 is resolving about 870l, the 24MP D3x around 780l. So much for your f/11 hard limit
Landscapers also talk about how sharpening can mitigate the effects of diffraction even more with higher-MP sensors. Here's the result of some research from
this link:
Quote:
"
As Simone has shown, the resolving power of a 36mp camera at f/22 does out resolve a 21Mp sensor at any aperture setting. And into the future, a 50Mp sensor will continue to out resolve the 36Mp sensor, even at f/22. This has even been shown in practise as the 7D has the same pixel density as a possible full frame 50Mp camera."
Don't fear the MP!
.