Why do people not want sensors with higher mega Pixel count???

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Why do people not want sensors with higher mega Pixel count???

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Started 1 year ago by dellaaa
Latest reply from jonnyapple
Related Topics:
1. Photographers Protest
2. The Megapixel War

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dellaaa

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There seems to be a staunch group of posters who think that producing cameras with sensors that have more pixels than lets say 12M pixels for a FX sized sensor is a bad thing.

I guess these are the people who what higher ISO performance. I don't understand them. It looks like the entire photo industry doesn't really agree with them, save for some tiny sensored cameras like the G10 and its successor the G11 and G12, all manufacturers are constantly increasing the number of pixels in their sensors.

To the people who don't want more pixels I say try this. Go to DPReview and look at the images taken by the medium format Pentax 645D at 40Meg Pixels. Compare these to a 12 Meg images or any other images on the site. These images blow any and all others out of the water for detail, crispness and ability to crop. They are technically beautiful.

I can buy a 2 TByte SATA disc for $69 and a 32G SD card for about $60. Why would I not want the ability to capture images with incredible amounts of detail? What am I missing?

The ability to shoot at ISO 640000? I come from the film days when ISO 1600 was fast. Give me a f1.4 lens and ISO 1600 with image stabilization an I will shoot 99% of what I want to shoot in low light.

Posted 1 year ago #
singlecoilpickup

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It's not a simple matter of being against more megapixels. It's a matter of being against jamming too many megapixels into too small of a sensor, or, more accurately, excessive pixel density.

The Pentax you referenced is a medium format camera, it has a MUCH bigger sensor than even an FX camera, let alone a DX. That means the pixel density is much lower. The images are much sharper and technically impressive because of the size of the sensor and what that offers. It's much the same in the concept that the FX sensors can perform better than DX.

The problem with high pixel density is multifaceted. First, it tends to perform poorly in low light (more noise) and second it tasks lenses beyond a lot of what's available on the market today. Third, it makes photos that much harder to take, a 24mp sensor jammed into DX is going to be very sensitive to small movements, so your technique needs to get that much better.

So in the end, on a DX sensor, we're getting very close to the limit of what's feasibly useful. Better low light performance and better autofocus systems are going to be of much more use than just more megapixels. The reason the camera industry crams more megapixels down the market's throat is because people who don't really understand these things are under the false impression that more megapixels is directly equivalent to more quality.

Posted 1 year ago #
Bland

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Sounds like you're comparing a $10,000 Pentax with an $800 Nikon D90.

I guess my question would be, why 40Meg? I'm not knocking it but what is done with a file that big? Are they used for extremely large prints?

Posted 1 year ago #
donaldejose

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Yes, I want 24 and more megapixels and also yes I don't need them. As a practical matter when I display an image with great detail on my 23 inch monitor I can only display about one megapixel! So all my images actually have to be downsized to display on my monitor. Magazine images are not 23 inches diagonally. How many megapixels can a magazine actually display? Arizona Highways is known for wanting only images shot on medium format but how many megapixels can they actually display on a page or a two page layout? Anyone know these numbers? Anyone know how to convert printed dots per inch for magazine size photos into the megapixels needed in a sensor to create that data? I have seen these a few places over time but don't have it at my fingertips right now. I think it proves you don't need a 24 megapixel sensor because that amount of data detail cannot be displayed in an 8x10 size photograph even if printed at 600 dpi (or 300 dpi).

I recently purchased a reconditioned D90 (12 megapixels in DX format) to pay around with and test "the megapixel myth" since it was cheap (about $800). Guess what? Even when I set it to record an image in JPEG basic and medium size that image has to be downsized to fit on my 23 inch monitor. How much downsized? The very sharp desktop background I am now using fills the screen at 90% image size and it contains only 300 kbytes of data. It is a crop of about one third the original image taken on the medium size setting. About 20% of a full size D90 medium size image fills my 23 inch monitor. Would that ge good and sharp as a print 80 inches wide? Now why do I need more than 12 megapixels? I have to admit that I don't. I have not used my D7000 in months because I have not yet reached any limit created by the "outdated" D90. Interesting experiment. Do I need a D4? No. Do I need a D800? No. Do I need a D400 DX? No, but I want them all. Perhaps it is just the illusion of obtaining spectacular images of incredible detail that I am chasing.

Posted 1 year ago #
sevencrossing

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Not too sure why dellaaa

But I do know the pictures I take with my D700 (ONLY 12.1 Mega Pixels)

are infinitely better than anything taken by friends who have D7000's (16.2 megapixels)

Anyway what we all want is, the quality of a D3x for the price, size and weight of a D7000 or even a P7100

Why do I get the feeling this thread is going to be closed

Posted 1 year ago #
Super Shooter

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Why buy a car with 400 horsepower when 80hp will get you there and back just fine?

Oh boy this troll thread is going to be fun to watch. I'm clapping my hands together and getting the popcorn ready!

Posted 1 year ago #
scoobysmak

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Well I admit I would like to be able to make a print as big as I wanted but in reality I doubt I will print things bigger than an 8 X 10. So long as the picture is not cropped, if camera has over 6.5MP you won't be able to tell the difference so long as the lens and other things remain the same besides the MP of the sensor (yes I know different camera body but if you could just swap sensors is the idea I am trying to show).

If someone asked me if I wanted a free Toyota or a free Rolls Royce, of course I am going to take the Rolls but doesn't mean I need to use all the extra features it has (and if I am not going to use it even it it was free, I am not about to pay for it).

Others have already pointed out if you do have 24Mp you will sacrifice something. This kinda reminds me of a shop that worked on race cars. If you want it cheap and fast it WILL break. If you don't want it to break, either you won't go fast or it won't be cheap.

About the hard drive space, I have recently learned that there is a difference between a good hard drive and just a hard drive. I have four 2TB hard drives now as paper weights because I went cheap and was uneducated that if you install 2TB drives in a NAS device you need to make sure they support RAID 1 if your going to use them that way. An example of this is Western Digital only recommends RE4 drives in a RAID setup, these are around $200 per drive the last time I checked. I currently need 6 of these, so a $1200.00 bill in hard drives could be put to better use.

I understand your wanting more MP and that is fine but admit some of the tone in your post seems a bit hostile, If I sounded that way it was not my intent.

Posted 1 year ago #
kanuck

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I believe there are more details processed in RAW with higher MP cameras that will look great when displayed on a 24" monitor or printed at 11x14 which is the minimum I have printed a lot of shots. For work MPs don't matter much, but for my landscape hobby shooting you bet more MPs matter. Especially the details captured in the backgrounds of say a famous landscape location like in the Grand Canyon. A 5D Mark II will capture more RAW details than my D700 in the distant rocks for example. I see it when I traveled with my brother last summer.

I'll wait as long as I have to in order to get that D700 refresh. Others don't care about MP and if you are printing 4x6 or are quite good at post processing then for sure MP doesn't matter. Many people say MP do not matter and depending on your style of shooting it doesn't. However, a nice clean high MP with great low light ability camera is my dream. The D3x in a smaller body.

Posted 1 year ago #
kanuck

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Niko is either busy or sitting on the sofa with his popcorn and his finger on the delete key with regards to this post haha

I stand by what I wrote though and its not a rant I don't think either just a personal opinion :)

Posted 1 year ago #
TaoTeJared

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If you have shot with FX you do know that there is more detail out of a 12mp FX D700 than the more tightly packed pixels of the D300.

More pixels does not necessarily mean more detail.

Posted 1 year ago #
kk5ib

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No one has mentioned that as the megapixels increase for a given size sensor the photosite size becomes smaller. The photosite size for a D7000 is 4.78 microns while the size for the D700 is 8.45 microns. At some point diminishing returns kick in. As the megapixels go up the size of the photosites go down, a classic physics problem.

Posted 1 year ago #
bjrichus

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I think several here (i.e. "singlecoilpickup" - yay Fender guitars), summed it up nicely.

No matter what some in a certain companies marketing department will say, more MP does not equal better quality.

Try to keep an apples to apples comparison: don't compare different formats to each other and don't compare sensors with different photo site densities.

More MP will usually equal a larger print or a more aggressive crop with less potential for quality loss.

Would I like a D7000 body that shoots 40MP files? Sure would, but I am happy to wait the decade it'll take to get to that kind of thing with the speed of innovation today. Just remember, the first generation of Nikon dSLR was a decade ago and even the humble D3000 or the much reviled Coolpix range is way better now than they were.......

Posted 1 year ago #
shigzeo

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The initial comparo of the digital 645 and a 12 megapixel sensor is silly for a number of reasons, but I do want MORE. Firstly, 12 megapixels in a mobile phone looks like crap even under great lighting. It's physics as is described in this thread. Same with a 12 meg in APSC or 35mm~ sensor. Now, a 12 meg Medium format will look like crap next to a 40 meg medium format.

But a 40 meg medium format is really quite low density, certainly lower per pixel than even a D200 is. It does (as is mentioned in this thread) come down to a lot more than megapixels.

Diffraction hits faster in smaller sensors, limiting a lot of great lenses. Bigger sensors always look sharper for many reasons including less diffraction at the same aperture, more light gathering, larger and less critical pixels as well as more light gathering area per pixel, and I'm sure a lot more.

I guess we'll see how well the 24 megapixel sensor pans out in APS-C with Sony's new system. The RAW files look pretty good so far and the JPEG not so good.

We'll see.

But every generation takes advantage of new tech. Diffraction won't change and neither will physics, but limits can be pushed and pushed. My friend's D7000 is much more packed than my D200 is, but performs way over and above my D200 at every ISO and still has a better buffer. Tech marches on.

12 megapixels was great from 2005-2008 for the basic reason that Nikon got hit by the D200 and D80 which a lot of consumers bought. That sensor is nice with skin tones, but horrid past ISO 400 unless you are careful and use ETTR or something or very bright lighting.

But the new Sony at 24 megapixels even embarrasses the D200 no matter being over 2x as dense and suffering the same small sensor and early diffraction.

I can't wait for the future.

Size of files, etc., that is problematic for me as I use a laptop and rely on mobility. For that reason, I use firewire, and stay away from the mains. But, I look forward to the new tech. Eventually, I'll even update my laptop.

Posted 1 year ago #
jerl

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I probably shouldn't post in such an obvious troll thread like this, but I think there's a few more points I can make that the others have missed (although you guys have pretty much covered it all).

First off, many of us can't really use any more MP than what we have. I pretty much never print larger than 11x14, so to print at 300dpi, I can only use roughly 12-16 MP (I don't always use the entire page). Any more, and I have to throw away data, either before I print it, or have the driver do it (or the lab, if I send it out to be printed). Of course, we all know it's better to use the original size than to resize an image, especially if its only by a small amount.

Of course, you can talk about cropping, but really, many of us don't need or want to crop an image by 50-75%.

Next, we have the issue of file size. Sure, we can get more hard drives and bigger cards, but who really wants to be buying new cards all the time? And more importantly, more MP tends to reduce the maximum frame rate fills the buffer faster: compare the frame rate of the D3, D3s, and 1d4 with the D3x, 5D2 and 1ds3: notice anything interesting? Sure the a77 can shoot at 9 frames (12 if you don't care about metering), but that only came out recently.

As far as what the camera makers are doing, well, let's face it: their biggest market is amateur and casual photographers who know little to nothing about photography. Look at which models sell the most, and look at who most of the advertising is targeted to. To market effectively to such people, you want to sell 1 number, and show how yours is larger than everyone elses. Hence the MP war, and the push to increase MP, especially among compacts and cell phone cameras. Now, we're also starting to see an ISO war, where manufacturers are touting the highest ISO (regardless of whether or not the images are useful at those high ISOs), so just because the industry is pushing in one direction, doesn't necessarily it's a good idea.

Posted 1 year ago #
BrownewellPhoto

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Lots of people want better ISO because they shoot in terrible conditions. I shoot in horribly lit churches, I know others shoot night street scenes, another large chunk does photojournalism/sports (lots of which is in poor lighting). I know I'd love to always have the ability to shoot at ISO 100, but that simply isn't a possibility for me. I need the best results (to a degree) at higher ISOs (1000+) and the d300 is CLEARLY out matched in this area by all sorts of bodies.

For me, my body purchasing decisions boil to what I plan to do with the image and what my customers expect from me. Personally, 12mp is almost perfect. Most of my images print at about 15-17 inches on the long side at 100% and could be printed larger with pretty great results. Most of my clients won't print past an 11x14 so I don't need more megapixels.

When you're editing 2000+ RAW images per week or more, you want to keep file size small so that the editing process moves quickly. At 12mp, I cam pump a wedding out in about 12 hours, give or take and that's with a 3 year old computer (dual core 2.2ghz with 8gb RAM, I just bought a laptop with those specs for under $300).

I can't even begin to image what kind of workstation/server you would need to efficiently process enough photos to justify the cost of a Pentax 645 or Hasselblad's 50mp back. You'd spend $15k on the Hasselblad back and another $8k on the equipment to process the photos, and don't forget the lenses. Storage has never been the problem on the computer side. I know that's what people cite, but like you said, a couple TB of space can be picked up pretty cheap.

Finally, most people (non-pros, people who happen to think they are pros, average consumer) don't need much more than 8-10mp with d200 or d300 quality. I shot with a d70 for years and it worked well enough for 11x14s. As long as you aren't printing billboards, you don't need massive amounts of megapixels. At a certain point, you won't be using the megapixels because printers and lenses cant resolve to the level that you camera is technically capable of shooting.

Posted 1 year ago #
BrownewellPhoto

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I walk away mid-post to take care of my kid, come back and finish what I was writing only to find that jerl is writing almost the exact same thing...such is life!

Posted 1 year ago #
jonnyapple

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I also have a feeling this thread will be closed. I'll just say that more megapixels can also help in low light because of the brilliant noise reduction algorithms of raw converters these days. You're not losing as much as you might think if you reduce noise and resample to the lower resolution (comparing both images at 100% zoom as shot isn't really fair) and you still get better resolution at low ISO.

Posted 1 year ago #
NikoDoby

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As long as everyone is behaving....

No popcorn for me, but I'll sit back and enjoy some chicken wings please.

Posted 1 year ago #
TaoTeJared

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I am just curious to see if Nikon will continue the High MP - Lower MP (Highest IQ - Low light IQ (possibly faster FPS)) path. Canon for that matter of fact also. I know many journalists and sports shooters who edit & e-mail files out on the road and lament the huge file size on small laptops. For many reasons above, many don't want to have to upgrade computers each body just to keep up with the file sizes as well.

It really is a shame that companies still push the MP being better to the masses. M4/3 hasn't had a change in 3 upgrade cycles and not much increase IQ either - that should tell everyone what type of increases the rest can expect.

Pixel pitches for Popular cameras:

M4/3 12mp = 4.3 µm
D3s FX 12mp = 8.4 µm
D3x FX 24mp = 5.9 µm
D7000 16mp DX = 4.73 µm
D300/s 12 DX = 5.42 µm
P7000 10mp = 2.07 µm (Lens multiplier 5.4)

Fuji X100 12mp DX = 5.48 µm
5D mkII 21mp FX = 6.39 µm
7D 18mp DX = 4.16 µm
Sigma SD1 14mp DX = 5 µm
Leica M9 18mp FX = 6.9 µm
Hasselblad H3DII 50 51mp MF = 5.93 µm
Pentax 645D 41mp MF = 5.93 µm
Phase One P65Plus 60mp MF = 6 µm

Anyone else noticing the 5+ pixel pitch for the best IQ rated cameras?

Posted 1 year ago #
Dave_Robo

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The problem with a lot of pixels on a small sensor is that you lose contrast. The number of different variations in color gets smaller. Film still beats digital with this. Medium format looks better because you see more range with less noise. Small sensors with large pixel counts will look flat and lose their life like appearance. Noise will also get bad.

Posted 1 year ago #
R8R

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I have a D7000.

I also have an Epson Pro 9600 that I got off Craig's List. (it was free....) I am looking forward to some 44" wide prints.

...Ok...nothing really to add other than I scored a free 44" printer.

As you were!

Posted 1 year ago #
tcole1983

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Did anyone really say they didn't want more MP? I just want good image quality. I think the difference from Nikon to Canon has shown that MPs aren't everything. The D90 still shot better pictures than the higher MP T3i. The problem with most people's thinking is that the higher the number the better or the more the better. As most have explained it isn't just about stuffing 40 MP into the small sensors. If it was easy as just creating a 40 MP camera wouldn't it have been done already? If you want to shoot poster size pictures that look great then you need different equipment than a entry level dSLR. Why would anyone bother with a $10,000 camera if the average joe with his $800 D90 could take the same quality picture?

Posted 1 year ago #
bjrichus

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TaoTeJared said:
Anyone else noticing the 5+ pixel pitch for the best IQ rated cameras?

Nice table... were you doing the math or did you get this info from somewhere like manufacturer web sites?

It is sometimes hard to get this info from marketing departments, as they usually don't understand things like pixel density/pitch etc, so don't include it in anything.

If they actually realized HOW to work out what makes a great image, rather than just focus on a nice page layout, they'd usually have a better story, but then, that's life...

Posted 1 year ago #
donaldejose

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It is my hope that the New Nikon bodies will have both high pixel count for high IQ in good light and pixel "binning" (combining two or more pixels) for high IQ in low light. In the end I just want astonishing Image Quality no matter how many pixels or what technology gets me there. Certainly there will be trade offs. We could all go buy a Nikon D3x now for more pixels or a D3s for high IQ in low light but very few will because the negative trade off is cost. When more pixels become available at a lower cost, such as in a 24 megapixel DX sensor, the negative trade off will be whatever reduction in IQ comes with it and perhaps more time processing or purchasing a faster computer. Everything is going to have its pros and its cons. I doubt Nikon will give us more pixels without a corresponding increase in IQ from those pixels. But we just have to wait and see. We cannot evaluate the trade offs until we see what the new Nikon bodies can do.

Posted 1 year ago #
kanuck

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It would be interesting to see how the mirrorless system factors into all this higher MP debate if that camera ever is released. Nikon Spokesman are saying the public isn't even asking Nikon for one but I know they have been working on one. Different crop factor so again another physics twist....

Posted 1 year ago #