Will Canon resist or succumb to the pixel peepers?

horse · December 9, 2012

In the January 2013 issue of Popular Photography they have named the Canon 5d Mark lll the Camera of the Year for 2012. The three contenders were the 5d Mark lll, Nikon D800, and Sony Alpha 99. So the question is does Canon need to boost megapixels significantly upwards or is the 20mp to 24mp range for full frame sufficient? The article is Modern Maturity, pg 58 Popular Photography-January 2013. I couldn't find it at popphoto.com web site for a link. This is an open ended question, I have my thoughts but I am interested to see how the coin falls on this issue in sight of this shocking revelation. So let the debate continue.

JDMvW · December 9, 2012

So the question is does Canon need to boost megapixels significantly upwards or is the 20mp to 24mp range for full frame sufficient?

</blockquote>

I found the answer at (<a href="http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~ssanty/cgi-bin/eightball.cgi">link</a>)

William Kahn · December 9, 2012

Hmmmm......the answer I got was, "No Way!"

luis_g · December 9, 2012

As long as the pixel peepers buy camera bodies, everyone will be catering to them.

keith reeder · December 9, 2012

As long as the pixel peepers buy camera bodies, everyone will be catering to them.

</blockquote>

That's a pretty ignorant response, as is the original question title - I'm no pixel peeper, but I surely appreciate the benefits of lots of pixels, because I like detail and the ability to crop.

Not everyone takes pictures of bandstands at 77mm...

John Crowe · December 9, 2012

I have not read the article, but of course you cannot believe everything that you read. I don't know how many opinions were taken to award the "winner" either. In any case I suspect substantiation for the winner was heavily weighted to high ISO performance which means absolutely nothing to me, being an ISO 100 shooter only. Obviously my opinion/vote will always go to the best Low ISO performance, and hence, yes, Canon very much needs to get into the 36-40 MP battle.

John Crowe · December 9, 2012

What the heck happened. Multiple post.

John Crowe · December 9, 2012

Multiple post.

jo7hs2 · December 9, 2012

I think the bigger question is at what pixel density will performance plateau...and what will be the market consequences.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't really mind the extra resolution, so long as noise performance and dynamic range remain

reasonably steady. With 18-22MP I'm a lot more comfortable cropping than I was in the past.

peter_j2 · December 9, 2012

I asked the Magic 8 Ball if there will be a 46.1 megapixel Canon EOS 3D next year. It said "Definitely".

I wanted to be sure and asked again. It said "Maybe".

I am confused by swami's answers.

colin carron · December 9, 2012

I've polished up my crystal ball and here is what I saw : In the same way film grain got finer I saw sensor resolution contunuing to increase. But alongside that I saw other aspects of sensor performance becoming more significant. Factors such as dynamic range and high ISO / noise performance. I also saw that just as digital sensors achieve their maturity they will be superseded by something completely different. Now.. those lottery numbers....

g dan mitchell · December 9, 2012

Not everyone will benefit from a camera with higher photosite density. Not everyone benefits from a camera with a video mode. Not everyone benefits from a camera with faster burst mode. Not everyone benefits from a camera with a larger sensor. Not everyone benefits from a camera with iive view. Not everyone benefits from a camera with...

You get the idea.

A camera built to meet the needs of the average buyer and no more would a) not meet the needs of the half of potential buyers whose needs exceed the average in at least one way, and b) would get panned in this forum, the photography publishing world, and by buyers.

While everyone most certainly does not need more than 22MP (or perhaps even more than 12MP) nor full frame sensors nor the rest... some photographers can take advantage of various improvements in digital camera technology. Regarding photosite density, as the trend continues of being able to produce higher density sensors with improved overall performance at roughly the same price point, I'm happy to have them for my own work.

And, of course, no company operates in a vacuum in which it can fully set the goals for the market. When Nikon (and, no doubt, eventually others) produce fine cameras at reasonably price points that have things like 36MP sensors, companies that intend to compete in that market space must respond.

Dan

keith reeder · December 9, 2012

Factors such as dynamic range and high ISO/noise performance.

</blockquote>

In reality, increasing pixel count has not had any negative impact on noise performance at the image level thus far - quite the opposite, in fact.

And while theoretically DR might be expected to decrease with smaller pixels, again in the Real World the opposite has happened - just compare Nikon D7000/Pentax K5 DR with that of any lower density crop camera that came before them - and with quite a few older, less densely packed FF sensors too.

jo7hs2 · December 9, 2012

Keith, that's exactly why I don't mind the increases in resolution. If they were having a negative impact in other areas, I'd be more willing to complain. But as it stands now, while maybe certain areas aren't progressing as dramatically as some would like (and as they might if they were sensor makers' primary concern), things are still improving across the board.

don_baccus · December 9, 2012

"And while theoretically DR might be expected to decrease with smaller pixels"

The question is when does physics overtake improvements in design and production engineering. I think we'll see steady increases in density and better DR/high ISO performance for another decade, at least. I think the pace will slow, though.

sgust · December 9, 2012

I think Colin and G Dan have it right.

bobatkins · December 9, 2012

It's not about sufficient. If Canon are losing sales to Nikon and market research indicates that one reason for that is that Nikon have more pixels, then you can bet Canon will be working on a sensor with more pixels than Nikon.

We have not yet hit the point at which noise and DR are noticeably worse for higher (36MP) sensors than for more modest pixel count (24MP) sensors. There is no wall, just an increasing steep slope. If you are happy with the noise and DR performance of a camera like the G15, then you could have a FF camera with 240MP with the same noise and DR performance.

Pixel count is driven more by marketing than technical requirements. I suspect the vast majority of photographers never make prints large enough to reveal image degradation due to a lack of pixels in the sensor.

g dan mitchell · December 9, 2012

Bob wrote:

"Pixel count is driven more by marketing than technical requirements. I suspect the vast majority of photographers never make prints large enough to reveal image degradation due to a lack of pixels in the sensor."

</blockquote>

True, of course. However, there are those among us who would not be very happy at all if camera manufacturers spec'ed cameras that were only sufficient for the average user. (By the way, that 240MP sensor extrapolated from the P&S world would actually work pretty well in many ways and produce very high quality images in, say, a full frame sensor. There would, indeed, be more noise - but the "grain" of that noise would be vanishingly small and thus cease to be an issue. Here the reasons for not putting such a sensor in a larger format camera are more about cost and design issues than image quality.

(And, no, I'm not actually calling for such a sensor in the next full frame Canon camera! :-)

Keith wrote:

"In reality, increasing pixel count has not had any negative impact on noise performance at the image level thus far - quite the opposite, in fact."

</blockquote>

Precisely. I alternately laugh or become frustrated with the folks who come out of the woodwork every single time that a new camera with higher photo site density is announced or delivered to tell us that the previous generation was the best that can be done and any further increases in photo site density will raise costs, diminish high ISO performance, increase noise, decrease dynamic range, slow camera operation, make files too large, and cause global warming. I made up the last one. People have been saying this stuff, obstinately, since back when the question was whether 4MP sensor would be too big. They ranted about it when we went from 6MP to 8MP, from 8MP to 10Mp, from 10MP to 12MP, from 12MP to 15MP, from 15MP to 18MP, from 18MP to 21MP, and any other combination of an earlier, lower density sensor you can think of and a later, higher density sensor. Here's the problem. If their concerns had the least bit of validity outside of their limited theoretical framework (which only works if you ignore a lot of relevant critical factors), as each generation of cameras suffered more and more from successive levels of the degradation that they predicted, DSLRs would be pretty much unusable today. However,

<ul>

<li>relative to cost of living and in some cases relative to dollar amounts, the cost of the DSLRs using the newer technology has gone down rather than up.</li>

<li>high ISO performance has continued to improve, to the point that we regularly shoot these cameras at ISOs we would not have imagined using even a half dozen years ago.</li>

<li>noise performance continues to improve, to the point that outside of forum discussions it is almost never an issue in actual photography.</li>

<li>dynamic range has continued to expand and by significant amounts</li>

<li>cameras like the 1Dx now provide 18MP full frame sensors and operate faster than previous equivalent cameras.</li>

<li>as file size has increased, decreasing costs of memory cards and external storage with hugely greater capacity has more then kept up, and steady improvements in computer processing speed have allowed us to work with larger files without penalty.</li>

</ul>

Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence that global climate change continues...

Dan

don_baccus · December 9, 2012

G Dan:

<blockquote> diminish high ISO performance, increase noise, decrease dynamic range, slow camera operation, make files too large, and cause global warming. I made up the last one.</blockquote>

I've heard some of these cameras get really warm in video mode. :) :)

a._t._burke · December 9, 2012

Gentlepersons:

RE: PIXEL PEEPERS

As I understand it, pixel peepers is a derogatory term assigned by self-appointed artistes, to people who favor the ability to do large blow ups and/or have concern for the technical quality of their work, etc.

I've been around long enough to watch the evolution of film from plates to digital. Subsequently, I was actively taking snapshots during the days when many people were using the convenient, pocketable 110 film cameras. Perhaps I wasn't just at the right place or in the right surroundings, or even didn't associate with the wrong type of people, but I don't remember there being a like derogatory term for 110 camera users to call those who used 35mm, medium format, or large format.

It's piqued my interest. Does anybody know what medium format film users who enjoyed using a good lens and fine grain film were derogatorily called by 110 camera owners and folks who used single use throwaway type 35mm drugstore cameras?

A. T. Burke

luis_g · December 9, 2012

Bob Atkins - "It's not about sufficient. If Canon are losing sales to Nikon and market research indicates that one reason for that is that Nikon have more pixels, then you can bet Canon will be working on a sensor with more pixels than Nikon."

Exactly.

peter_j2 · December 9, 2012

If Canon are losing sales to Nikon...

</blockquote>

You can be assured that there will be Canon CPS members who will leave Canon if there isn't a high megapixel counterpart to the Nikon D800/800E by early next year.

g dan mitchell · December 9, 2012

"You can be assured that there will be Canon CPS members who will leave Canon if there isn't a high megapixel counterpart to the Nikon D800/800E by early next year."

</blockquote>

Yes. Probably as much as .001% of them. ;-)

The sky is not falling.

jimstrutz · December 9, 2012

There are certainly marketing benefits to having more pixels to entice potential buyers. But limiting that are all the pixel peepers out there wanting sharp & smooth down to the pixel level. Of course it's actually quite difficult to keep both groups happy. Witness all the flack Canon continues to get for the 7D's high pixel count causing early onset diffraction limitations. The argument is absurd of course but it continues to come up again and again. Similar arguments come from the lack of apparent sharpness and increased noise at the pixel level for all cameras with high pixel count. It's easier to placate pixel peepers with fewer pixels, and as long they primarily judge image quality at the pixel level, camera companies will have a difficulty selling more pixels to them.

I don't find much practical difference over 15 MPix for what I do, except that larger files takes longer to process when you're dealing with 1000's at a time.

Currently the small raw or jpg files that are offered on Canon cameras don't seem to offer much, if any, of the potentially offsetting advantages a real 8-12 MPix sensor would (higher sharpness and lower noise at the pixel level). And the cameras that have fewer pixels on their sensors can't compete with the quality at the image level from high pixel count sensors. So perhaps the more the better at this point. ---- Still, my computer continues to object.

In the end, Canon, Nikon and all the rest make cameras that they think will sell. If more people want >30 or <12 MPix, then that's what they will make the most of.

peter_j2 · December 9, 2012

If more people want >30...

</blockquote>

Photographer's have Medium Format DSLR's as a choice.

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Will Canon resist or succumb to the pixel peepers?

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