How big?

[Bill Pierce]

As we approach the end of the year, it’s definitely been the year of the big megapixel with cameras like the Fuji GFX 50 S with a 51 megapixel sensor, the Sony A7R III refining the results from their 42 megapixel sensor and the Nikon D850 with its 45.7 megapixels. Do we need that many megapixels?Well, if you only post your pictures on the internet and/or view them on a conventional computer screen, no. You could do well with 4 or 5 megapixels.

Recently we printed 12 x 18 inch test images from 24 megapixel APS-C Fuji and full frame Leica sensors alongside those from the larger megapixel sensors we’ve mentioned. There simply was not a significant difference in the prints. After all, a 24 megapixel file is going to deliver more than 300 pixels per inch at this print size.

But, by simply by looking at the image at 100% on our computer screen, we could see a significant difference in resolving power between the 24 megapixel images and the higher counts. At what point does that difference reveal itself in prints? Of course, the answer is - it depends.

Billboards are huge, but they are viewed from a distance. They can be printed at 15 pixels per inch. But, if the print is going to be examined from up close on a gallery wall, if it’s a landscape or architectural shot beautifully executed, that 40mg sensor is going to deliver a beautiful 16x24 or 20x30 print. On your living room wall, where the viewer is blocked from sticking his nose against the print by your sofa, I’d ballpark an acceptable 30x40 from only 24 megapixels. And that presumes fine detail is an important part of the picture. That’s not always true. There’s a reason portrait photographers use diffusion.

Since “How big?” is an “It depends.” situation, I would like very much to hear other folks opinions on this as it relates to the cameras they use and their photography.

 

[charjohncarter]

Do you think, and this is a non-digital guy writing, that noise is the reason for the APS-C being less "sharp" on your monitor? When I use digital if I have to go higher ISO with my APS-C it starts to drop some sharpness.

 

[Darthfeeble]

That would have been my first question too. I'd love to see my little 6mp Epson fired by one of the newer processors. The ability to clean noise and retain detail would be more important to me than what numbers are on the box.

 

[charjohncarter]

Even though I'm not big on digital, it doesn't mean I hate it. I use it, if not with cameras, every day with processing my negatives. So, I would like to thank you for bringing questions that some of us that are 'hybrid' and not really into technology find interesting and helpful.

 

[kshapero]

Also not a big digital guy, but my Nikon D600 with 24 Meg is more than enough for me, but then I am not printing billboards. So I guess it depends.

 

[ReeRay]

Cropping. That's were the bigger megapixels come in handy. I can pull a section from my A7r images and equal my full frame 24mp image. Gives me a lot of extra options if I get caught with the wrong lens on board.

 

[Larry Cloetta]

All other things being equal, a bigger pixel is a better pixel.

Though it may be quite true that "it's not a photo until it is printed", most people don't print their photos any longer. If they do, they rarely are ever going to print anything larger than 8x12-most people, if for no other reason than that who really has the wall space for a significant number of 24x16 photos.
Some people have a legitimate need to consistently produce large prints, but that is, these days, an infinitessimally small number of people. New cameras with huge megapixel counts cater to them. Other people, who really should know better, because they never make a print larger than 8x12, and rarely even do those, mostly just looking at pictures on a screen, get sucked into buying larger MP count cameras because of marketing (and because manufacturers, being sales volume driven, have mostly abandoned that segment). More megapickles. Most people (not necessarily most people in this forum) would be better served by a 16mp full frame body (better dynamic range, less noise, better color depth) producing better images for the way they use cameras than a 24, 36, 47mp body.

Because, all other things being equal, a bigger pixel is a better pixel.
Scant bragging rights come in the box with a new low pixel count body, though, so the industry is going the other way, regardless.
Because, the bigger number, it's better, right?

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I'm downsizing my processed images for keeping, display and print to 2800x1800 pixels. Which is 5MP. I'm qualified for R-D1! 🙂

 

[Bill Pierce]

Do you think, and this is a non-digital guy writing, that noise is the reason for the APS-C being less "sharp" on your monitor? When I use digital if I have to go higher ISO with my APS-C it starts to drop some sharpness.

No, when we are viewing digital images at 100%, I think the lower sharpness, lower resolution is primarily, but not totally, due to pixel count on today’s modern sensor. However, the way that camera makers handle noise or the way we handle it with processing programs can certainly effect sharpness. If you soften or conceal the noise present in an image, you also soften the fine detail. And, on that rare occasion where all other things are equal, the smaller sensor with its smaller pixels is going to be noisier.

My policy is to make the image as sharp as possible and pretend the noise is the same as the film grain I used to get when I pushed film.

I suspect, since more pixels on a given sensor size mean even smaller pixels and more evident noise at high ISO’s, APS-C and 4/3 will probably always lag behind some bigger sensors in pixel count.

 

[Godfrey]

Modern sensors are very clean imagers. I have to work hard to get what I consider to be significant noise in an image these days.

I figured way back in the mists of time that about a 15-16x enlargement of 35mm film was the effective quality limit, and backwards engineered from that the notion that a 4000x6000 capture sensor would net enough pixels, and enough overhead, that I could make the same quality prints from digital capture as I could from the best 35mm film workflow. Time and lots of experience with digital process has proven to me that this is about right, give or take some special uses.

So a good 24 MPixel sensor was my desire from the beginning, and every stop along the way to that was why I bought camera after camera until I've arrived at my current kit of Leica M-D and SL cameras. I don't need anything more than 24Mpixel in any realistic sense, so I'm sticking here until some incredible advantage to a higher rez sensor shows up.

G

 

[Peter_S]

Photokina, 2015. One of my images at a booth was printed 3m wide. M8.2 at 10.3 MP.
That said, from the M246 or MF back it would certainly look cleaner, but not change anything about the image itself.


3m wide

 

[RichC]

A resolution of 300 dpi has been used for decades for images made up of dots when printed: i.e. the traditional "halftone" photograph in books and magazines. This figure is no accident - it matches the average resolving power of the human eye at a typical reading distance. A higher value looks no sharper because we cannot see the extra detail, but as the value lowers we start to notice less detail and more blur.

So, not surprisingly, 300 ppi has been adopted in digital photography as the "ideal" resolution when printing images.

There's nothing magic about 300 ppi itself - it's very crude. In practice, if you compare two photos printed at the same size - one at 300 dpi, the other at 200 dpi - the difference is minimal in most instances, but noticeable.

I refuse to print below 200 ppi - and if the resolution is much below 300 ppi I enlarge the image to increase the resolution to 300 ppi. This may be a complicated process involving selection of the best resizing algorithm (sometimes Photoshop works fine, sometimes dedicated software like SizeFixer - sadly no longer supported), adding barely visible noise to take the place of lost detail and for other reasons (a trick I learnt from a master printer - film grain in traditional silver prints is much more than just an "artefact") and suitable sharpening. Often layers are used, as different parts of a photograph need to be processed separately.

Some folk say that their 6 MP prints look fine printed, say, a metre (3 feet) wide. They don't - they look like mush! If you put that metre-wide print next to an identical photo from my 36 MP Nikon D800E, the difference would be stark! That's about 80 dpi versus about 200 dpi.

I also don't believe in viewing distance. It's fine in theory but people will always walk right up to a print to examine it, even if it's massive! So, every print I make must be pin sharp when viewed from mere inches.

As I mentioned, I use a Nikon D800E. Its 36 MP images have dimensions of roughly 7500 x 5000 pixels. So, how big will I print? At 300 ppi with no resizing, this equates to 25 x 16 inches; resizing at 200 ppi gives 36 x 24 inches. So, I can just about get metre-wide prints - but I consider the quality barely acceptable (I'm fussy!).

There's a very good reason why professional photographers who make or whose clients require large prints use medium-format cameras with 50, 100 or more megapixels!

 

[David Hughes]

I guess the pixel count is unimportant for most people, in reality, and I wonder if they really understand it. Talk about 300, 200 or 100 dpi and you get no response most of the time.

My local lab could turn out posters but I only ever saw them do one and I used to visit a lot. Talking to them they said nearly everyone wants 4 x 6 which means a 4 or 5 megapixel camera would be more than adequate. And for those who only look at them on the screen a 1 or 2...

The trouble is digital lets us take an unhealthy and forensic look at our pictures. Great if you need to test lenses to do billboards but a waste of money for most people.

Regards, David

 

[ForestCap]

The trouble is digital lets us take an unhealthy and forensic look at our pictures.

Regards, David

Agree. Unhealthy and forensic, these are the correct terms I tried to come up with.

I've been doing lots of digital image analysis for biology research work. Even such work does not require pixel peepings which I thought it would.

 

[David Hughes]

Always happy to help...

 

[Dogman]

When I shot film, the largest I would ever print was 11x14. Usually 9x12 on 11x14 paper. That was my limit of acceptable quality for 35mm. Of course I was using 400 speed film, sometimes shot at 1600 and often cropped, so I suppose I could have gone larger if I had gone slower.

With digital, I don't find there to be a true limit of acceptable quality. The 300 dpi guide is not set in stone. You can make a print at a much lower dpi, depending on subject detail, lighting and other factors. Viewing distance is a major factor, per the billboard analogy. I've posted before that I came to accept using digital with a photograph I printed from 1/2 of an 8 mp frame. The picture was shot quickly with the wrong lens on the camera, necessitating the major crop. But the moment was fleeting, the light was perfect, the colors eye boggling, the interaction of the colors and shapes were interesting and I can print that photograph 12x18 all day long and it looks terrific. Technically, if you try to find the quality deficits you can do so. Who cares?

Although I don't believe there is a limit of acceptable quality with digital, I still work within limitations based on my equipment and procedures. I mainly use 16 mp APS-C cameras. I have other cameras that are 12 and 18 mp in APS-C and in standard and micro 4/3 formats. I shoot Raw. I can print up to 13x19 with my current printer. I do both color and B&W, with emphasis on B&W. Mostly I print 12x18 or 6x9. I frequently crop, sometimes significantly. With 4/3 format and higher ISO with cropping, I get a good bit of noise--grain. Nothing someone who has shot Tri-X at 1600 would get too worked up over. I don't feel the need for more megapixels, larger format sizes and larger files these days.

 

[Timmyjoe]

As I don't print anything bigger than 11x14, and most of my work is photojournalistic or documentary, the issue for me is file size. The "biggest" I use is 20MP, more often 16MP. Bigger than that it jams up my laptop, making sorting and editing very slow.

If I did landscape or something of that ilk, I guess 45MP would be cool.

Best,
-Tim

 

[David Hughes]

" Technically, if you try to find the quality deficits you can do so. Who cares?"

Exactly. it's the print that counts and you can get a high wow factor with very low tech...

Regards, David

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

I'm very happy with 20x30" prints from 24MPx cameras. And, I like a print sharp enough to stand close inspection.

I did some experiments a while back. Shoot a scene with D200 (10 MPx), then switch to a longer lens, shoot a series, stitch them together for higher res. Print at 12x18. The D200 looked pretty good. The stitched image looked better. All this FWIW, but it made me feel that 10MPx was OK but at the margin for 12x18 print.

 

[jsrockit]

The trouble is digital lets us take an unhealthy and forensic look at our pictures. Great if you need to test lenses to do billboards but a waste of money for most people.

I agree David. Most internet "photography" sites are really just equipment sites that gush about technical attributes that only geeks really worry about. It's rampant consumerism. Nothing wrong with being a geek, but galleries and museums are full of images that are not sharp, not about bokeh, are not printed overly large, and even have mistakes. However, the content and framing are wonderful...and make an impact. That said, the technical side (as opposed to the artistic side) of photography has always been easier to understand. Photography equipment reviews these days are not far off from computer reviews.

Yesterday I was reading a thread on a different site about the Leica CL. The guy "tested" the camera and was commenting on a photo of a man wearing sunglasses about 10 feet (or more) back from the camera (of course framed badly). He was stating that the camera did not handle the skin under the sunglasses (in the shadow of the sunglasses) as well as the rest of the skin on the man's face. We are talking about a detail that is about the size of 1% of the total photo and honestly would not make or break a good photo. However, all I could think about is that the photo was horrible in the first place and that it was mind boggling that anyone would even look at that minor detail in a throw away photo (no less obsess about it). He swore the Leica Q would have nailed it.