Are pixels critically endangered and in need of conservation? If not, don't worry about having too many of them ...
I understand, it’s a personal issue. For my last show in Italy the gallery wanted 20x30” prints. They loved a photo of mine that was 10mp. They insisted on 20x30” and I tried to insist it be smaller. They just decided to use a different photo instead. If I had my way always, I’d have no problem with small prints. But sometimes others díctate these choices. It’s expected that digital looks clear even up close. So, now I use 24mp or more.
It's a balancing act, for sure. More pixels is not without its cost in computing requirements, but in general—for shooting and editing—having more is a good situation. Not so much if you are trying to capture and send finished work directly out of camera, in some circumstances, but most cameras allow the in-camera JPEG engine to be scaled to less than 100% output resolution.
Two of my favorite exhibition winners were made with the 5Mpixel Olympus E-1 and printed to 20x24" image area after upscaling to double resolution. They're perfectly sharp and several copies sold at the gallery.
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I worry about people getting wound up and into debt because they think they don't have enough pixels etc and buying more when, in reality, they already have too much. ..
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PS For Godfrey, years ago when the Olympus E-1 appeared I saw and was very impressed by demo prints the rep. had and scrounged a couple and a huge fat book from him. I guess they were done on their posh P-400(?) printer.
Not to sound callous, but I don't worry much about what other people do with their money or lack of it. Doing photography is never a life essential, it's an artistic pastime or a business that you garner a living from. If a pastime, it's up to an individual to manage their luxury expenditures for themself; if a business, well, you better figure out how to make whatever angle you're approaching it from profitable.
I never had one of those printers. I did all my exhibition and for sale printing for years and years on an Epson 2400, and replaced that after 11 years with an Epson P600. They did/do excellent work.
One of the early Olympus Visionary pros (can't recall his name just at the moment... sheesh, a sure sign I'm getting to be ancient!) demonstrated some of his rendering/printing techniques at a workshop I attended in 2005-2006, using the 5Mpixel images out of the Olympus E-1 to make HUGE 48 inch and larger prints for exhibition. Brilliant work! I've used those techniques myself ever since, although I'm generally not inclined to making such large prints.
Talk of what we get delivered in pixels is all very well but do we really need them all?
A few very simple sums tells me how many I need as I never print more than the metric version of 12x8 on A4 paper. And for the ones I never print but only look at on the screen I don't need more than 2 megapixels. Looking at a QHD monitor the other day I realised it had a 3 megapixel screen so I reckoned over 5 mp's in the camera would be a waste of a lot of different things.
Of course, all the pixels in the world won't compensate for a middle of the road lens, poor exposure and poor focusing but they are easily remedied; until the camera goes belly up and you find it can't be repaired.
Way, way back in the day, somewhere in the fantasy world of 2001-2002, I wrote down what would be a great digital camera. At the time, I still had my favorite Nikon F3/FM2n kit and its lenses, and I had a Leica M6TTL and its lenses. Given the quality that I like in my prints and the sizes I print, I figured that a camera the size and weight of the Nikon F3, with 4000x6000 pixels resolution on a 24x36mm format, enough storage to capture 2000 full resolution images, and enough battery on board to make 1000 exposures before needed a recharge or swap batteries would be just right.
What I found as the years progressed is that the quality of what I could get on an APS-C format with 6-12 Mpixels easily exceeded what I was getting out of 24x36 film, and storage became insanely dense and ridiculously cheap, and enough battery in one charge for 500-600 exposures was well more than enough. Everything beyond that has been gravy since, a useful if not entirely essential excess. Shooting today with 24Mpixel APS-C and my Leica M lenses in something as small as the Leica CL is just amazing for what it can do. Shooting today with my old Hasselblad 500CM fitted with the CFVII 50c back nets quality—both pixel resolution and dynamic range—absolutely unattainable by anything I had in 2001.
Expectations scale to assume whatever you have is what ought to be, at least. I don't need more, but then I work with something that gives more and can't find any reason to complain about it.
🙂
G
