Mega pixels - How much do I need?

[kelly_flanigan1]

Its sort of like horsepower on riding lawn mowers. Your neighbor has an 18; you buy a 20 to out do him; then the new guy moves in and has a 22!

[robertvarga]

Sure, and I think there is a law of diminishing returns that applies here as well as a reasonable balance of camera performance and image quality. With 20Mp+ cameras coming down the pipeline it will be a case of affording a lense good enough to take advantage of the sensor.

[tdigi]

I don't think this is the same as memory because with memory the software requires more as the technology moves on. A

4x6 print will be a 4x6 print 5 years from now.

 

Since I don't do large prints what should I look for besides more mega pixels to improve the quality?

[hjoseph7]

When you compare the resolution from a 35mm film camera and that of a Medium Format camera, the MF wins hands down even if the prints are the same size. So given that scenario, would it be fair to say that a 21 megapixel camera will show more resolution than a 10mg camera ? Of course nobody really notices the differences unless the prints made from both formats are placed side by side with each other and even then it's very hard to tell.

[StuartMoxham]

But with 35mm vs med format the actual size of the film gets bigger so you gain resolution and tonality. When you just add more pixels to the same size sensor you get an increase in resolution but you also need a lens and technique that is good enough to take advantage of the extra resolution. Getting more megapixels on the same size sensor is like getting finer grained film not larger film.

 

To see the difference between a 10mp camera and a 21 mp camera you would need to print large enough for the differences to be visible. I doubt if most people would be able to tell in an 8x10 inch print.

 

The best way to improve quality is to improve your technique, your compositional skills and your post processing skills. Your camera is more than up to the job so you need to look at what is else going on.

[robertvarga]

Tommy, as stated above lens and technique but I would still say that going for the max Mp in a good quality camera is important (no point in getting a crappy throw away camera with 12Mp). Your comment about a 4x6 print is true but more Mp will give you more and crisper detail. Also bear in mind that those 4x6 prints are fine but you or someone else may want to do enlargements later which higher resolution and detail will allow.

[jerry_schuler]

Did anybody have these arguments a few years ago debating 1 and 2 megapixels?

[jpo3136b]

". . . enlargements later . . ."

 

Keep in mind, some scanners nowadays can produce such detailed scans that they can take all day to go over one

page, and produce enough data while doing so that it could take forever to transmit all that information over a network.

Thus, I would think that you could simply build a tight printout; and then re-scan that print to generate a smooth, data

rich file that could meet your enlargement needs later. It wouldn't be perfect, but unless you're shooting billboard ads,

why carry around a CCD that would qualify as an upgrade for the Hubble telescope?

 

If some of our cohorts are scanning negatives and slides successfully, there has got to be a way to upgrade a good

looking, small format print. Some of my scans here look horrible, but I insist on the smaller file sizes to meet my needs.

I bet if you asked around, you could make those enlargements with the technology you have on hand. J.

[robertvarga]

If you scan an inferior or low res print all you get is the same quality of enlargement - you don't get detail/information being added after the fact. If someone invents a way of doing it (and there are many people that have captured their kids growing up on phone cams or crappy 1-2.5Mp point and shoot cams) they will be very rich indeed.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Pro Nikon digital slrs were once 1.2 to 1.3. megapixels; and cost as much as a car. In the same era some folks used 1/4 VGA ie 240x320; and a high end VGA 480x640 unit cost a 1000 bucks. Even before that some of use used teathered VGA unit that cost several grand.

[ian_kydd]

I have 2MP, 6MP and 11MP FF, the detail in the 11MP FF is superb but for prints 2 and 6MP are great. The 2MP an old Kodak 520/620 gives me some amazing prints and has a massive buffer and frame rate in comparison to the 6MP and 11MP, I use it for street pics and as long as you crop in camera its fine. MP count is OK to a point but perfectly good pics can be had with lower MP count.IMO<div></div>

[jpo3136b]

enlarging and rescanning:

 

Of course, Varga has a point. I don't want to mislead anyone into the impression that you could cycle the process as

though it were a perpetual motion machine; of course, chaos will always increase. What I'm suggesting with this is that,

just because a digital picture doesn't initially look like it might have enough data in its initial capture to enlarge really big,

that doesn't mean that the entire project is lost. One area where a rescan might help would be with coping with over-

compression of an image file. If you had a tight print of the original, and rescanned to higher parameters, at least you

could break out of some digital "blocking" effect created by the compression. Of course, every successive scan will be

a limited filtration of the previous image; but, a rescan is in some respects, a second photo.

 

We see this in film duplication to another format size. For example, a 645 negative might not meet your enlarging

needs, but a 4X5 might. When that 4X5 dupe is built, it will not only have some of the losses caused by the duping

process, but also some of the gains. One might lose on sharpness, but gain on smoothing with grain; no two film

granules will fall in the exact same place from negative to negative; where some of these features do and don't coincide

in duplicating and copying can control an image's appearance as it is duplicated from one format to another.

For example, when I dupe a 645 to a sheet of 4X5 ortho copy film, the second image does not show grain in the same

way as the original because the second film has its own properties.

 

I feel that there would be something analogous with a rescan of a digital printout. A rescan is like the computer version

of duplicating a negative. Thus, if the original camera did not have all the qualities that a final enlargement needed, but a

photographer's scanner did, some of those scanner's properties could be used to contribute when making the duplicate.

That's not to say that one can capture parts of an image that were not originally there; but, the successive decay

expected in duplication is not total. The image doesn't always get worse; sometimes the decay is limited or "clutched"

by the properties of the successive layers of duplication.

[scott_ferris]

Well to look at it another way,

 

as most people have said for your 6x4 pictures no there is no point in going to larger MP numbers. But Roberts assertion that you might need more in the future and more is always better does not hold up. Once the pixels are smaller than the COC then all you are doing is resolving blur. The blur can be caused by your lens resolution or your aperture, but there is a mathematical finite number above which more MP can not give you any more detail, with consumer zooms it is quite early, way before the 15MP of the Canon 50D, with pro lenses (better resolution) and bigger sensors (yes the size of the sensor is important) then even the 21MP Canons are out resolving the COC at f16 and higher. It is all marketing above these figures.

[backswamp]

Scott says: "Once the pixels are smaller than the COC then all you are doing is resolving blur. "

 

Hey guy, you're not ranting enough! You've got to spout some grandiose observations about the Bokeh of that blur. How else are they going to keep selling new cameras?

 

MB

[scott_ferris]

Good point Michael :-)

 

I don't know how they are going to convince people to buy new cameras, oh maybe they could put video capture, GPS and a tea/coffee maker in them!

 

I'm not a freak about the background blur either ( can't bring myself to use the B word) but I am interested in the physics of it and looking through the marketing to understand what is "enough". I will buy a 21 MP camera but I won't buy a 30MP camera if I have the choice, and if I do have to, it won't be because of the added pixels.

 

It is important to understand, if you are interested, that the blur I reffered to is in focus blurring caused by light scatter, not background pretentious nonsense. There is a limit to resolution and that, now, isn't the sensors it is the physics of light.

[backswamp]

I won't be buying a 21mp camera until they're real cheap. I'm really a film kind of guy, but I'm not a film

bigot. Or maybe I'm just old and set in my ways. Can't say for sure exactly.

 

I do admit that the lens bokeh is slightly meaningful to a picture, especially if it's going to be a big enough

enlargement that isolated portions are easy to examine by the viewer at a "reasonable" viewing distance. A 30

foot mural on the wall in an airport corridor comes to mind as an example of something that small areas might get

observed nonchalantly. Obviously a 16X20 on display in a museum has a very different viewing distance than a 2X3

wallet sticking in the corner of a loved one's mirror, however both are "the work under consideration" and in

both cases the viewer forms an opinion of the photograph. But the only reason most viewers will look at the

non-sharp areas of a picture - unless they are really making a critical study of the photograph or the whole

point of the work happens to be a creamy dreamy soft subject - is because the subject is uninteresting. If the

subject is arresting and in focus, no one will pay much attention the shape of the light blurs outside the

focused field.

 

MB

[jerry_schuler]

"Pro Nikon digital slrs were once 1.2 to 1.3. megapixels; and cost as much as a car"

 

It sounds like there were better reasons to have pixel arguments a few years ago.

 

...let the pixel wars continue.

[robertvarga]

Scott, some clarification - I never asserted that more is always better, i will be happy when the "mathematical finite number above which more MP can not give you any more detail" is reached or at least digital equals the quality/versatility of film. After that point for camera manufacturers it will be all about refinement and squeezing the last bit detail out of each captured image - and designing the lenses to match this.

 

For the record I shoot on a Nikon D300 with 12.3Mp and I have my old Canon 300D (yes I switched brands to get a cheap digital SLR) which shoots at 6Mp. I still use the Canon to take snapshops but that's about it.. Certainly the difference in the quality of the shots is marked in the detail, shading and clarity and that doesn't only come down to the difference in the camera's processing engines and lenses.

 

PS would have preferred 16Mp but that was beyond my budget at the time

[summitar]

Using the services of Costco, I have made very nice 12 by 18 inch prints from a Canon Powershot A95 which has 5 megs. I have also made very nice prints of the same size from a Fuji 6900Z which had a 3 meg sensor with interpolation to 6 megs. mega-megs are highly overrated.

 

A spec I would love to see for digital cameras is the signal-to-noise ratio for different ISOs and different levels of ambient illumination. Lots of megs on a small sensor points to a low signal to noise ratio.

[steve_mareno]

You only need 2 pixels. One for each eye.

[scott_ferris]

No Steve that is the tiles on the wall :-)

[manuel barrera houston,]

thank you my 1D 4.17 mp does very well with it's extra large pixels, sharp is a matter of distance, since we view large objects from a distance, shapness matters to the pixel peepers. I do have a 5D and 1Ds for those few occassions that I do need more pixels.