Pixel Lust

[Bill Pierce]

Big megapixel sensors are on the rise - 100 megapixels in the Fuji GFX 100, and 47.3 in the Panasonic S1R (It’s rumored that the Fuji X-T3, the S1R and GFX 100 sensors are all cut from the same sheet. Makes sense if you look at the pixel numbers.) and 61 in the new Sony A7 R IV. There is no question that pixel lust has hit any number of otherwise sensible photographers. Really, you have to ask yourself, “Will I benefit from pixel increase beyond the envy of the other photographers around me?”

For openers, will that new, high pixel count reveal that your old lenses are not able to take full advantage of the new sensor? That’s a very real consideration. And if your lenses are good enough, are you good enough to take advantage of the advantages? Remember - no camera shake, no non optimum aperture, no misfocusing, no high ISO bailout.

And while we are just plain being nasty, how about the need for higher capacity memory cards, more storage capacity, and the large file slowdown of computers and imaging programs, plus the fact that the bigger pixels of a lower count sensor may improve low light and video performance (to a degree that always seems to be changing).

From my perspective, there are two undeniable advantages to high megapixel counts. One is the fine detail held in large prints. The Fuji GFX 100 can produce a print a little larger than 24 x 32 inches at 360 pixels per inch. At that ppi, you can press your nose against the print to examine the fine detail. Most folks feel conventionally sized prints don’t need more than 300 ppi. That would make a print a little larger than 29 x 38 inches. Realistically, if you are standing back far enough to see the entire print, 240 ppi is more than sufficient, and that produces a print 36 1/2 x 48 1/2 inches. So, for big prints a high megapixel camera delivers.

The second advantage is the ability to crop. That’s often desirable with news shots, but they are most often shown in a small size in print or on the screen. Where croppability really pays off is advertising and commercial shots that are being laid out by a crazed art director. I think I could use it with some of the pictures of my dog, but I don’t think I’ll go for the dollars.

Anyway, I think the advantage of many megapixels for me in a house whose walls are already covered with 11x14, 16x20 and 20x24 prints from a variety of cameras that all seem "sharp", doesn’t really exist. I think that may be the case for many of us even as we suffer from pixel lust when a new camera is introduced. I’d love to hear what you think - especially if you disagree with me.

 

[Larry Cloetta]

The original brand of lust is more interesting.

 

[Timmyjoe]

I'm a "bigger is better" photographer when it comes to film, but not for digital. For many of the reasons you have listed above, none of my digital cameras is over 24MP, and I only have one of those, and that one is a PITA because of how large the files are. I also love shooting two sets of rather old rangefinder lenses and even though I love the way they render, they were designed in the late 1940's and early 1950's, and I'm convinced they would not hold up on a 36, 40, 50MP camera, not to mention the 100MP one you discuss above.

But I feel very differently about film cameras, and have been slowly putting together a 4x5 set up, after having experimented with an old 2.25"x3.25" shooting sheet film. It's all B&W work, and I'm drawn to the tonal gradations I'm hoping to be able to get with the LF lenses and the large negative.

Best,
-Tim

 

[Bill Pierce]

I feel very differently about film cameras, and have been slowly putting together a 4x5 set up, after having experimented with an old 2.25"x3.25" shooting sheet film. It's all B&W work, and I'm drawn to the tonal gradations I'm hoping to be able to get with the LF lenses and the large negative.

Best,
-Tim

Same here. The only film cameras I have are an 8x10 view with a 4x5 reducing back and a Speed Graphic with, oddly, a Zeiss lens.

 

[Timmyjoe]

. . . a Speed Graphic with, oddly, a Zeiss lens.

Funny you should mention that. Been a Nikon guy for almost thirty years now, both my rangefinder sets are Nikon based, so naturally, what's the first two 4x5 lenses I acquire? Couple of Nikkor-W's. I know they're not rated very highly for LF, but they feel familiar, and I think they'll be good for starting out.

Best,
-Tim

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I gues they all support small and medium RAW. 100 Mp files are not something to deal with daily.
Sure, some printers will able to print file this huge after some waiting time, but before this, storage and processing comes first. I don't think it will be easy peasy with recent Best Buy PC or Starbucks savvy Air Book from years ago. Even for cropping.

 

[peterm1]

Big megapixel sensors are on the rise - 100 megapixels in the Fuji GFX 100, and 47.3 in the Panasonic S1R (It’s rumored that the Fuji X-T3, the S1R and GFX 100 sensors are all cut from the same sheet. Makes sense if you look at the pixel numbers.) and 61 in the new Sony A7 R IV. There is no question that pixel lust has hit any number of otherwise sensible photographers. Really, you have to ask yourself, “Will I benefit from pixel increase beyond the envy of the other photographers around me?”

For openers, will that new, high pixel count reveal that your old lenses are not able to take full advantage of the new sensor? That’s a very real consideration. And if your lenses are good enough, are you good enough to take advantage of the advantages? Remember - no camera shake, no non optimum aperture, no misfocusing, no high ISO bailout.

And while we are just plain being nasty, how about the need for higher capacity memory cards, more storage capacity, and the large file slowdown of computers and imaging programs, plus the fact that the bigger pixels of a lower count sensor may improve low light and video performance (to a degree that always seems to be changing).

From my perspective, there are two undeniable advantages to high megapixel counts. One is the fine detail held in large prints. The Fuji GFX 100 can produce a print a little larger than 24 x 32 inches at 360 pixels per inch. At that ppi, you can press your nose against the print to examine the fine detail. Most folks feel conventionally sized prints don’t need more than 300 ppi. That would make a print a little larger than 29 x 38 inches. Realistically, if you are standing back far enough to see the entire print, 240 ppi is more than sufficient, and that produces a print 36 1/2 x 48 1/2 inches. So, for big prints a high megapixel camera delivers.

The second advantage is the ability to crop. That’s often desirable with news shots, but they are most often shown in a small size in print or on the screen. Where croppability really pays off is advertising and commercial shots that are being laid out by a crazed art director. I think I could use it with some of the pictures of my dog, but I don’t think I’ll go for the dollars.

Anyway, I think the advantage of many megapixels for me in a house whose walls are already covered with 11x14, 16x20 and 20x24 prints from a variety of cameras that all seem "sharp", doesn’t really exist. I think that may be the case for many of us even as we suffer from pixel lust when a new camera is introduced. I’d love to hear what you think - especially if you disagree with me.

Bill, you mention the benefits of big megapixel counts for facilitating cropping.

Mainly because I have some difficulty focusing fully manually as in an M camera now that I am older, I recently bought a Leica Q with some reservations about one aspect of it - The ability to produce an image at full resolution or at 35mm equivalent or 50mm equivalent. I found that it is more beneficial than I thought as the native 28mm is a bit wide for my taste. But I also found that I did not really want to crop to 50mm as at 35mm the pixel count drops from 28mm at full res to almost 16 megapixels which is still perfectly fine - its the size of most of my other camera's sensors. By the time an image is cropped to 50mm equivalent I think only something like 6-8 megapixels are available (sorry - too lazy to get off my bum and check). This is a bit too much pixel loss for most of my purposes.

Then they brought out the Q2 which has almost a 50 megapixel sensor. And they now provide framelines for a crop to a 75mm equivalent lens in addition. You can work out the numbers on the megapixels available at each cropping mode but it is significant.

All of this is a long way of saying I found the crop mode to be somewhat better than I expected. Yes you can shoot full resolution anyway then crop the old way - in post but I found I liked having framelines for each crop point for, I suppose, obvious reasons once you think about it. In this sense it is better than shooting now and cropping later.

The second point I wish to make is that a 100 megapixel sensor with cropping mode would provide the opportunity to have an even bigger range of crops available and hence provide correspondingly greater benefits. I wonder if other makers of cameras - certainly fixed lens ones might adopt this mode more widely, after it should be far cheaper to implement than making a specialist high quality zoom lens. For this reason if no other I suspect it could become more popular in the future for certain camera types.

PS in the Leica incarnation of this mode, the pixels "cropped" are not actually cropped at all - at least if you shoot in RAW mode where they are preserved. This means that when you import the image into Lightroom, the full uncropped image is still available, with the framelines for the actual crop you elected to use before you took the image superimposed on that image but able to me moved around the larger image. Overall this is quite useful for recomposing a shot after you have taken it.

 

[nickthetasmaniac]

Megapixels have far exceeded the point where I'm interested in them from a technical point. I don't print big and I rarely crop, so it's just not something front of mind. I was pretty content with my 10mp E-3 years ago, I'm very happy with my 20mp Pen F, and even the 'entry-level' 24mp full-frame sensors are positively swimming in pickles from my perspective.

As the pixel count grows, I do have two concerns:


- File management and storage. I'm not someone who upgrades my computer system every year or two, and I expect raw files from a GFX100 would be almost unusable on my current system. Likewise, I haven't figured out an effective way of archiving files when I run out of room. This is fine when high mp is limited to the top end models, but the entry-level count is creeping up too.


- Lenses. I genuinely expected high-performance lenses would become more compact as computer design and fabrication improved. I've watched in amazement as the new generation of 50mm f1.4 lenses have come on to the market (Zeiss Otus, Sigma Art, Pentax D-FA*, Panasonic S Pro, etc...) - far heavier, bigger, more complex and more expensive than ever before (the Panasonic has 13 elements, weighs almost 1kg and costs $3.5k). I think this is largely due to the increased demands of designing for sensors that will probably exceed 100mp before long...

 

[zuiko85]

Does not affect me. Still using film, but I prefer to torture myself with 35mm half frame. Small prints from small negs, that's my motto. Also mess about with 10X14mm format 16mm film cameras. Ya want GRAIN! We got grain!

Sure, I mess around with 4X5, but only use photo paper as a negative, and my $25 basket case 4X5 was a DIY kit called the TruVue sold, if I remember correctly, by Calumet in the late 70's or early 80's.
Lenses are whatever I can mount, from a 1930ish 130mm f7.7 Kodak Anastigmat to a series 6 plus 5 (200mm) Tiffen close up lens.

Why yes, my standards are very low, how did you guess that.

 

[Archlich]

Manufacturers have to push the envelop to create new demand. Whether us consumers would buy it is another story.

Rumor floating around that the the upcoming RX1R III will have the same 61MP sensor as the A7R IV. That really is a bit to much to handle.

 

[Keith]

Being able to zoom in and count someone's eyelashes is fine if that is what's required.

However, I suspect that the majority of people who buy a 60 pus megapixel camera could probably be quite happy with the files from my RD1 ... but they wont of course for the same reason they need a 250kph car to drive to the shops!

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

I lent a young friend my Sony A7s so he could learn about using it for video (and save him the expense of buying one for a one-off project). Of course, the silly sausage loves it so much he then purchases an A7RII on credit (good discounts) and then has to buy a new computer as his isn't powerful enough or has enough memory to handle the files.

Not for me these large sensor cameras - I don't need the resolution for what I do and I've come to the conclusion that for 99% of what I do a crop sensor JPEG is very much big enough.

 

[Michael Markey]

I lent a young friend my Sony A7s so he could learn about using it for video (and save him the expense of buying one for a one-off project). Of course, the silly sausage loves it so much he then purchases an A7RII …..

I`ve had both of those cameras .
I still use the A7R2 almost daily along with a 24mp 5D3 and 42mp Sigma Merrills.


Advantages with the larger sensor …. cropping .
That`s important to me because often I simply cannot get any closer to my subject.
I also imagine that I see more fine detail in the micro contrast but that could be just me.

 

[jsrockit]

Big megapixel sensors are on the rise - 100 megapixels in the Fuji GFX 100, and 47.3 in the Panasonic S1R (It’s rumored that the Fuji X-T3, the S1R and GFX 100 sensors are all cut from the same sheet. Makes sense if you look at the pixel numbers.) and 61 in the new Sony A7 R IV. There is no question that pixel lust has hit any number of otherwise sensible photographers. Really, you have to ask yourself, “Will I benefit from pixel increase beyond the envy of the other photographers around me?”

I think most of won`t benefit from it. It seems that right now it is all about showing off details at 100% on the internet...i.e. technology porn. Ultimately... a great photo is a great photo.

For openers, will that new, high pixel count reveal that your old lenses are not able to take full advantage of the new sensor? That’s a very real consideration. And if your lenses are good enough, are you good enough to take advantage of the advantages? Remember - no camera shake, no non optimum aperture, no misfocusing, no high ISO bailout.

Most lenses are good enough unless you expect perfection. Camera shake can be mitigated in multiple ways. High ISO can be used and downsized to look better than low res images. At 100%, sure it`ll look bad...but a 100mp high ISO photo that looks bad at 100% will look ok when downrezed to 24mp.

And while we are just plain being nasty, how about the need for higher capacity memory cards, more storage capacity, and the large file slowdown of computers and imaging programs, plus the fact that the bigger pixels of a lower count sensor may improve low light and video performance (to a degree that always seems to be changing).

Memory cards are cheap compared to cameras and lenses. And again, if you downrez 100mp files to 24mp, they will look great in high ISO too.

From my perspective, there are two undeniable advantages to high megapixel counts. One is the fine detail held in large prints. The Fuji GFX 100 can produce a print a little larger than 24 x 32 inches at 360 pixels per inch. At that ppi, you can press your nose against the print to examine the fine detail. Most folks feel conventionally sized prints don’t need more than 300 ppi. That would make a print a little larger than 29 x 38 inches. Realistically, if you are standing back far enough to see the entire print, 240 ppi is more than sufficient, and that produces a print 36 1/2 x 48 1/2 inches. So, for big prints a high megapixel camera delivers.

Agreed...

The second advantage is the ability to crop. That’s often desirable with news shots, but they are most often shown in a small size in print or on the screen. Where croppability really pays off is advertising and commercial shots that are being laid out by a crazed art director. I think I could use it with some of the pictures of my dog, but I don’t think I’ll go for the dollars.

Cropping is generally sloppy. If the composition doesn`t work at full size, I find that it still doesn`t work when cropped. I guess as a digital zoom, it could work. Maybe for commercial purposes it could work. Who knows? I`d have to try it before completely writing it off.

Anyway, I think the advantage of many megapixels for me in a house whose walls are already covered with 11x14, 16x20 and 20x24 prints from a variety of cameras that all seem "sharp", doesn’t really exist. I think that may be the case for many of us even as we suffer from pixel lust when a new camera is introduced. I’d love to hear what you think - especially if you disagree with me.

I`m still at 24mp. I have used 42mp sensors in the past. I find that these two are enough for me and my photography. However, we always think enough is enough in technology and then we are proven wrong. I don`t stress it. These cameras are all really great and people are making great photos with cameras from the 1800s and from 2019. It`s still the photographer and not the camera.

On a side note, in the past 10 years, I have had a bit of perspective. When I lived in NYC and most of my friends (and I) had the latest and greatest digital gear (and of course film gear but that`s different). Nobody used really old digital gear other than maybe an Epson or Leica digital rangefinder because they are cool. Now I live in Chile and some people are still using 10 year old digital DSLRs with kit lenses, but are really good photographers. They aren`t concerned with high ISO, fast lenses, big MPs, etc. They use what they have and adapt to it. They only have one camera too... kind of refreshing (even if it is not for me).

 

[jsrockit]

PS in the Leica incarnation of this mode, the pixels "cropped" are not actually cropped at all - at least if you shoot in RAW mode where they are preserved. This means that when you import the image into Lightroom, the full uncropped image is still available, with the framelines for the actual crop you elected to use before you took the image superimposed on that image but able to me moved around the larger image. Overall this is quite useful for recomposing a shot after you have taken it.

Good solution for the RAW...

 

[jsrockit]

I lent a young friend my Sony A7s so he could learn about using it for video (and save him the expense of buying one for a one-off project). Of course, the silly sausage loves it so much he then purchases an A7RII on credit (good discounts) and then has to buy a new computer as his isn't powerful enough or has enough memory to handle the files.

Are you sure of this? I post-processed 42mp files on a 5 year old computer a few years ago...

 

[leicapixie]

I am old so my opinions based on MY experiences and practices!
35mm was invented by Oskar Barnack to replace the 5"x7" View-camera..
The depth of field scales on all 35mm camera lenses for 5x7 print..
We look at a small image in viewfinder, whether RF or SLR.
Or Phone camera. Image size of palm..
So truly we don't see "Cinerama" blockbuster murals.

Why these huge MP ?
Sales are way down for cameras and lenses, due to being overrun by phone cameras..
Selling less, need to raise prices and "voila" a magic trick.
Pull the walking talking ginormous monster lenses of unbelievable quality.

I did Fashion, Publicity and Advertising.
My best investment was "Softar" Filter by Zeiss.
My 180mm Mamiya lens for C-33 Twin lens was way too sharp!
I finally pasted scotch tape(transparent" over front element..

Why can Leica in M, have APO lenses of beautiful sizes? Why!
Yes at SL and so forth, enter the great whites, belugas, super sized whales.
Prices to match for Techno deep thinking "artists" making BIG BORING MURALS.

I bought a few weeks ago, my 1st DSLR 6MP because it had the Kodak CCD sensor.
My main cameras are point and shoot digitals.
Film remains a M3 (52 years in pro service).
Lenses 50mm Collapsible-Summicron, 35mm Summaron, 135mm Tele-Elmar (actually an APO). Never needed film faster than 400 ISO..

 

[Luke_Miller]

With film and early digital I strived to get my composition in camera. As an event shooter I acquired a set of fast and heavy zoom lenses that allowed me to zoom rather than reposition in order to get the composition I wanted. Now I have reached "a certain age" where heavy zoom lenses are no longer very enjoyable to use. But a light prime on my high resolution body allows me to get the composition I want (via cropping) without the weight penalty of the heavy zoom. I don't print big, so cropping is my only reason for resolutions higher than 24mp, which I find to be the sweet spot in my shooting.

 

[jsrockit]

Prices to match for Techno deep thinking "artists" making BIG BORING MURALS.

Well, in all fairness, I`ve seen huge prints in galleries for a long time ... and (as Bill says) a 100mp camera can print 24 x 32 inches at 360 pixels per inch. I see photos this size all of the time in galleries. People in the past used 8x10" cameras to make big prints at high res. Now we can do it from a handheld camera. While it is not necessary all of the time, I think it could allow some people to make interesting art. However, I`m not completely cynical about Art or digital.

 

[ptpdprinter]

I think there is much less resistance to high MP around here now that Leica has introduced the Q2 with 47 MP.