Originally posted by Oldbayrunner Anyone with an understanding of reach knows better than that. Now if you were talking about cropped image resolution loss when reducing the image size of a full frame image to that of an Aps-c image then that I would agree the more MPs provided is of great importance and your mathematics is spot on comparing the K3 24mp to the cropped 16mp K1 image.
The simple fact is, the term "reach" is not scientifically defined so it's pointless debating it. People are free to define it however they want. Anyone who uses the term to try and define an argument is an idiot. Nuf said. You're stupid if you say APS-c gives you the same reach, you're stupid if you say APS-c gives you more. Because of the nebulous definition of the term, both things are true. Discuss magnification, there will be no confusion. And all the dubious misleading arguments disappear.
Simple fact…. on a sensor sample from slightly larger than and APS_c footprint, a K-3 gives you more subject magnification than a K-1 using the same lens. There is simply no argument against this. It's an absolute fact. The rest of this is semantical nonsense. Your image will appear larger on your screen than an image taken with a K-1 and it will have 33% more resolution.
Talk about subject resolution. Talking about total image resolution sonly relevant if you can use the total image, great for landscape, wildlife usually involves some cropping.
As I said, if we were talking about a 51 MP Canon, this wouldn't be true. If we were talking about a 6MP *ist it wouldn't be true. Forget the hogwash and nonsense. Stick to what's true. Anyone who's gone from a K-5 (same pixel density as a K-1 in crop mode), and a K-3 knows this.
The term "reach" is photographic techno babble, that the way it's normally applied is not relevant to cross-format discussion. Unless one understands the limitations of the term, one really has no business using it.