How much sensor do you really need?

[unpopular]

^^^ so by inferior results do you mean it lacked bloom, accurately rendered color and sufficiently filtered IR radiation?

(only kidding. there is definitely something kind of cool about a tiny aperture placed millimeters from the sensor. it's be interesting to see a higher-end camera with manual exposure and raw capability take advantage of this)

 

[Gary A.]

This was with a P&S:

This with a FF.

I think camera performance and capabilities is more important than the sensor size. Use the equipment best suited for the job at hand.

 

[fmw]

Good discussion. I guess we have determined that small sensors are capable providing both a good learning platform for the novice photographer as well as great images. Whether the small sensor is in a pocket camera or a pocket cell phone is immaterial. All that matter is that the camera has the ability to allow the photographer to control the exposure.

I took this picture with a pre-smartphone era Nokia phone. Remember those with a small screen and big buttons? I have no idea what was the sensor size or pixels number (probably 2 Mp). Tried to replicate this shot with a full frame and APSC cameras later with inferior results.
View attachment 122759

As we all know, it is all about the light. The day you had your cell phone the light was excellent.

 

[Ysarex]

Good discussion. I guess we have determined that small sensors are capable providing both a good learning platform for the novice photographer as well as great images. Whether the small sensor is in a pocket camera or a pocket cell phone is immaterial. All that matter is that the camera has the ability to allow the photographer to control the exposure.

I took this picture with a pre-smartphone era Nokia phone. Remember those with a small screen and big buttons? I have no idea what was the sensor size or pixels number (probably 2 Mp). Tried to replicate this shot with a full frame and APSC cameras later with inferior results.
View attachment 122759

As we all know, it is all about the light. The day you had your cell phone the light was excellent.

The lighting was difficult -- side to backlight sunshine and the cell phone camera did exactly what that little Panasonic pictured would do: It crashed and burned and nuked the diffuse highlights to h*ll after the auto WB algorithm went off to lala land. High contrast light like that is a common Achilles heel of phone camera and PS camera JPEG processors.

Joe

 

[beagle100]

I'm all in favor of a small portable pocket-size camera that can go along everywhere.

Joe

that's why camera scientists invented mirrorless and pancake lens!
www.flickr.com/photos/mmirrorless

 

[Crashbox]

Having recently stepped up from a Fujifilm Finepix S1800 to a Canon Rebel SL1, I have to say that the tool does have a lot to contribute to a good picture. With my Fuji, anything over ISO 100 had noise levels that even a rookie could spot. Without ISO flexibility, one third of the triangle is gone and with it one third of my available options. My Fuji simply didn't handle well in low light. With the Canon, I can crank the ISO all the way up without losing nearly as much in the noise department. My Fuji's ISO 200 noise level looks a lot like my ISO 6400 noise level in the Canon.

That said, a lot of the sensor debate involves a single question: What is the end goal? If you're using the camera to capture moments of the nose miners for Gam-Gam in Coral Gables, my Fuji is enough camera and enough sensor. Set it to auto and let 'er rip. If you have any ambition to take creative control over your output and want to possibly have print quality results, the Fuji is not going to help. I had minimal control over depth of field, and any of the artistic shots I want are simply incompatible with that platform. The car that will serve well as a work commute car may not handle well as a drag race platform and I feel cameras are much the same. If you're just documenting nose miners and nothing more, using an ILC with 37.5MP is like using a sledgehammer to kill mosquitoes.

Truly, I'm not really needing more than what I have right now, and any picture I post online is going to end up being cropped way down because of size and display restraints. Thus, my 18MP is overkill if that's all I ever do with it. Still, I do intend to get into stock photography eventually and having more camera than I'll need will be much better than not having enough.

End application is really the question for me. If the user has plans to email the pictures to a relative living away, 18MP is only going to increase bandwidth loads for small gains. If the user has plans to create and sell prints, I'm not sure 18 is "good enough" for that.

Overread has a key point: stepping up does make you more aware of options you may have overlooked. I dove into the Fuji pretty hard and got some good shots but when I got a "better" camera I actually got serious about it. At the same time, a lousy mentality about photography is a lousy mentality. I felt I was "better" than the camera I had whereas now I know the camera I have is much more capable than I. In many things, that's important. I didn't always feel like I needed to bring my A-Game to the table with the Fuji. With the Canon, I know I can't be lackadaisical about my part of the puzzle. I actually have enough control to make a good picture or a bad one and if the shot doesn't come out I can't really say the camera is the weak link. With my fuji, I had the "ISO is so noisy" line to fall back on for a lot of things. That's why my Fuji isn't for sale; it's not just that it has a really low resale value but that I've given it cubic miles of emotional baggage with my frequent criticism.

 

[cauzimme]

Sure, but if you were really going to dive headfirst into the art of photography, why not purchase the very best camera you can afford?

Otherwise, you end up buying it later

Yes and no you purchase the best for what you wanna do.
Pro photo and amateur are a big distinction.
Why buy the best equipement if you're not gonna push it to his max ?
Unless you have tons of money to spent then XD buy everything!

 

[Trever1t]

I did say "but if" and that applies to shooters like me, who are charging or not, who want to learn and not be limited by my gear.

 

[Romphotog]

It has a 1/2.3" sensor which is quite a bit smaller than the APS-C or DX sensor we see in many digital SLR's.

I tried printing 8x10" cropped some %20. It didnt exactly work out as upclose you could see artifacts and such. However, further it's fine, as ifcourse all blown-up prints do look from a 1/2.3 sensor.
So, for bigger than 5x7, you need a DSLR instead of P&S sensor.

 

[Gary A.]

I think one should get the largest they can afford ... But there is also a case to be made of diminishing returns and "significant" advantages. For what I shoot and how I shoot, there is not a lot of significant advantages to a FF over an APS-C. (Which is why my 1D's are collecting dust in favor to my XP2 and XT1's.)

 

[Stradawhovious]

Here is an image from a 18 year old Nikon D1. At 2.7 MP and HORRIBLY outdated, it should produce terrible images, correct?

I've said this before, and I will say it again.

Much like anything else in life, in photography what you have doesn't matter nearly as much as what you do with what you have. This camera, which is completely obsolete in every sense of the word, still takes what I would consider to be very usable images.

That said, it hasn't stopped me from getting a Nikon D7000 and a Nikon D3. yes, I realize those are dreadfully obsolete as well... but I know them, like them, and they produce fantastic images.

Buy what you like, learn to use you what you buy, and have fun.

 

[fmw]

I agree. However, Romphotog has a point. If you look at the actual pixels in an image made by my 16mp Panasonic P&S you will sell a lot of smearing of details in the raw files (and some chromatic aberration as well.) The same image made with my 16mp D7000 will replace the smearing with details. Same resolution. Different sensor size. The Panasonic makes perfectly good images for the internet like the one I posted but wouldn't be the answer for big enlargements.

However, my point wasn't that a P&S has comparable performance to a DSLR. My point was that a P&S that has complete exposure control can be a good camera for learning photography. This discussion hasn't changed my mind at all. The people here are hung up on equipment. What a beginner needs is technical information and skills. The P&S (with exposure control) can develop those skills as well as any other camera.

 

[astroNikon]

^^^ so by inferior results do you mean it lacked bloom, accurately rendered color and sufficiently filtered IR radiation?

(only kidding. there is definitely something kind of cool about a tiny aperture placed millimeters from the sensor. it's be interesting to see a higher-end camera with manual exposure and raw capability take advantage of this)

the plants/trees didn't have leaves on them. Was the camera's fault !! LOL .. j/k

 

[robbins.photo]

Much like anything else in life, in photography what you have doesn't matter nearly as much as what you do with what you have. This camera, which is completely obsolete in every sense of the word, still takes what I would consider to be very usable images.

That said, it hasn't stopped me from getting a Nikon D7000 and a Nikon D3. yes, I realize those are dreadfully obsolete as well... but I know them, like them, and they produce fantastic images.

Buy what you like, learn to use you what you buy, and have fun.

In most shooting situations you'd be pretty hard pressed to tell the difference between the shots I took with my D5100, my D5200, or my D7100 or now my D600.

However I could tell a huge difference in usability between all of them. Switching from the D5200 from the D5100, almost immediately the 24 mp sensor made it possible for me to get shots that the 16mp sensor couldn't, I could crop much more and still end up with a usable result.

Switching to the D7100, the better AF and second command wheel and all of a sudden I'm getting shots I would have missed with the D5200 because I wasn't wasting time fiddling around with menu settings or having to figure out which button to press and hold to change a setting with the single command wheel.

Going from the 7100 to the D600, and now shooting in lowlight suddenly is a whole new ballgame. I don't have to pull out every trick in the book to get something that's barely on the acceptable level of noise when shooting indoors in bad light.

So really the better technology, at least for me, means more keepers with less effort. It means I can spend more time focusing on the picture and less time screwing around with camera settings.

Do I use every single feature of my D600? Nope. I don't, and I probably won't. But for me it's worth it's weight in gold as is, so I'm happy.

 

[Braineack]

However, my point wasn't that a P&S has comparable performance to a DSLR. My point was that a P&S that has complete exposure control can be a good camera for learning photography. This discussion hasn't changed my mind at all. The people here are hung up on equipment. What a beginner needs is technical information and skills. The P&S (with exposure control) can develop those skills as well as any other camera.

A camera is a camera. They all work the same.