The Megapixel Spectrum

Bill Pierce

Bill Pierce

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As of late a lot of manufacturers have been announcing cameras with mega megapixel counts. Be it the Nikon D810, the Canon 5DS, the Sony A7R II or the proposed Canon APS-H camera with 250 megapixels. Some folks can take advantage of those pixels, some can’t. The danger is that those folks who really don’t need them, as a matter of fact can’t take advantage of them, will succumb to pixel envy and misdirect some of their cash flow.

How about the folks that can use them?

Eric Meola currently has a show of his storm chasing photographs at the Bernaducci.Meisel Gallery in NYC, big prints of violent skyscapes dwarfing everything from farm fields to tiny homes. Between the big prints and the important small details, this is a series of pictures that in the film days would have been done on 8x10. Eric shot with two 36 megapixel Nikons.

How about the folks that don’t need them?

Me. A lot of my professional work is portraiture. I’m proud of my sharp, detailed character studies, but the clients always choose the heavily retouched, slight diffuse version. A lot of my personal work is street photography, hand held, shutter speed never quite high enough, guess focused by scale, lens close to its maximum aperture. Its lack of technical perfection is not because of a lack of megapixels. And, in my own defense, may I say that when I do come up with a good picture of a good moment, its lack of technical perfection is not a distraction. Maybe someday I’ll buy one of those big megapixel cameras, maybe even a tripod, and take a picture of a landscape. But that’s a maybe.

So, where do you fall on the megapixel spectrum (and why)?
 
The problem with the mega megapixel race is the secondary effect on the production chain which limits the usefulness of the camera and the quality of the outcome - the need for better lenses to use all those pixels, higher capacity storage and better computers for PP. The new camera with bigger sensor is often only the start of the upgrade/cost spiral.
 
Sometimes a high MP count is nice to have. It depends on the type of pictures I take. For macro-work or product photography for example, I would probably take it. But just a few days ago, I took my 6 MPixel Epson R-D1 for a walk and did some street photos - and I absolutely love its quality and the feeling while using it.

So, both ends are okay for me, but I don't have problems with pixel envy. Just because others have 36 MP Nikons or 42 MP Sonys, I don't change my gear.
 
A high mp count is useful if you want/need to crop .
Other than that not so much.
I use a 6mp camera and two higher mp Merrills (and a couple in between).

Like Krotenblender said ...both ends are ok for me.
 
I do lots of art reproductions and already use cameras with a high pixel count (50MP) or scan backs (312Mp) but I have to say that for most applications the high pixel count is not really necessary even in the high end art reproduction world. Most large prints are made at low DPI Settings and the viewing distance does the rest.
Also most People don't print much larger than 8x10in and for that size 250 MP is pure Overkill. Zuikologist is right when he says you need new lenses as well as new computers for that kind of files and images.
 
I love what I can get with a Sigma DPM, and did succumb to the A7 (for full frame legacy lenses), but mostly I'm shooting jpg (when not shooting film i.e.) because shooting RAW and downloading the shots before I know which are worth keeping, printing, or even editing is likely to end up with me buying hard drives like I used to buy packs of Camels. And then forgetting what's on which or where I put it after disconnecting it from the Apple mothership.

This year I hope to have a better, Hm, strategy for using the cameras with more than 16mp at their disposal. (I do mean disposal.)
 
I am at a loss to understand why camera manufacturers are spending any money on R&D for sensors capable of 250 megapixels. Nobody needs it. We hit peak megapixels a long time ago. Most people never print a photo preferring to view images on a screen. For those who do print, they hardly ever print large enough to see any detrimental effects from having lower resolution sensors. The larger you print, the greater the viewing distance, the lower the print resolution needed. All those megapixels (and money) are going to waste.
 
I don't stress it much as long as I'm using 16mp or more. That way I can print relatively large with details. I'm of the opinion that people get up close to prints these days in galleries...even if they are large prints.

I feel it is nice to have a great, large file to work with just in case... since you never know what the future holds regarding image presentation (assuming you have something worth displaying). Whenever you say something like "you'll never need more than [blank]" about technology, you'll most likely be wrong. Sure, you can choose to ignore it and be fine in life, but there may be reasons to accept it as well. It all depends on what you want to do with your photography.
 
In principle I should need a lot of Mpx as what I do the most is product photography and quite a bit of birds/nature, where cropping is often a necessity. However, in practice I never _really_ need all that much. Simply, most of the time pictures are not printed that large and state of the art printers are not used. Now I live in poor Latin America where cost factor is a real factor but by looking at books and publications in general I doubt that much better is done in the rich first world. My real question is at which point it becomes convenient to pass to MF as opposed to ultra high Mpx on a 24x35 sensor? Once you buy that last 50 Mpx Canon you have done very little unless you can use a lens which can actually resolve accordingly, so you get, say, a Otus, but now you are using the camera with MF on a tripod like a view camera and if you don't nail absolutely the focus you could as well have used a 12 Mpx sensor, plus to process and store images you need a lot of hardware, at some point probably the cheap MF options like Pentax and...uh Leica seem to appear actually in the same league and give a lot of other advantages... Well, it's me thinking loud, different people may have different needs.

GLF
 
Now would be a good time to organize the Small Print movement. As in Polaroid sized prints. Give people a reason to move in close to the wall other than resolution-peeping of grandiosities.

Imagine a show where all the 'prints' or perhaps projections were no bigger than the camera's lcd. Oh, you could use generous mattes or shadow boxes, but think of the image scale like haiku, not novel.

I know, let's talk Andre Taurisano into sponsoring a Tiny Print exhibit in his new labor of love gallery in Trondheim! RFf supporters could send him their best tiny print with $$ sufficient for him to frame them, his gallery could pocket the proceeds (a month or two of rent?), and the movement gets its international start.

Aside from the merry jest here, I do think it would be cool to see/sponsor/take part in some RFF-crowd-sourced exhibits, and rallying behind a motto like "The Image Is More (and Less) Than the Sum of its Megapixels" is something many of us could believe, support, contribute to.
 
Rhl we already have a small Image Gallery it is called a Smartphone. A large number of Images will never be viewed larger than the cell phone Screen so we are back to Carte de visites sized Images. Galleries seem to like big, the public seems to prefer small. :)
 
rhl-oregon said:
Now would be a good time to organize the Small Print movement. As in Polaroid sized prints. Give people a reason to move in close to the wall other than resolution-peeping of grandiosities
Click to expand...

I had heard that some photographers were making small collections of small prints for sale. So, instead of buying one big print by that photographer, you can buy a collection of prints. Of course Magnum did this just a few months ago.
 
codester80 said:
I am at a loss to understand why camera manufacturers are spending any money on R&D for sensors capable of 250 megapixels. Nobody needs it. We hit peak megapixels a long time ago. Most people never print a photo preferring to view images on a screen. For those who do print, they hardly ever print large enough to see any detrimental effects from having lower resolution sensors. The larger you print, the greater the viewing distance, the lower the print resolution needed. All those megapixels (and money) are going to waste.
Click to expand...
For what I do now, I don't need over about 16 megapixels either: enough for a modest-sized print. But I'm not stupid enough, arrogant enough or unimaginative enough to say that nobody ever needs it. In other words, I don't equate "I don't need it" with "Nobody needs it".

Cheers,

R.
 
the largest desktop printers are 17'' wide, so there's an obvious commercial place for ~40mp sensors. that's about as big a print as you can comfortably handle on a table. i'd say it's currently the largest print size that enthusiasts commonly assume should have crisp detail.

the 80mp and higher range is just if you make large exhibition prints and you want to make viewers happy when they inevitably step up closer to see if there's more detail. that's more stylistic.

i just want a rangefinder-style camera whose sensor is 16-24mp (waiting for the fuji x-pro2) for street/documentary, and it would be really nice if somebody made a full frame 40-50mp camera with leaf shutter lenses for portraits/fashion when using strobes.
 
It is never enough of MPs for Macro, I guess, for some.
And I don't think those cameras are as limited as my two old Canon DSLRs. Where I could have RAW file only in one size, but smaller JPEG1.
 
So, if I talked my local 3rd generation film developer/printer biz to sponsor a 2016 exhibit of international photographers making small prints, how many of you would send a print no larger than say 4x5 or 4x6 and no smaller than a negative (ha ha), plus $5-10 to cover matting costs appropriate to your specs and a thumbnail bio (of course)?

I realize I shouldn't volunteer Andrea without his complicity, but I could do something cool here, even if most of you never will get to Oregon, let alone Eugene.
 
aizan said:
. . . if you make large exhibition prints and you want to make viewers happy when they inevitably step up closer to see if there's more detail. . .
Click to expand...
As they almost invariably do unless your pictures aren't worth looking at, or unless you use special processes (e.g. hand colouring). Why do do many people ignore this simple truth?

Cheers,


R.
 
You can't magically have more megapixels, short of faking it with fractals or whatever, so more is always better*. The only limitation is file storage space, which is cheaper every day (not to mention the easy fix of simply deleting stuff not worth keeping).

*Assuming no loss of dynamic range or increase in noise, which may be a tenuous assumption, but with improvements in technology we've constantly upped the MP count while retaining or improving those specs, so...
 
For me, one reason for more megapixels is the dream of cropping a frame and still making a high quality, large print.
 
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