People are better off investing in better lenses and learning how to frame photos than relying on “cropping” in post.

You can have a debate about how valuable resolution is as a feature, but you can’t debate that it has some value (all you can do is debate the priority to *your* needs).

Oh, and people need to stop saying Nikon will never release a camera that competes with it’s own flagship – THEY HAVE DONE THIS REPEATEDLY, A YEAR AFTER THEY RELEASE A FLAGSHIP CAMERA, LIKE CLOCKWORK. I’m glad you’re enjoying your $8K camera, but for Pete’s sake get informed before you start making those kinds of arguments, and take off the bias glasses.

Nikon has lenses who are able to show more details than the sensors now-a-days deliver. Have a look to a single picture taken with a D3x. Don´t try to mix up us. People are not as idiot as you expect. Nikon Company doesn’t have any excuse for not issuing a new and cheap camera model.
Other day I made a picture with my son’s 12mpx Fujifilm camera and it had more details than the one taken with my D200. Other issue is the quality, processor etc, etc. But with more Mpx a single camera delivers more detail than any other professional.

I agree with your basic math.

Mark

Within each generation there has been a bit more variation, as Nikon has fixed any nagging deficiencies in each camera by coming out with a revised model.

There is and will be no D3H, because the D3 already is the D3H. Based on Nikon’s historic pro digital body series release timeline (you can see this on Wikipedia), a D4 is due out around the third quarter of 2011 – and there certainly won’t be a D3H replacement for the D3s somewhere in that two year period.

I’m not the only one to come to this conclusion. Check out Thom Hogan’s prediction – it’s exactly the same concerning the D4. He even went so far as to predict the D3s when this article came out this summer, although he underestimated the amount of changes it underwent.

A 16×20″ print, obviously, is in the 4:5 aspect ratio, and represents an uncropped negative of 16×24″.

I also think you will find a consensus that _prints_ have an information density of right around 200-300 dpi.

16×24″ x 300 dpi therefore can be considered consensus “informational density” of the reasonably best 35mm film exposed, developed, and printed with the best techniques (and lenses). (Not at all saying this is anywhere close to the _average_ informational density, just the _max_)

Therefore one can reasonably say that 35mm film has its _theoretical_ resolutional equal in digital when the resolution of sensors (not the pixel count, the resolution) reaches 4800*7200=34.5 megapixel.

As I hope I clearly qualified – 9x% of films, 9x% of lenses, 9x% of techniques can’t reach this limit – I just want to illustrate why, though, there are people (_besides_ the unwashed idiots) who are calling for more MP.

Back when we were at 6MP then every extra pixel made a difference. Most people take 6×4 photos most of the time, 6MP is fine. But most people would like to get an 8×6, or even a 10×8. At that time a 30% increase in pixels made a big difference.

I recently took a family photo with my D300, made some 20″ prints from it without any sign of resolution issues. I don’t think a 30% increase in pixels is going to make anyone switch, any more than a third of an ISO stop would make people upgrade.

I think that it is clear that Nikon has decided that from now on it will upgrade resolution by doubling the previous maximum. A 16MP camera might make sense now, but it would not have a very long shelf life. It is pretty clear that we will see an upgrade to the D3x with the higher ISO resolution technology recently deployed on the D300s the next time they are making the D3x sensor. I would put that announcement no earlier than 3 months and no later than 6. And I would expect a D700 equivalent about 6-9 months on from then.

So an 18MP D700x would have a lifespan of only 9-15 months.

If Nikon feel pressure from Canon, the obvious response is to drop the price of the D700. It is currently $2328 at Amazon. The D300s is $1600. Thats almost $750 more for a camera that should not cost a lot more to build at this point. The sensor yield should be up to 90%.

The D3x is a different issue, I think that they were having yield issues when that came out and were forced to price accordingly. If your base yield is 30% and you make your sensor twice as big, your yield will be less than 9%. So your good chips per wafer will cost at least six times as much, So I can actually believe Sony were charging $2000 a sensor or more.

He is right though, almost nobody really needs that 24.5 megapixels. I rarely use it for my own work so why does a person who isn’t a pro need a 24.5 megapixel camera.

Personally, getting is right from 18-25MP is what I can hope, at least I’ll feel like it’s finally caught up a little with film :p

There never was a Nikon D2 like there was a D1 and D3.
Nikon just went from the D1X to a D2H before a D2X. I think we could see a D3H before anything else in the near future.

Now what else do you want? Hmmm? But there is only one camera Nikon makes that is more then 12MP and that one is 8k. So go back and kiss Nikon’s butt for more 12MP crap.

Think about this, since Sep 2004 Nikon released the first 12MP DSLR and since then it released only 1 that was more than 12MP. Dude, we are talking about a 5 years product cycle. It’s been 5 years they are milking the same 12MP and in the meantime if others ask for something else, smart people like yourself determine that I do not need more than 12MP. This arrogance is my problem with you and with Nikon.

I accept that you your are satisfied with the 12MP. I am happy for you, but we are different and I have different needs.