Megapixels and Tripods

[bgelfand]

<p>Just to give everyone something else to obsess about other than the puny 34 megapixel sensor in the D800, Nokia has just announced a phone with a 41 megapixel (34 or 38 useable megapixels depending upon aspect ratio). Does this mean I will need a tripod to use my phone? <GRIN></p>

<p><a href="http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/119961-nokia-unveils-41-megapixel-808-pureview-smartphone-threatens-digital-camera-revolution">http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/119961-nokia-unveils-41-megapixel-808-pureview-smartphone-threatens-digital-camera-revolution</a></p>

<p>Do you think Nikon will reply by adding LTE and voice to the D800 in the next firmware update? <BIG GRIN></p>

[jcoffin]

<p>Nikon has had "LTE" in place for decades under the name "F mount".</p>

<p>For those who didn't know, "LTE" in phones stands for "Long Term Evolution" -- the basic idea was/is to have a coherent long-term plan instead of basically starting over from the beginning with completely new protocols every generation (as they did with Analog, PCS, GSM, and 3G cell phones).<br /> <br />There is a bit of a dichotomy there though: the technical people would like to get rid of "generations" and have more compatibility -- but the marketing people really like having distinct generations as a basis to tell everybody their current equipment is obsolete.<br>

<br />And now back to your regularly scheduled flaming... :-)</p>

[eric friedemann]

<p>Nikon has already added HD video with sound to still cameras; so why not add more usless features, like a phone, Internet and instant messaging.</p>

[JakeQ]

<blockquote>

<p> so why not add more usless features,</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The D800 will have face detection, which is completely useless for my kind of photography. I wish they had added butt detection instead.</p>

[eric friedemann]

<p><em>"I wish they had added butt detection instead."</em></p>

<p>The "butt detection" feature could have been accompanied an audible beeping, and could have gone by the moniker "Booty Call." </p>

[JamesFarabaugh]

<blockquote>

<p>The "butt detection" feature could have been accompanied an audible beeping, and could have gone by the moniker "Booty Call."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That sounds more like "missile lock" to me.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>34 Megapixel sensor is considered puny?!</p>

<p>And here I am still going gaga over my six year old 6MP DSLR. 12MP DSLR must be going dirt cheap by now.</p>

[bgelfand]

<p>Hi Tim,</p>

<p>This thread was moved by the moderators from the Nikon forum to this forum. To understand its context, you would have to read some of the D800 threads in the Nikon forum where people are complaining that the 34 megapixel sensor of the D800 is too large and the camera is not worth the price because of the large sensor.</p>

<p>Mind you, none fo these "gurus" making pronouncements has seen, much less used a D800. But they are all sure there will be problems with the camera. The one person who may have had his hands on the camera, the moderator, isn't writing much.</p>

<p>Then I saw an article about the Nokia phone with a 41 megapixel sensor and posted the original, tongue in cheek. Perhaps I should have put the word puny in quotes, but in the context of the Nikon forum, it was not necessary. I did not expect the thread to be moved, but I guess my sense of humor and the moderator's sense of humor differs.</p>

<p>As for me, I shoot mostly film. I do have have an 8-megapixel Canon PowerShot Pro 1 digital point-and-shoot and a Nokia N8 phone with a 12-megapixel camera. The N8 takes excellent images; if you are interested, you can find one in my portfolio. I will be very interested to see how the new Nokia phone performs as a camera. </p>

[eric friedemann]

<p><em>"(The gurus) are all sure there will be problems with the camera."</em></p>

<p>Brooks, I've worked part-time in the photo business for more than 30 years. I'm confident there will be problems with the D800 variants- not because they aren't well-designed or well-manufactured- but because I can't remember any Nikon DSLR that hasn't at least had issues that have needed resolving through firmware updates. (I'm sure Shun will correct me if he can remember a Nikon DSLR that's been flawless out of the gate.)</p>

<p>I plan on eventually replacing both of my D700 bodies with ... probably D800E variants. However, I'll let all the folks who "pre-order" the first cameras essentially do the beta testing on the cameras, and I'll buy mine sometime in 2013, when the cameras' problems have been addressed. </p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>For what it's worth, I'm with Eric on this (although it's partly because I can't actually afford a D800 just now). I bought a D700 at launch, but there was precious little that could actually go wrong with it - it was the tested sensor system from the D3 with a lot of technology inherited from the D300. I don't remember any major issues, although I'm sure there were a couple of glitches that I happened not to hit. The D800 is a different kettle of fish; I probably want one (pending a full review and knowing how much stuff made it into the BIOS), in addition to my D700, but I'm less confident that it'll be perfect when it first ships.<br />

<br />

As for the 808, I've no idea how they've got a useful amount of sensor area between the support circuitry (history has suggested that cameras with big sensor sites do better in low light than cameras binning smaller sensor sites), I'll be interested to know how many dead sensor sites they have on average, and I've no idea how well a lens that big will be able to avoid diffraction issues at full resolution. I'm mostly dubious because if this was a good idea, everyone would have been doing it already (and Canon would have been shipping one of their 50MP APS-C sensors). But, as ever, I'm prepared to be wrong.</p>

[johne37179]

<p>All new tripods will be required to carry megapixel ratings.</p>

[bgelfand]

<p>Hi Eric,</p>

<p>I agree with you there will be the normal "teething" problems with the D800 that any new product has. As Andrew wrote, with a new sensor there may be a few more problems. From past experience with Nikon equipment, I do not expect anything major.</p>

<p>However, the posts on the Nikon forum from people who have never seen muchless used a D800 were quite opinionated. The only person on the forum who may have handled the D800 - the moderator Shun - has been quite circumspect in his writings. </p>

<p>Having worked with computer since 1962 (yep, I am a geezer <grin>), I firmly believe in two adages about new equipment/software:</p>

<p>1) "Never buy anything that ends in .0 (point zero)."</p>

<p>2) "Do you know how to tell a pioneer? They are the ones with the arrows sticking out of their rear ends." (This adage being a reference to the B western movies shown in Saturday matenees for the kids. They almost always included the "wagon train massacre" with pioneers shot full of arrows.)</p>

<p>Andrew, this White Paper (i.e. marketing driven paper) from Nokia may answer some of your questions:</p>

<p><a href="http://europe.nokia.com/PRODUCT_METADATA_0/Products/Phones/8000-series/808/Nokia808PureView_Whitepaper.pdf">http://europe.nokia.com/PRODUCT_METADATA_0/Products/Phones/8000-series/808/Nokia808PureView_Whitepaper.pdf</a><br>

Although the White Paper does not say anything about using a back illuminated sensor, that would be one way to get a useful amout of sensor area and the support circuitry on the chip.</p>

<p>As for a large megapixel sensor requiring a tripod, have you seen this preview from Adobe:</p>

<p><a href="

<p>The software is removing motion blur. It is hard to tell just how effective this feature is. But if it is as good as the demonstration implies, it may solve any motion problems associated with large sensors. In fact, it may remove the need for VR/IS lenses, and hopelully reduce the cost of lenses. But that speculation is food for another post.</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>Brooks - thank you. I'd seen, but not finished reading until now, the N808 paper - I agree with them to some extent that image quality at the centre of the image is the important thing (especially in a wide angle, if you're planning on standing close to a print so as to get an immersive field of view). I, too, wondered about back-illumination. The sensor is bigger than I'd initially been thinking (hence that's one thick phone) - I might be tempted to buy a compact camera with this technology, but I'm not so sure about a phone! Still, I'll reserve judgement until I see what the 40-odd MP images look like.<br />

<br />

Re. the motion blur removal, I saw a paper on (I think - I'm at work and can't turn audio on for this clip) this a while ago, and it's interesting to see Adobe incorporate it. I've been using Focus Magic so far (at least with the version I've got, it only helps with linear blur and it's not automated like the paper and the Adobe version, but it's still useful), but I'll be interested to see Adobe's implementation. Of course, like any sharpening, it relies on the depth of pixel data, so if you've got a noisy image because your shake was low-light related, there's probably only so much it can do - but I'll take what I can get. If it can handle a moving subject and static background, or rotation of parts of the image, it'll be an improvement over what I'm used to (and I might try to rescue the last, blurry, image I have of my mother). I don't think it'll be replacing image-stabilised lenses (or sensors), but every tool in the arsenal is welcome. Some techniques try to reconstruct high-resolution and blur-free image data from multiple source images; I'll be interested to see whether that's available too. (If I get a D800, I'm expecting an upgrade to Photoshop anyway, especially since I only have CS4 at the moment.)</p>