Big Megapixel Development Announcement in the Fall? [CR2]

[Lawliet]

Once you reach the resolution limit of the lens, the sensor will represent the image the best it can.  If the data is not there it will be soft. 

Thats not how lens resolution works - instead higher frequency detail gets dampened, like in a low pass filter. More resolution just means slightly lower contrast for microdetail. Thats unless lens aberrations convolute detail in a nonrecoverable way, but the new canon lenses show little tendency to do so.
(But even with perfect lenses we're sooner or later have to choose between lack of DOF and diffraction...)

[Chuck Alaimo]

I wasn't stating that nobody needed more MP, I was pointing out that the numbers we have can be used to very great effect and I don't believe many people need more the vast majority of the time,

Well I do.

It's just what I need for better photo's of my cat. 
I regularly print 4x6 prints of her, and I think the extra MP's will come in handy for downsampling to fix those out of focus shots. 
I'm sure my old Canon MP600 printer will get a new lease of life when these higher quality files come through - I doubt you'll be able to tell that I print on plain paper.

Hurry up Canon, I need this camera!

This is funny!

[LetTheRightLensIn]

art_d

To the first, not really, if you know how to use your equipment and have a basic grasp of post processing as I demonstrate, very large high detail and quality prints are more than possible with the current sensors. More MP might be nice, but it isn't, generally, needed, and the disadvantages of always having more can vastly outweigh the advantages of having it, just ask any D800 owner about their computer processing times and storage requirements!

I have a pretty solid grasp of how to use my equipment, how to post process, I own a 44" printer, I shoot professionally and I also exhibit in galleries. I can tell you from years of experience that printing large depends on what you mean by "large" and how acceptable the results are depends on the subject matter. I've made 6-foot tall exhibition portraits from a single 5dII file. But I would not print a landscape photo (or a cityscape photo as is my case often) with lots of fine detail in it larger than 20x30 at most from a Canon camera (and often I find 16x24 unacceptable) because the fine detail falls apart. So it's not quite so simple.

To the second, it depends how you look at it. But no, I have the print and if the crop is 7" wide on your screen then it is the same size as the same detail on the print.

As for my methodology, I upscaled the original 21mp image to print at 240, anybody saying you need to print big prints at higher resolutions just isn't actually doing it. I then wanted to show an actual life sized (as close as different resolutions of monitors will allow) crop from that 31"x47" print. To do that I measured my screen and a 700px image in the forum, it is 7" wide on my 27" monitor, I then cropped a 7" section out of my print file and downsampled it to 700px. This means it is an accurate reproduction of my print life sized if you are displaying it at close to 7", if you have a calibrated screen all the better.

An image displayed on a monitor is not quite the same as an image printed on paper. In any case, if you upscaled your print to 240ppi, then a 7-inch crop should be 1680 pixels across.

But again, just because you can print a portait large and it looks good doesn't mean a landscape photographer shooting with the same camera can print a photo large and have it look good. So I'd advise against making blanket statements about others not knowing what they're doing just because they say they could use more resolution.

I agree, what is large? I would venture that you and I, regularly printing over 24", are in the extreme minority, from my experiences I would say 80% of photographers don't print at all, to them large is a 60" TV with the groundbreaking resolution of 2MP. Some might have spent a fortune and moved up to the latest and greatest 4K, 8MP, big whup!

I would also venture to say if you are a true landscape big print professional (I am not) then basing your captures on a single 135 format capture would be cavalier in the extreme. Even with a D800E.

There will always be a few people who push any metric of any camera design, I wasn't stating that nobody needed more MP, I was pointing out that the numbers we have can be used to very great effect and I don't believe many people need more the vast majority of the time, me included. I was also pointing out that if you don't need it regularly, the downside of dealing with it all the time becomes a big negative.

I believe part of Canon's marketing leadership is based on them knowing what they are doing, to do that they know a trick I was taught many years ago by my mentor, don't give people what they say they want, understand what they want and give them that. Most of the time, as the marketshare demonstrates, Canon do deliver what people actually want.

To me the 5D MkIII is probably the greatest mass market high end SLR ever made, it will probably be the most appropriate camera for most users, ever. I believe when it is replaced many of the features will be market driven crap people think they want but then rarely, if ever, use. Mixed in with those spurious distractions, sure a bit more DR will be nice, though none of the bleaters ever shows an optimally exposed real world image where the one stop lower Canon DR has ruined their image. Sure a few more MP would be good so I can crop 80% instead of only 50%, well use a 7D instead, that is what it is there for, if you want a 40+MP FF sensor so you can crop to "extend" your lens, you already have it, for a bargain price!

My tale is more a cautionary one, I am no King Canute, we will get more MP, we will get more DR, we will get WiFi and GPS etc etc, and nothing will stop that, the  DSLR market will continue for a time yet. I just think we should be careful what we ask for, if we shout too much then they might just give it to us. I just don't want to be bothered with 40+mb RAW files, every, single, shot.


As to my crop, it was 1680px wide, but if I had posted it at that it would have displayed nearly 17" wide, that is not what I wanted to do, I wanted the detail to be life sized in relation to a 47" print, to do that I downsampled my 1680 wide print file crop to 700px wide to display at the correct size in the forum. I don't understand why that is such a difficult or complicated idea for you, a big printer, to get their head around, it is obviously a failing on my part to be clear.

If, on your monitor, my crop is close to 7" wide you are looking at a life sized proof of a small section of a 47" print from a single 21MP capture. I could post the 1680 crop and then people could print it if anybody cares enough, but that would only be relevant when printed, it would not be relevant as a displayed image. Yes my crop has lower resolution than the print file but because of the vagaries of display and print pixel requirements you are pretty much seeing  what a 47" print looks like.

The difference in DR a lot more than one stop. You definitely do not get that holy cow crispness from 20MP at 47".

[art_d]

How could anybody possibly consider my post sneaky or duplicitous? I laid out the numbers from the word go. If you don't think it produces results reflective of the difference between screen and print then I would start to seriously consider your experience. How else can you show a print sized view? That is all PS does in Print View, and whilst it is not perfect, with the last several generations of graphics processors it is very close.

As I said, I did NOT consider your post sneaky or duplicitous and I UNDERSTAND your rationale.

[East Wind Photography]

MKII lenses while quite good are not perfect and is what we see in the real world.  The sensor can only reveal what the lens can resolve.

Once you reach the resolution limit of the lens, the sensor will represent the image the best it can.  If the data is not there it will be soft. 

Thats not how lens resolution works - instead higher frequency detail gets dampened, like in a low pass filter. More resolution just means slightly lower contrast for microdetail. Thats unless lens aberrations convolute detail in a nonrecoverable way, but the new canon lenses show little tendency to do so.
(But even with perfect lenses we're sooner or later have to choose between lack of DOF and diffraction...)

[art_d]

Please do, I have been dying to see some optimally exposed shots where the DR of a Canon has substantially ruined a shot yet a Nikon capture would have been perfect.

Here is one from a recent shoot of a prison complex:
http://www.arthurdomagala.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/cell-block-2nd-level.jpg

The common area on the first floor is illuminated by a skylight. The dark gray cell doors on the second level have no lighting on them at all. Exposing correctly for the highlights in this scene severly underexposes the doors. There is no way to set up any additional lighting. Lifting the shadows on the doors in post leads to very obvious pattern noise on the doors. The eventual solution is blending multiple exposures. If this had been shot with an Exmor sensor simply lifting the shadows in a single exposure would not have been a problem.

Another example:
http://www.arthurdomagala.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/IMG_6414-web.jpg

This image was exposed to capture the colors along the horizon. But because of dynamic range limitations, the water that should have been dark blue in the lower left corner was instead black. This requires lifting the shadows again. On the first 20x30 inch print I made, the shadow banding was clearly evident:
http://www.arthurdomagala.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/IMG_6414-20x30crop-no-nr.jpg

I had to go back, reprocess the image multiple times, blend exposures, apply noise reduction with debanding, apply a manual blur brush, and apply grain to even things out.  Again, with a better sensor, this processing scenario would have been greatly simplified.

(A longer explanation can be found at this link: http://www.arthurdomagala.com/blog/2012/04/dynamic-range-canon-dslrs-and-shadow-noise-dealing-with-it/ )

I will just add one more note: "ruined" is your term, not mine. And it's a loaded term. I don't think Canon images are "ruined" by not having more dynamic range. But there are circumstances where it becomes problematic.

[Aglet]

...
I have always found FPN to be comparatively easily removed, lets face it, it is fixed pattern noise, subtracting a dark frame can usually deal with it if NR can't. Banding when lifting shadows can be problematic, particularly with non optimally exposed images, hence my request for optimally exposed examples.

The point, made before, is that when we buy a body costing $2-3k or more, we should NOT have to F-round in photoshop to remove pattern noise.  Just because you can, doesn't mean we should.  Nor should we be settling for sub-par performance when options abound that perform better.

Some of us just have high higher standards and we're trying to hold Canon to a higher standard than they've been providing.  I don't care about photoshop work-arounds that waste my time.  Getting it right to start with sometimes means getting it with a non-Canon camera.

I told Canon directly, then voted with my wallet.  Takes less time for me to hit my local shop, buy a competitor's camera and shoot and post-process however I want, without any concern for pattern noise.  That a competitor's camera costing as little as $400 has no FPN is telling.  That some of Canon's own products aren't particularly affected by it is also somewhat telling.
The ONLY mfr that has a problem with FPN with current products is ... can you guess?
The reason it's griped about is?... some of us are tired of paying serious money for serious gear when it has a serious weakness.

[art_d]

What you said was

" I understand now your rationale, and I'm not saying you were trying to be sneaky or duplicitious...but I don't think it is reflective of the difference between screen and print."

The word now implies that previously you didn't, hence my surprise. Now you don't, but previously you did.

I don't agree that an image projected on a screen accurately represents what you see in a print just because it is the same size; and some people could be misled into believing that the 700 px image you posted can be printed 7 inches wide and look that crisp. But I was trying to make clear that I didn't want to insinuate you were being duplicituous in any way. Either then or now.

[Stu_bert]

Its about time Canon responded to the Nikon D800 and D800E. This fixation with high ISO, low DR, and high noise needs to stop. We need a quality camera to bring back the 1Ds range, a camera that is best in class.

For whatever reason Canon have been asleep at the wheel for a while now and its time they woke up. I have no wish for ISO extremes, nor do I shoot video at all, but I do shoot landscapes, so want a camera that has a minimum of noise and world beating DR. Maybe removal of the anti-aliassing filter?

It's a valid fixation.  There are many more sports and wedding photographers than landscape photographers.  Hence why Canon has dominated the market.

High ISO if clean is great for landscape shots when movement is not desirable - for instance freezing stars without wishing to get star trails. If you're taking shots from a moving plane, then faster speeds are essential (>1/1000th is ideal). Add in the desire to shoot in the golden hour, and suddenly higher iso is useful. Finally, as has been mentioned, not having to take a tripod everywhere opens up flexibility - although I appreciate that may be negated by the higher resolution.

1Dx bodies are also perhaps better in harsher conditions - be that cold, wet or sand, all often encountered by landscape photographers.

I thought as mentioned in other threads, Canon's latest L glass is not sensor limited. And certainly not by a 40MP sensor.

Finally, as also mentioned elsewhere, higher MP resolves the subject detail better.

Cropping is useful, even for landscapes, where you can't change your position or zoom - for a variety of reasons.

The simple conclusion is of course, everyone has different needs. And sure, eventually, Canon will try and satisfy them all, but they're never gonna keep everyone happy...

But then if they did, these forums would be a lot quieter 

That's great!  However, it doesn't have anything to do with why Canon has neglected a high MP body.  The reason is plain and simple.  High ISO/high shutter/super AF goes to sports and wedding photogs.  Not landscape photogs.  Take all the shooters, especially pros.  What would you guess?  98% wedding/sports, 2% other?  That's all great that everyone has different needs, but is beside the point.

Sorry, I appreciate for you, High ISO / High shutter may not be a requirement for your style of landscape photography, but for me, as I tried to outline, it does have benefits from time to time. So that is *exactly* why I said everyone has different needs. Perhaps you might respect that others are not like you....

[Stu_bert]

Its about time Canon responded to the Nikon D800 and D800E. This fixation with high ISO, low DR, and high noise needs to stop. We need a quality camera to bring back the 1Ds range, a camera that is best in class.

For whatever reason Canon have been asleep at the wheel for a while now and its time they woke up. I have no wish for ISO extremes, nor do I shoot video at all, but I do shoot landscapes, so want a camera that has a minimum of noise and world beating DR. Maybe removal of the anti-aliassing filter?

It's a valid fixation.  There are many more sports and wedding photographers than landscape photographers.  Hence why Canon has dominated the market.

High ISO if clean is great for landscape shots when movement is not desirable - for instance freezing stars without wishing to get star trails. If you're taking shots from a moving plane, then faster speeds are essential (>1/1000th is ideal). Add in the desire to shoot in the golden hour, and suddenly higher iso is useful. Finally, as has been mentioned, not having to take a tripod everywhere opens up flexibility - although I appreciate that may be negated by the higher resolution.

1Dx bodies are also perhaps better in harsher conditions - be that cold, wet or sand, all often encountered by landscape photographers.

I thought as mentioned in other threads, Canon's latest L glass is not sensor limited. And certainly not by a 40MP sensor.

Finally, as also mentioned elsewhere, higher MP resolves the subject detail better.

Cropping is useful, even for landscapes, where you can't change your position or zoom - for a variety of reasons.

The simple conclusion is of course, everyone has different needs. And sure, eventually, Canon will try and satisfy them all, but they're never gonna keep everyone happy...

But then if they did, these forums would be a lot quieter 

That's great!  However, it doesn't have anything to do with why Canon has neglected a high MP body.  The reason is plain and simple.  High ISO/high shutter/super AF goes to sports and wedding photogs.  Not landscape photogs.  Take all the shooters, especially pros.  What would you guess?  98% wedding/sports, 2% other?  That's all great that everyone has different needs, but is beside the point.

I don't think that's the whole story.  You can say that high MP/DR sensor is also for status symbol, bragging rights.  If you really want to be the market leader, you need to prove that you have the best or at least will compete with the best, no matter the arena.  Sometimes, it's all about reputation.  Yes, for most of us, that's not how we see it since some things are really trivial and there are other things that are more important but on the business side for Canon, there's a reputation they must maintain.

Reputation?  You mean the one they have supported by numbers, money, and sales?  Oh that one!

"If you really want to be the market leader..." you say.  Well, guess what.  They are!

You can never rest on your laurels... That's what I'm saying.  Clear?

No not really, but ok.  If you think producing a super high MP camera that only about 1-2% of the DSLR users will purchase is "stepping it up" then that's cool.  However, the majority of camera users are NOT asking for a high MP camera.  I think it will be produced in small quantities, be produced for a short time, and won't be updated for an even longer time after that.  Also, like the 1Ds Mark III, there won't be many units sold.  Look at the sales of 5D Mark II vs. 1Ds Mark III.  Even most of the pros I knew bought the 5D2 over the 1Ds 3.  Too pricy for not noticeable enough features over the other.

Guess I bucked that trend instead, bought my 1Ds MK III second hand and never looked back in comparison to the 5D II 

As for high MP - sure the market for MF style resolution is far lower than for "traditional resolution" dSLR, but again, I'd be interested to know how good / bad the D800 has sold for Nikon as this is perhaps the best barometer...

Given the sensor density for high MP is not significantly different from that of the current APS-C sensors, then frankly, why not? You get better resolving power and in a FF format

Again, everyone's mileage is different....

[art_d]

With regards the Bay image, seeing as how you yourself say

"Granted, I don’t run into such issues very often"

and you did successfully make a 20"x30" print to your satisfaction from it, I don't see that the Canon let you down. Was it more work to achieve your intended goal than a Nikon might have been? Yes. But that wasn't my request.

I thought you wanted to see circumstances where limited dynamic range in Canon sensors has a real world impact. That is what I have presented The fact that those issues are infrequent does not mean they are insignificant. If I am on a photoshoot and I need a specific shot, then it doesn't matter how often or not it happens. It is happening now, and I need to deal with it.

Another case. I was shooting an interior design job where the designer decided towards the end of the shoot he wanted to use someone as a model in the scene. The problem was there was a bright window on one side, and a furniture arrangement creating a lot of dark blocky shadows which will make for an ugly scene. Lifting the shadows in post is not an option. Exposure blending is not an option anymore because there's no way you can get a model perfectly still across multiple exposures. So I have to go down to the car, haul up my lighting gear, and fill in the shadows with strobes. There wasn't supposed to be a model at the shoot, it just occured by happenstance, and the only thing that saved me was that I always pack extra lighting gear "just in case." But if I had not, there was no way the Canon could have made that photo.

So it may be not be needed often, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be hugely beneficial to have more dynamic range.

[Sporgon]

@privatebydesign, I can't quote you 'cos I'm on my iPhone, but you mention a serious landscape photographer not using one FF frame even if it is 36mp.

This is quite right, high mp on a smaller format will never equal a larger format in landscape photography because your subject or detail in the picture will only cover a very small areas of the sensor, ie the light image projected onto the sensor will be tiny, because the detail is not close to the camera, whereas on a larger format the actual capture is larger. So MF or LF is always going to beat a smaller format in these circumstances. ( This is why when people test FF against APS and fill the frame with a subject close to the camera they see no difference - because in this scenario there is essentially no difference).

Digital has allowed us to easily stitch frames together to mimic a larger sensor, the advantages you gain are the same because each section has a larger image on the sensor. So a 13 mp 5D for instance, stitched from four vertical sequences, will produce a higher 'IQ' than a single frame 36mp FF, because the 5D has been turned into a larger format, - about 36x 90 in this instance, about the same size as the old 645 film medium format.

For applications where the subject detail is larger in the frame, 18 or 22 mp is going to be enough to make enormous prints, so the 36 or 50 mp FF is a little in no man's land. Just like the D800, a gimmick. And you want the E? just add unsharp mask to the regular one.

I think Canon know this. Canon are quite good at avoiding the fluff on their higher end cameras.

"Does Sir require a little pop up flash to fill in his 36 mp ? May I direct Sir to Nikon"

40 mp belongs on a larger format.

[art_d]

What you said was

" I understand now your rationale, and I'm not saying you were trying to be sneaky or duplicitious...but I don't think it is reflective of the difference between screen and print."

The word now implies that previously you didn't, hence my surprise. Now you don't, but previously you did.

I don't agree that an image projected on a screen accurately represents what you see in a print just because it is the same size; and some people could be misled into believing that the 700 px image you posted can be printed 7 inches wide and look that crisp. But I was trying to make clear that I didn't want to insinuate that you were being duplicituous in any way. Either then or now.

And that is why I explained what I did, have offered to post the 1680 pixel crop pre downsample, and have offered to send anybody my full original file and the print file. You all seem to find this so hard to believe, have you never used a well set up Print View in PS? Doesn't your screen give you a pretty accurate WYSIWYG?

Yes, thank you for the clarification. I haven't found anything you say hard to believe. I don't use Print View for judging fine detail in a print, no. But some people feel it is suitable for them, and that is fine.

[EvilTed]

Maybe by then, Intel will have a superfast processor and SATA express will be out.  Current SSD's are limited by SATA III to about 500mb/sec, and huge image files take a lot of time to process.
At least Canon has options for sraw that you can select when you don't want full blown resolution.  With the D800, you get those huge files every time if you want to use raw.
That way a user would have a choice.

Yeah but sRAW isn't really all that RAW and with Nikon you can use crop mode FULL RAW which is great for wildlife since you maintain reach while not wasting storage on all the outer border areas so I'd actually WAY rather they went to the Nikon way of handling it.

I'd rather it be 39MP for perfect video and keeping 6fps than 47 or 50+ and being less than 5fps and having worse video.

Sata 3 has a limit of 600MB/s not 500mb/s.
There is a huge difference!

Megabyte per second
(not to be confused with Mb/s – Mega bits per second) A megabyte per second (MB/s) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:
8,000,000 bits per second, or
1,000,000 bytes per second, or
1,000 kilobytes per second, or
8 megabits per second.

ET

[Sabaki]

Hey guys

Seems that the most desirable quality of the D800 would be the impressive dynamic range it offers.

I'd just like to ask, you folks think cameras will ever reach the DR our eyes and brains could resolve and if so, the impact it could have on photography?

Thanks peeps