[benjikan]

You know, I've been observing my images and thinking about the stuff I have shot with my Canon 10D, Canon 20D, Canon 1Ds Mkll and my Pentax K10D's and K20D's.* I have also shot with pretty much every Medium Format camera and digital back available.

I JUST DON'T SEE ANY SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANY OF THEM WHEN PRINTED TO A LARGER THAN STANDARD MAGAZINE FORMAT!!!* That being around A3. Perhaps color nuance and some grain differences when I shot at 400 or 800 iso.

I have been published with all of the above camera's. All of the magazine's I have been published in are very high grade Trendy Press book quality magazines. The output out of all of the above camera's were more than adequate for my needs.

My point is this. In terms of resolving power and for most support that most of us would imagine being published in,* pretty much all of the newer DSLR's out today could be used for professional application, if you know their limitations.

In fact my last shoot I did with the Pentax K20D was over kill considering the size of the support i.e. about 8x10 inches. In fact I had to reduce the image size to get down to 300 dpi for Pre Press.* I would have been quite comfortable with a 8-10 mega pixel DSLR. The only grain I see when published with a 10 mega pixel camera in double page landscape format is the "tram" grain of the printing press of around 133 dpi.

Why do I bring all of this up...Pixel Peeping is a total waste of time.

Go out and enjoy your toy and use it to express who and what you are.

Benjamin Kanarek Blog | Benjamin Kanarek Blog

[wildman]

Go out and enjoy your toy and use it to express who and what you are.

Yes.

And the same could be said for lens' tripods etc.

I am always much more limited by my imagination and skill than by my hardware.

[blackcloudbrew]

Several years ago, I attended a landscape photography workshop in Death Valley National Park. The pro photographer there, speaking to a group of about 20 or 30 of us, said that if we had a camera of about 3mp that was all we would (most likely) ever need because most of us would never print beyond an 8x10 image and 3mp was more than enough to do it. Based on that and your post above, I think your point is well taken. I'm not really concerned how many mp my cameras have, it's more about ease of use, bells and whistles, things like that. Thanks for adding another data point in this Ben. Put me down as voting for going out and enjoying my toy.

[khardur]

Amen to that. I noticed a slight jump in quality from my 6mp K110D to my 10mp K200D. But between that and my K7 there is no big difference.

[newarts]

....
My point is this. In terms of resolving power and for most support that most of us would imagine being published in,* pretty much all of the newer DSLR's out today could be used for professional application, if you know their limitations....

Why do I bring all of this up...Pixel Peeping is a total waste of time....[/url]

What you say is true especially as you qualified it.

But remember that a one pixel camera captures only a single colored smudge for any scene. What is in fact required is a number of pixels suitable for the intended display.

If cropping is part of the reproduction scheme then increased pixel count will help (but should best be avoided by using the right lens in the first place - because contrast must fall and noise must rise as resolution/enlargement increases).

I'm saying this not to refute you but to pound in the fact that "good enough" in the digital world is in fact "good enough"; it is no benefit to have digital resolution beyond that needed.

For the highest displayed image quality one should crop by lens choice not by throwing away potential data.

[MPrince]

...The pro photographer...said that if we had a camera of about 3mp that was all we would (most likely) ever need because most of us would never print beyond an 8x10 image and 3mp was more than enough to do it...

To go beyond that point, 3mp is also enough to print at any size, because as the size of the print increases, the comfortable viewing distance also increases. You can comfortably view a 3 mp 8x10 print held in your hand at arm's length. Increase the size of the print to, say, the size of Colorado and the print would still look great, so long as you were viewing the print from space.

[Matthew]

To go beyond that point, 3mp is also enough to print at any size, because as the size of the print increases, the comfortable viewing distance also increases. You can comfortably view a 3 mp 8x10 print held in your hand at arm's length. Increase the size of the print to, say, the size of Colorado and the print would still look great, so long as you were viewing the print from space.

What you say is true for an image where you want to take in the entire scene at once, but some images are made for exploring, having many subjects each of which requires its own three megapixel space.

Other forms of photography require recording as much information as possible, e.g. Astro-photography, aerial photography and other scientific endeavours.

Extra resolution can also give you cropping flexibility (particularly useful when you are shooting moving subjects that are hard to keep centred) and post processing flexibility for when you want to correct or create distortion or other creative manipulations.


Personally, I use the extra pixel resolution of the K5 to substitute for a longer lens/teleconverters and then use the built-in cropping to pick out the subject area that I was interested in.

The big question for me is, "Is 16 mp enough?".
The answer is that I have no use for more resolution unless there is a corresponding improvement in sensitivity and DR as there was with the K5.

[kheldour]

Go out and enjoy your toy and use it to express who and what you are.

Benjamin Kanarek Blog | Benjamin Kanarek Blog

Well spoken Ben!

Instead of focussing on the technology, photographers should go out more for actual photography.

+1

[wombat2go]

Benjikan, I agree fully with your post and extend my comments to viewing on a monitor.
I just got an Eizo 22 inch (1920 by 1200 pixels=2.3 MB) even though I still use outdated ist (3008 by 2008=6.1 MB) bodies.
I did a lot of fooling around with color cards etc yesterday and I now realize it would have been indeed asinine of me to upgrade the bodies and still use the basic old monitors I have here, even though a new Eizo costs as much or more than a Pentax body.
I also only use camera jpegs of 3008 by 3000.
As a hobbiest in sRGB space, it is my opinion that the errors by lack of camera pixels and by the jpg conversion are orders of magnitude less than the other factors that we know about and can control in many cases. And it is fun doing so.

[RioRico]

Agreement! BUT...

I'd been shooting film for decades. I got a 1.1mpx P&S in 2001, and a couple (much better!) 5mpx P&S's a couple years later. And I still use those extensively. When I did my rigorous analysis of which dSLR to buy just 3 years ago, megapickles *were* a concern. Not so much for, would I *be* happy with a nice 8mpx or 10mpx camera, but would I *stay* happy? I chose the K20D both for its bang/buck (and the DA10-17 lens), and because I thought that 8-10mpx cam would leave me lusting for more. I feared to contract the I-GOTTA-UPGRADE-SOON disease that seems to strike many Rebel owners.

Going from 6 to 8mpx, 8 to10, 10 to 12, 12 to 14.6 mpx, each increment is quite indistinguishable. Yes, I moved from 5mpx to 7-8mpx P&S's, with negligible differences in IQ. So yes, I could have bought a 12mpx dSLR and had the quality (if not all the features) of the K20D. But the K20D sets a standard that I can live with for years. I have no disposable income, besides what I trade on eBay, so I'm not in a position to 'upgrade' regularly -- and the K20D keeps me from lusting for the impossible. That many megapickles are a prophylactic on my desires.

Yes, a K5 or Kr would be Real Nice To Have. But I'm quite happy with my over-performing K20D, so I needn't waste time fantasizing for more. Except maybe the Sony A850, ooh, what a babe...

[Warped]

You know, I've been observing my images and thinking about the stuff I have shot with my Canon 10D, Canon 20D, Canon 1Ds Mkll and my Pentax K10D's and K20D's.* I have also shot with pretty much every Medium Format camera and digital back available.
.... snip..

And if you were an aspiring semi-pro who can only afford (or has access to) just one camera, which would it be?

Fair enough on all points, but a lot of us don't have the luxury and being able to loan this, hire that and only get to use one main camera, or maybe have access to a back-up camera as well.

In the main I agree with that's written and I've managed 2 magazine covers (nothing compared to Benjikan I know) shooting with a K100D. Now I've got a 645D and absolutely love it!! Sure the 40 Mpixels isn't "needed" in the strict sense of the word, but boy does it open up a lot of possibilities the K100D would have never let me do or try.
If I want to print BIG for an exhibition I can, if I want to crop a full length shot with a lot of background down to a tight head and shoulders and still show it big I can, the dynamic range letting me shoot outdoors with a lot more confidence has me trying things I'd long ago given up on using the K100D .......etc.

I think I achieved quite a lot using the 6.3 Mpixel K100D with publications, interviews, being profiled and my work shown on a number of sites, and being sought out by people I'd only dreamed of working with .... will I go back to the K100D now after 6 months with the 645D ...... not a chance!

Having spent 4-5 years with the K100D I thoroughly agree with "Go out and enjoy your toy and use it to express who and what you are" but I'd also add - don't underestimate what a difference an upgrade or a change to a different system can make (without getting caught in the "upgrade trap").

Having shot 35mm and a range of MF formats on film in the past, I always wanted to go with a digital MF kit but could never afford it. So I saved, and saved, and used the cheapest kit gear hoping to pick up a 2nd hand Hasselblad, Phase One ...etc, but then the 645D came along at the right time for me financially speaking. So maybe it's a bit different for me having gone from a bottom of the range, entry level, consumer DSLR with kit lenses and jumping straight to a pro Medium Format.

[magkelly]

Honestly I can't see myself ever needing beyond 10MP even for doing professional work. I can see someone maybe needing more if they're doing ads that will land up on billboards but for simple portrait work etc anything over 12MP or so does seem like overkill to me. I'm quite happy to see that the next camera I will own, the K-x, has 12MP, sure, but I really doubt that I'll be using all that capacity half the time. Still, if you have it, need it, it's there, and that's cool, IMHO.

To me it's rather like the K-x having some video capacity. I really don't have much use for that given what I do and likely I'll just ignore it, but if I happened to be on a street corner shooting and something really newsworthy happened, who knows? I might just be glad my DSLR can shoot a 15 minute video if being in the right place at the right time nets me a nice offer from news station that can use the footage.

It doesn't hurt having more capacity than you need, but no, I agree with Benji on this one MP shouldn't take priority over getting out there and really using your camera even if it doesn't have the highest capacity available right then and there.

There are always people out there who have to have the latest, greatest gadget, but that's not always a good thing as the contents of our landfills can testify.

[pinholecam]

Thanks for posting this.

I will refer this post to ppl who come up with meagapixel comparisons

[Clavius]

Go out and enjoy your toy and use it to express who and what you are.

Benjamin Kanarek Blog | Benjamin Kanarek Blog

That's some extremely good advice right there!

The earlier digital camera's didn't have very good (or didn't have any) internal infra red filters. So, last year, when I got interested in infrared photography, I bought myself an old 2 megapixel Olympus 2020c. It is famous for it's sensitiviy to IR. It can shoot infrared handheld, even in low light.

The 2mp pictures are absolutely fine. I only get in trouble when I want to crop to much.

[psychdoc]

True. But even though I don't bother to print but rarely there are still good reasons to get megapixels.

For some of us amateur sports shooters, i.e limited to kids playing in atrocious lighting conditions, CROPPING seems to save a lot of pictures. And more megapixels helps...