How many megapixels do you need?

[ecphoto]

Anything over 5 MP should be sufficient for a hobbyist photographer.

So I guess hobbyists don't do large prints?

Perhaps I should have said for most hobbyist photographers, and the question was need, not want.

But - As print size increases so does the viewing distance, and as the viewing distance increases the need for print resolution decreases.
To keep the math tidy - 6 MP in the 3:2 aspect ratio of most DSLR image sensors is 3000 x 2000 px. (5 MP would be just slightly smaller at about 2775 x 1850 px)

Many consumer print labs stake their print quality reputation on having a required minimum print resolution of about 100 ppi.

At 100 ppi a 3000 px by 2000 px image will be a 30 x 20 inch print, which is a large or wall size print.
At 150 ppi a 3000 px by 2000 px image will be a 20 x 13 inch print, which is also a large, or wall size print.
At 200 ppi a 3000 px by 2000 px image will be a 15 x 10 inch print, which is also a large, or wall size print.

Thanks, that helps a lot.

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[glun]

I've been wondering how many you actually need? I currently shoot with a D3200, lots of megapixels with out a lot of advanced features. I wanted to pick up a used camera body from KEH for cheap, maybe a D90 or a D200. Those don't have a ton of MP, but they have a lot of good features and are dirt cheap used.

Any thoughts?

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Depends on how large you want to print, but D90 is sufficient even if you're doing large print. Anything above 20 megapixel should be great.

 

[Solarflare]

How many Megapixels you need ?

Always one more Megapixel than you already have.












More seriously, assuming:

- You have nailed focus
- You dont have any movement blurr (non-intentional, anyway, not blurry background from panning etc)
- You dont have any camera shake (such as using a tripod etc)
- You dont have any other error (such as noise from low light conditions etc)
- You use really sharp, really high quality glass
- You do not want to crop, at least not extremely
- Also, the person looking at your picture is looking at the picture as a whole and isnt trying to look at small details

Then a 12 Megapixels Bayer color filter digital sensor should be plenty and completely sufficient. You can paint house walls with that no problem.

In the old days, small format cameras reportedly had about 6 Megapixels, and nobody saw a reason to complain back then, either. Leica sold their excellent lenses for the Leica M camera and people could see the difference between excellent Leica (and Zeiss etc) glas and cheaper glas, even at such resolutions.

As others have said - if you run hardware under bad conditions, more Megapixels dont result in actual gains of quality. You are just making the errors even more obvious.

 

[Ilovemycam]

35mm flatbed scanned film is 3 or 4 mp. Anything above that is gravy.

Camera Comparisons

 

[Derrel]

35mm flatbed scanned film is 3 or 4 mp. Anything above that is gravy.

Camera Comparisons

Really a NICE set of camera comparisons. In terms of a really QUALITY IMAGE, I noticed an IMMEDIATE, and very,very clear jump upward in quality of the image detail with the 12 megapixel Olympus camera...it looks MUCH better than the film samples, or the 6MP digital images. Not just in resolution, but in the overall, total "look" of the file. I thought the subject matter chose for the comparison was also really well-chosen.Tp me, the 6 MP images looked, well...exactly the way 6MP images looked with my FUji S2 Pro and my Nikon D70: they looked "acceptable" for their era, yes, but they were "wanting" as well...6 MP is not really all that..it does not do so well on long-distance images, where 6 million pixels might represent say, a 50-acre landscape...but which looks "pretty good" when the subject is a house 120 feet away.

Great link!!!

 

[imagemaker46]

All depends on what needs to be shot, I've had great results with 3.8MP and with 22MP, if you're stuck in a situation where a big crop is required and you still need a good size image, 22MP works better. A straight up well exposed image, with good light that requires no crop 3.8 works. It's all relative to the image.

 

[Derrel]

Depends a LOT on how the image is seen or how it is "outputted" (is that a word???). If your pics are being printed on newsprint or in a glossy magazine, the halftone screen equalizes almost any sensor of today "downward"...the image is made up of tiny dots...so the halftone reproduction process is what becomes the main limiting factor--it's impossible to show really super-fine, high-frequency detail because the halftone screen is wayyyyyyy below the pixels per inch frequency of even a 6MP sensor, or any film made since 1910...

The world wide web is the same, sort of...low-resolution computer screens are the norm, although there are now some higher-resolution screens coming out, like the Retina display Apple premiered a few years back, and others have since equalled or bettered; but those are also "low resolution" in terms of pixels x pixels dimensions....when your screen is big like this 30-inch and is displaying at 2,560 x 1,600 pixels--that's basically UNDER a 5-megapixel on-screen image; and yet...the difference between a 6-MP Epson RD-1 image and a 12-megapixel MODERN Olympus m4/3 digital image can be literally SEEN as being markedly clearer, and just "better" on this display. More detail, more information, a clearer photo, one that looks BETTER. Markedly better. See popst #64 above fopr the camera comparisons, and look for yourself, and your monitor and see where there's a HUGE cut-off or a huge uptick in image quality, depending on how one looks at things; for me, the 6-MP to 12-MP jump is the single largest,meaningful improvement.

A LOT of people are now looking at web-based images on mobile devices, with small screens that have high pixel density. Most anything looks at least decent on an iPhone or an Android phone or one of the Samsungs.

But what if you like to have landscape shots printed at one of the big labs across the world--NOT portraits, and NOT small-scenes that measure 20 x 30 feet in total?

 

[Gavjenks]

Yes. High ISO is pretty much a marketing gimmick these days. Can my camera do ISO 25600? Yes. Would I ever use it? No.

1) By "high ISO" I simply meant like, higher than 400. Most of the big differences between cameras are still at 100-400 or so, and they draw much closer together at 800+, which most people use fairly often.

2) Responding to your point though about super high ISOs, yes. How far the dial goes is a gimmick. How far up you can go with X amount of noise is most definitely NOT a gimmick, however. Would you use ISO 25,600... if it only had as much noise as you're used to seeing at ISO 800? Why on Earth wouldn't you!? It would allow you to buy much cheaper, lighter weight lenses and still shoot with super fast shutter speeds (unless you want wide aperture specifically for creamy backgrounds).

The performance difference between the 6D and the 5dIII isn't really 2/3 stop when you shoot in raw.

DxO Mark (where those charts are from) does use RAW, so yes, it is 2/3 of a stop when you shoot in RAW.

As far as low iso DR, it matters to more than just landscape shooter, although they are the most demanding and vocal. Imagine shooting a baseball game in the middle of the day. You get a nice close up of the pitcher but the shadow from his hat is quite harsh and when you lift the shadow his face turns into a noisy mess

That's not a valid example of where it would matter. In mid summer on a harshly sunny day, the difference between shadow and non-shadow illuminance is only like 3 stops at most. And the difference in reflectiveness on a baseball field would be maybe at most 5-6 stops (e.g., between fresh clean black vs. white uniforms, like if it's a Yankees game. And that difference drops fast as they get dusty).

So directly sunny white uniform vs. shadowed black uniform still only = 9 stops worst case shot. So what does it matter if your camera shoots 12 stops of dynamic range vs 153,127,008 stops of dynamic range? Anything over 9 will be pointless and not any more helpful in such a scenario. Thus, pure marketing hype.

The number of scenes were you NEED more than like, even 10 stops is very very small. Which even the crappiest cameras can achieve nowadays at low ISO.

 

[3Js]

0

I shoot film. Way better than your mega-pixel cameras. Try it someday.

 

[Gavjenks]

0
I shoot film. Way better than your mega-pixel cameras. Try it someday.

The resolution these days is approximately equal for 35mm...

You will get higher film resolution possible from medium format or large format film, which you can't get in digital (yet, too expensive to manufacture), something like 100+MP. However:
1) You need a lens that can resolve that much, which you probably don't have unless you're filthy rich. Cheap ones don't resolve any better really than cheap digital-intended lenses do, relative to their projected image.
2) Scanning gets much more expensive for large films at full quality. If you're using some flatbed or whatever, then you're also not actually seeing any of the potential advantages.

I do shoot film. Primarily large format. But I do it for the fun and novelty, and to slow myself down, and to gain all those technical movements from the bellows. Not for resolution, because I don't get significantly more of that with my equipment (I might get 30-40MP tops if I use all the affordable stuff I have the best I can)

 

[runnah]

0

I shoot film. Way better than your mega-pixel cameras. Try it someday.

I don't like you.

 

[3Js]

I don't like you.

Thank you.

The resolution these days is approximately equal for 35mm...

Approximately is the key word here and a big one. And you're talking 35 mm. What about 4.5 x 6, 6 x 6, 4 x 5, 8 x 10, or larger?

 

[robbins.photo]

0

I shoot film. Way better than your mega-pixel cameras. Try it someday.

Film? Sheesh. What a sissy way to go. Seriously. Sheffield plate. Daguerrotypy. That's how a real man captures images. You kids and all this lazy film nonsense.

 

[3Js]

0

I shoot film. Way better than your mega-pixel cameras. Try it someday.

Film? Sheesh. What a sissy way to go. Seriously. Sheffield plate. Daguerrotypy. That's how a real man captures images. You kids and all this lazy film nonsense.

Yes, that's one way of looking at it.

Then again there are those of us who hate digital but don't think we need to go back to the stone - age.

 

[JerryLove]

0
I shoot film. Way better than your mega-pixel cameras. Try it someday.

You will get higher film resolution possible from medium format or large format film, which you can't get in digital (yet, too expensive to manufacture), something like 100+MP. However:

There are 80MP backs in mainstream use (Medium format). I see no reason that the resolution couldn't be pushed up.

I doubt the claimed performance of film, however.