Goood news for digital camera users

bmattock said:
Granted, but 'megapixels' has been burned into the BEM brain for a number of years now, with the notion that more=better. It will be hard to shift their attention to something else that's shiny and new. Note the TV commercials where they had to hammer home again and again the importance of anti-shake, and face-detection (for the point and shoot crowd). It was a massive effort to get them to stop watching the shiny megapixel number for a few seconds. BEMs are hard to train, but once they think they know something, it's equally hard to get them off it.
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That's what marketing is for.

/T
 
hawkeye said:
For years I've written thaqt 5-6 MP is plenty of megapis for most people. For Flickr, email and websites even this is overkill. For a pro 10-12 works for most magazines and stock agencies.

Hawkeye
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In the aerial imaging industry, the magapixel war started in 2003 at 86 Mp (composite) and unlikely to end until it reaches at least 256 Mp. A monolithic 111 Mp chip was announced only a couple years ago.

However, the new 50~60 Mp chips started a parallel race that might stop the first race.

But then, our film format standard for 50 years was 9" x 9" (230cm x 230cm) and scanners started at 5 micron resolution... It all depends on what you need to do.
 
Avotius is pretty well spot on

Avotius is pretty well spot on

Avotius said:
Sounds like Olympus is throwing the towel because they know that 12 megapixles for their 4/3 sensor size and technology is already starting to push it. Now if they had some of the tech going on at Canon and Nikon that might be another story but they are still a ways away from matching them in the image quality department.
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When Olympus decalres that 12Mp is enough, they are probably correct for most normal (average) uses. But, don't forget that on the 4/3 sensor this is equivalent to just under 48Mp on a full frame or FX sensor. There are a number of reasons for calling a halt to the resolution growth from Olympus' point of view

  • Noise performance is directly connected to sensel size (area) and 12Mp on 4/3 is a set of pretty small sensels. They do well with what they have, but Canon and Nikon's full frame sensors start with a very significant advantage here. Even the APS-C sensors have a head start in pixel size.
  • Smaller sensels become subject to diffraction limiting resolution earlier than large. Again, smaller sensors suffer relative to larger ones - unless the manufacturer is about to introduce a range of f1 lenses for the system.
These issues limit the improvement possible from increased pixel count in the 4/3s system. A similar 48Mp limit on FF has not been reaached, and may be a step too far, but 20+ Mp counts are certainly useful for some applications. Also, there is a lot of nonsense talked about how to manage the files. Storage has become cheaper as pixel counts have risen and applications like lightroom make dealing with the files very easy.

Mike
 
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sojournerphoto said:
When Olympus decalres that 12Mp is enough, they are probably correct for most normal (average) uses. But, don't forget that on the 4/3 sensor this is equivalent to just under 48Mp on a full frame or FX sensor. There are a number of reasons for calling a halt to the resolution growth from Olympus' point of view

  • Noise performance is directly connected to sensel size (area) and 12Mp on 4/3 is a set of pretty small sensels. They do well with what they have, but Canon and Nikon's full frame sensors start with a very significant advantage here. Even the APS-C sensors have a head start in pixel size.
  • Smaller sensels become subject to diffraction limiting resolution earlier than large. Again, smaller sensors suffer relative to larger ones - unless the manufacturer is about to introduce a range of f1 lenses for the system.
These issues limit the improvement possible from increased pixel count in the 4/3s system. A similar 48Mp limit on FF has not been reaached, and may be a step too far, but 20+ Mp counts are certainly useful for some applications. Also, there is a lot of nonsense talked about how to manage the files. Storage has become cheaper as pixel counts have risen and applications like lightroom make dealing with the files very easy.

Mike
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It's too easy to say: buy cheap storage and you can easily handle files even from a PhaseOne P65+. Larger files directly relate to more CPU Power necessary, more RAM in your Computer, backup needs much longer, Working with files takes longer if you have an underperforming system. With my first Olympus 5050 I could backup a holiday on a CD with the small jpg files. For my M8 Raws I need a DVD now for the same amount of picture. If I had a 5DMKII I needed 2-3 DVDs. That all costs time, my precious time that is more valuable than bloody cheap storage.
 
More is better, everyone knows that.
My brother had a 10 transistor, transistor radio. I only had a 7 transistor, transistor radio. 😡
With the introduction of the new aps-c hybrid camera niche, where the projected physical camera sizes appear to be just as compact, if not more so then the current m4/3 offerings, continuing the mega pixel war would be a losing proposition for the companies (oly) that have gambled on the m4/3 platform.
Small, compact cameras with comparable dimensions will be available to the avg consumer that have vastly different sensor sizes, aspect ratios and consequently, mega pixel count.
 
dazedgonebye said:
It will fly with the consumer when the manufacturers want it to fly.
When Canon and Nikon are ready to say "no more" they will tout the other benefits of their systems and downplay the pixels.
Any time now would be fine with me.
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I think recently both Nikon and Canon have only upped the MPs on their FF cameras and I would be surprised to see them up the smaller sensor sized DSLRs MPs. I think we are there for now anyway for APS-C sensored DSLRs. Been wrong many times before though.

Bob
 
Nikon Bob said:
I think recently both Nikon and Canon have only upped the MPs on their FF cameras and I would be surprised to see them up the smaller sensor sized DSLRs MPs. I think we are there for now anyway for APS-C sensored DSLRs. Been wrong many times before though.

Bob
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They didn't only updated the MPs, they improved the sensor and the processing. I have a 40D with 10MP a friend of mine has the new 50D with 15MP. When we go out at night I usualy go no further than ISO 1250 before pictures look not so good anymore. With his camera he can set ISO to 1600-2000 and regarding noise they look like my photos.

That's a problem Olympus has. Due to the smaller sensor they can never catch up with the Ca or Ni. The samples of the new Olympus E-30 seem to be the best noise performance Olympus ever had. But still not quite as good as my 1,5 year old 40D. And at the same pace Olympus improved, Canon improved the sensor performance too.

Olympus offers a very nice feature set in their cameras and they have great lenses but many people think: Olympus? Isn't that the brand with those tiny sensors that produce so much noise? No way. Even those people who only shoot in sunlight think they could get a problem with Olympus.
 
So ... Leica got it right! I remember when the M8 was released there was a lot of disappointment at the 10 megapixel sensor choice.

Maybe Kaufmman should be in bed with Olympus and not Panasonic ... we may even get an M8 you can put under a tap to rinse off after shooting at a particularly dusty cafe or theatre event! :angel:
 
bmattock on target....again!

bmattock on target....again!

bmattock said:
......Money matters. And consumers are mainly booger-eatin' morons. They will buy more megapixels every time.
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Trust me when I say that 'quality' is whatever they (the consumer) think it is. Many years in manufacturing have afforded me numerous opportunities to see just how true that statement is. Many a quality product has been shunned by an ignorant consumer public who only saw the hype and not the relevance in a competitor's ads. Apple and Microsoft are two of the most obvious examples. Let us hope that the management at Olympus has their heads on straight with this one. 😕
 
Papa Smurf said:
Trust me when I say that 'quality' is whatever they (the consumer) think it is. Many years in manufacturing have afforded me numerous opportunities to see just how true that statement is. Many a quality product has been shunned by an ignorant consumer public who only saw the hype and not the relevance in a competitor's ads. Apple and Microsoft are two of the most obvious examples. Let us hope that the management at Olympus has their heads on straight with this one. 😕
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I see the situation as being a little like the auto industry ... general Motors have literally sent themselves broke producing pondorous vehicles that have oversized engines with little thought for thermal efficiency ... gas is cheap right!

The forward thinking informed manufacturers (Honda VW etc) were smart enough to put their development dollars into small clever engines that wring every ounce of available energy from the fuel provided be it petrol or diesel!

If Olympus want to sit back and take this approach while Canon and Nikon beat each other sensless (sensorless) with bigger and bigger megapixel counts good luck to them ... I believe they'll succeed!
 
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tom.w.bn said:
It's too easy to say: buy cheap storage and you can easily handle files even from a PhaseOne P65+. Larger files directly relate to more CPU Power necessary, more RAM in your Computer, backup needs much longer, Working with files takes longer if you have an underperforming system. With my first Olympus 5050 I could backup a holiday on a CD with the small jpg files. For my M8 Raws I need a DVD now for the same amount of picture. If I had a 5DMKII I needed 2-3 DVDs. That all costs time, my precious time that is more valuable than bloody cheap storage.
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All true, but if I could afford a phase P65+ then I could probably afford a decent Mac - or has Mr Jobs put his prices up even further?

As for back up, I gave up on CDs and DVDs long ago and back up on multiple external HDDs. This is invisible to me as I save two copies of everything on download and then further backups are just programmed. I do the same with film scans - save to a feeder directory and then import into LR backing up as I go.

Your absolutely right - time is really important. I don't have enough of it.

Mike
 
12 Mpix is more than enough ... on such a tiny piece of chip. That would be 48 MPix on FX (full frame).

I have 6 MPix DLSR too (Minolta), but I do not find it enough for some purposes (landscapes). Partially because of the fact that I just DO NOT like the look of uprezzed digi pics and also because I got spoilt by the quality of scanned 6x6 and 4x5 ...
 
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