How important are mega pixels?

[Garbz]

I would not define an iPhone as a camera despite its photographic capability. I was referring to roughly similar format digital cameras.

Forget I said iPhone my point is resolving power of the sensor does not define image quality, resolving power of the system does. That relationship holds between the extremes as well as some very similar format cameras. The 6 megapixel Nikon D70 will produce equally resolving images to a 10 megapixel Nikon D200 when using a Sigma 10-20mm. In fact if you zoom to 100% some people not quite clued into the physics of it all would probably say the 6 megapixel camera looks sharper.

If you take any element of the photographic system in isolation then you have lost. The glass matters, the sensor resolution matters, and the sensor size matters too.

What is important is that you know the limits of each part so you can build the system. If you have no L glass then the higher resolution should not be the deciding factor in stepping from a Canon 20D to a 7D. If you have nothing but L glass and you're still on a 20D then the next logical investment would probably be a camera with higher resolution.

Sounds like we need a new thread: Canon or iPhone? We could do 25 pages and 5,000 views in probably a week or so.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should, but one thing is certain this photographer has been whoring the news lately with his silly little stunt (great advertising for him) and he's making apple fanboys' heads collectively explode.
http://fstoppers.com/iphone/

 

[Josh66]

Sounds like we need a new thread: Canon or iPhone? We could do 25 pages and 5,000 views in probably a week or so.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should, but one thing is certain this photographer has been whoring the news lately with his silly little stunt (great advertising for him) and he's making apple fanboys' heads collectively explode.
http://fstoppers.com/iphone/

Funny. No mention of the $10,000 (probably more than that...) worth of lighting equipment that went into that shoot - not "just an iPhone".

Not to mention the PRO everything - models, makeup, hair, PP, etc...

 

[TobascoJackson]

I work at a camera store, and one of the biggest things people are screaming about is MORE MEGAPIXELS! There seems to be a mistaken mentality out there that more megapixels = higher quality or more megapixels = better pictures somehow. Not at all.

Megapixels are nothing more than the final size you can print your photo (or how much you can crop, I guess if you do a lot of that). In fact, packing more megapixels onto a sensor starts to degrade that sensor's high-ISO performance. It's one of the reasons I went with the XSi over the T1i when I bought my DSLR—I've never needed more than 12 megapixels professionally or for hobby, so the T1i's extra 6 megapixels are nothing more than a lowlight quality degrading, filesize inflating nuisance to me.

That being said, get the Nikon. Pentax is so hard to find decent lenses for compared to Nikon or Canon. And speaking of Canon, get a Canon.

 

[DennyCrane]

I work at a camera store, and one of the biggest things people are screaming about is MORE MEGAPIXELS! There seems to be a mistaken mentality out there that more megapixels = higher quality or more megapixels = better pictures somehow. Not at all.

Megapixels are nothing more than the final size you can print your photo (or how much you can crop, I guess if you do a lot of that). In fact, packing more megapixels onto a sensor starts to degrade that sensor's high-ISO performance. It's one of the reasons I went with the XSi over the T1i when I bought my DSLR—I've never needed more than 12 megapixels professionally or for hobby, so the T1i's extra 6 megapixels are nothing more than a lowlight quality degrading, filesize inflating nuisance to me.

That being said, get the Nikon. Pentax is so hard to find decent lenses for compared to Nikon or Canon. And speaking of Canon, get a Canon.

I'll put the T1i against the XSi in low light any day. I've used both and it's day and night. There's more than sensor size and megapixels... there's the processor. The Digic 4 will spank the Digic 3 everytime. And there's only a 2.7mp difference between the 2 cameras.

 

[cfusionpm]

It really irritates the buyers and lovers of the small-sensor, ultra-high MP cameras to hear it, but full frame sensor size is the path to the best quality...

Actually, I can't think of anyone who disagrees with that. :thumbup:

Well, maybe medium format shooters...

 

[TobascoJackson]

The reassuring thing for me is that they CAN make lenses that will out-resolve huge amounts of megapixels. Yes, even the current L primes from Canon hit the wall at around 15 megapixels or so, but my dad's ancient RB medium format film camera has lenses that are optically superior to those enough to get massive prints. My dad scans his medium format film at a resolution that renders it equivalent to 99 megapixels. Now I don't think the glass he uses will out-resolve 99 megapixels, but it certainly out resolves 15.

 

[Garbz]

False! Because of the sensor format. When you use a larger sensor with a larger lens all sorts of limits such as diffraction, and manufacturing quality and accuracy are extended. Those companies which design ultrasharp lenses for medium format cameras would still struggle to get beyond 15mpx within the confines of a tiny 36x24mm square projection.

By would I mean do, the Zeiss Distagon ZF T 25mm f/2.8 is a wonderfully sharp lens but it performs about similar to the top gear from any other DSLR lens manufacturer, and this from the same company that produces the Zeiss Planar T 80mm f/2 which gives most medium format shooters a big fat woody on sight.

Also a quick google will hint at all sorts of common names at the top tier. The Plaubel Makina 670 is raved about at the luminous landscape in the same sentence as "Sharpest medium format lens ever". The lens there is an 80mm f/2.8 Nikkor.

Neither Canon nor Nikon are dumb. There's just more to sharpness then megapixels.

 

[Derrel]

>SNIP> There's just more to sharpness then megapixels.

Indeed. Megapixel count is a number. Higher and higher and higher megapixel counts do not bring with them a linear increase in overall resolution. It takes roughly a four-fold increase in megapixel count to bring a doubling of resolution. A 6-megapixel d-slr is out-resolved by a factor of two once the MP count is roughly 24-megapixels in a similar d-slr sensor.

Given the same MP count on a smaller sensor, and the same MP count on a larger sensor, current, actual lenses from Canon and Nikon deliver higher overall,total resolution figures on the larger sensors than on smaller sensors. The highest lens performance figures of current lenses come from Full-Frame d-slr sensors, not crop--body sensors.

This is why the 10.2, 12.2, and 15 MP sensors are all so close in total,overall performance. As MP count goes up and the area of the sensor (the size) is held constant, the per-pixel image quality begins to suffer, in several metrics. One cannot take a VW chassis, and put a 350 V-8 into the body, and then a diesel truck engine, and finally a jet engine and not expect that some of the horsepower increases will be wasted because, well, the tires are small and too skinny to handle the ever-increasing HP levels.

Leica's S2 chief optical engineer gave a great interview to the Luminous Landscape,and he admitted that now, the LENSES are the problem,the stumbling block, and so when Leica designed its tweener medium format S2, they KNEW that they needed ALL-NEW, super-capable lens designs that would last for this generation, and beyond. He said it clearly: current medium format lenses are not adequate for the demands of a larger, high-resolution sensor. "We are lens limited right now," he said. Same in the APS-C size 35mm-style d-slr segment that most users use. That is why Olympus and Nikon are not too worried about the 12 to 15 MP APS-C size currently....it's about all lenses can do right now, without loss of contrast, diffraction, and no real significant quality boost, just larger data sizes to write, higher noise levels, and reduced color quality at elevated ISO levels to show for the 15 to 18 MP counts on APS-C sensors. The facts underlying high MP counts, small sensors, digital signal processing, and optics often seem to really,really irritate the buyers of 18MP d-slrs however, and they keep denying that FF sensors with lower MP counts offer better images, by several metrics.

We've gotten to the point now where there is a total,overall "system" that determines resolution, either by allowing it to go up, or by limiting its potential. Like the VW Bug, we can NOT make it go faster by putting ever-bigger engines into the same old body size.

 

[skieur]

A camera with more megapixels resolves more detail.

No. A camera with more megapixels produces pictures with higher sensor resolution, nothing more. To resolve more detail you need the entire system to resolve more detail.

Again a 5mpx iPhone 4 will not produce a picture with more detail than a 4mpx Canon EOS1D.

I really don't think that anyone is considering buying a 5 mpx Iphone 4 as their serious camera, so that kind of comparison is irrelevant.

Ah, higher sensor resolution will resolve greater detail if you are comparing apples with apples like two DSLRs with roughly similar lenses.

skieur