Bill Pierce
Well-known
Are you in distress because your camera, now several years old, doesn’t have enough megapixels? Don’t worry. Just remember the prints from the Canon 5D and the Nikon D700 with their 12 megapixel sensors. Those prints looked pretty good.
Still worried about megapixels? Perhaps megapixels aren’t everything. The Leica M10, twice as many megapixels as the 5D and D700, body only, no lens, costs $7,300, is 37th from the top of the Dx0Mark list of full frame and smaller sensor cameras.
The small, compressed images seen on the internet or even the original files viewed on your big screen computer don’t need many megapixels to look good. Make a print and megapixels start to count, but perhaps not as much as people think. Say you print a 2x3 ratio image typical of uncropped full frame on 11x14 paper with half inch borders. Print that frame from a 12 megapixel Canon 5D raw file and it will have a pixel density of about 330 psi, right between the two pixel densities, 300 and 360, that seem to be contenders for the “you can’t do better than that award.” Truth is, an even bigger print with an even lower pixel density does pretty good because it is normally viewed from a slightly greater distance. Bigger prints viewed from a greater distance or of images like portraits that don’t benefit from razor sharpness can go larger. Unlike prints in an exhibition hall, prints in your living room can go bigger because most people are polite enough to not leap over the sofa so they can press their noses against the glass.
“Sharpness” is dependent on so many things beside megapixels. Some of it, just like the megapixels, is inherent in the cameras. The Leica M10 may score the way it does, edge performance at times falling well behind central performance, in part because sensors don’t like steeply angled edge rays that you get from non retrofocus short focal length lenses - not a problem that bothered film. Nor is wide open performance top drawer across the field with any of the older lenses and quite a few new ones. But, it’s still one of many photographers favorite cameras.
But problems inherent with cameras are peanuts compare to problems with photographers.
Number one, camera movement… One thing that results from staring a 100% views of many digital cameras is the realization that we aren’t really that good at holding a camera steady at 1/30th of a second (or 1/60 or even 1/125). Actually, staring at 100% views has shown us the both human and autofocus aren’t quite as perfect as we had imagined nor depth-of-field as all enfolding. You’re not looking at images and saying “shaky and soft.” It’s subtler than that. It’s just not quite as sharp as it could be (“micro shaky and soft?”). The easy way out is high shutter speeds and small f/stops. Of course, that’s going to mean a high ISO. Digital had taken some of the curse from that, but there are still times when a tripod and a lower ISO and shutter speed make sense. There is also one other thing that makes sense, realizing that many megapixels, razor sharpness and ultimate technical perfection are not a guarantee of a powerful image. Film photographers know that. Maybe digital photographers should, too.
Your thoughts?
Still worried about megapixels? Perhaps megapixels aren’t everything. The Leica M10, twice as many megapixels as the 5D and D700, body only, no lens, costs $7,300, is 37th from the top of the Dx0Mark list of full frame and smaller sensor cameras.
The small, compressed images seen on the internet or even the original files viewed on your big screen computer don’t need many megapixels to look good. Make a print and megapixels start to count, but perhaps not as much as people think. Say you print a 2x3 ratio image typical of uncropped full frame on 11x14 paper with half inch borders. Print that frame from a 12 megapixel Canon 5D raw file and it will have a pixel density of about 330 psi, right between the two pixel densities, 300 and 360, that seem to be contenders for the “you can’t do better than that award.” Truth is, an even bigger print with an even lower pixel density does pretty good because it is normally viewed from a slightly greater distance. Bigger prints viewed from a greater distance or of images like portraits that don’t benefit from razor sharpness can go larger. Unlike prints in an exhibition hall, prints in your living room can go bigger because most people are polite enough to not leap over the sofa so they can press their noses against the glass.
“Sharpness” is dependent on so many things beside megapixels. Some of it, just like the megapixels, is inherent in the cameras. The Leica M10 may score the way it does, edge performance at times falling well behind central performance, in part because sensors don’t like steeply angled edge rays that you get from non retrofocus short focal length lenses - not a problem that bothered film. Nor is wide open performance top drawer across the field with any of the older lenses and quite a few new ones. But, it’s still one of many photographers favorite cameras.
But problems inherent with cameras are peanuts compare to problems with photographers.
Number one, camera movement… One thing that results from staring a 100% views of many digital cameras is the realization that we aren’t really that good at holding a camera steady at 1/30th of a second (or 1/60 or even 1/125). Actually, staring at 100% views has shown us the both human and autofocus aren’t quite as perfect as we had imagined nor depth-of-field as all enfolding. You’re not looking at images and saying “shaky and soft.” It’s subtler than that. It’s just not quite as sharp as it could be (“micro shaky and soft?”). The easy way out is high shutter speeds and small f/stops. Of course, that’s going to mean a high ISO. Digital had taken some of the curse from that, but there are still times when a tripod and a lower ISO and shutter speed make sense. There is also one other thing that makes sense, realizing that many megapixels, razor sharpness and ultimate technical perfection are not a guarantee of a powerful image. Film photographers know that. Maybe digital photographers should, too.
Your thoughts?
