How can Nikon remain in business with 12MP FF?

[Cetalis]

Isn't it riskier to hope that what you want just happens to be in your image? Don't want to sound belligerent but, um, aren't you supposed to use the viewfinder to make sure your shot is 'spot on'?

Not to pick on you specifically, but it seems like there is a lot of "if you fix it in post, you suck as a photographer" type of comments or at least insinuations, and I guess I disagree with that.  I view photography as a visual art, not a "how well can you time the button pushing" art.

If you can capture that visual art straight out of the camera, great.  But if I use a bunch of post processing and get as good or better results, does that somehow make my product inferior?  We are using different tools and skills neither of which is inherently superior to the other to achieve the same end result.

I believe you misunderstand me; I'm not implying anything about post, except cropping, and even then, there are many legitimate reasons to crop. I agree that it does not matter how you got the shot and what you do to it as long as the result works. What I don't understand is why the OP seems to believe that cropping is more likely to work than framing the shot, where one can see the results in the viewfinder and thus not have to rely on luck. There are times when erratic subject movement makes shooting wider more practical, but few people have to shoot this way all the time and the OP hasn't said that he is one of them.

Fantastic shot, but with 12mpx, you are hoping that your shot is spot on (like this) so that you do not have to crop much. My philosophy in shooting is bringing in raw ingredients and it is in PP where the magic happens.

Most of my 21mpx turn out to be 15 or even 10mpx even everything is said and done. I cannot afford a 12mpx, because it will cripple my WF (and may be make me better). The risk is too much!

[funkboy]

Great shot funkboy.  For me though i am not yet at the level where I can compose eveyone of my shot like this one.  To get there, I still need to crop a lot of them.  What ISO was your shot taken again?

Thanks poias & JR.

My friend the wedding photographer has all the RAWs & did most of the post-prod on it, so to be honest, I don't recall the capture settings (other than the aperture), but given that we were in light shadows in a park on a sunny afternoon I'd say probably around ISO400 & exposed to the right.  Anyway one likely couldn't tell the difference with this little thumbnail even if it was shot at ISO6400 with that thing.

For the record, I recall that we may have cropped it a little bit when we first took a look at it, maybe 5%.  The evening after the shoot we went over a good chunk of the ~2.5k photos from our two cameras, so my memory on this particular one's a little hazy...

[funkboy]

Most of my 21mpx turn out to be 15 or even 10mpx even everything is said and done. I cannot afford a 12mpx, because it will cripple my WF (and may be make me better). The risk is too much!

Native resolution of an A3 print at 240dpi is about 10mp.  That happens to work out rather well with my 40D.  I consider anything over that to be a bonus, as I've never needed a print bigger than A3 and I don't have any friends with a printer bigger than that anyway.  (Granted, there's a shop a few blocks away with a pair of Epson 9600s that do wall posters for boutiques, but I shudder to think what they'd charge for a print that big...).

Now don't get me wrong, it would certainly be nice to have the luxury of being able to crop half the image away & still have that kind of resolution if necessary, but it's not too high on my wish list.  I'd say that if you're cropping most of your shots more than 5-10% then you might be better served just taking more shots from different focal lengths to be sure that you got what you want from the beginning.

[neuroanatomist]

So, ISO 6400 and 1/2000 s is going to look a lot better than ISO 6400 at 1/60 s.

Can you point me to somewhere where the effect you describe is documented?

In the example below (100% crops from the 5DII, processed with DPP using no NR or other adjustments), the light source illumination was the same.  For the shot on the right, ND filters were used reduce illumination by a fixed amount to match exposure, giving (IMO) a more common real-world situation where you might need to use ISO 6400.

[JR]

In the example below (100% crops from the 5DII, processed with DPP using no NR or other adjustments), the light source illumination was the same.  For the shot on the right, ND filters were used reduce illumination by a fixed amount to match exposure, giving (IMO) a more common real-world situation where you might need to use ISO 6400.

This is very insightful Neuro!  I would be sooo curious to see the same chart done with a D700...just curious...  But the difference in your test is striking.  I would say almost 1 to 2 stop delta no?

[Meh]

Size does not matter - what you do with it does...

Depends who you ask 

[Meh]

short shutter speeds minimize the effect of read noise

How so?  Can you explain how read noise is affected by shutter speed?   Careful now...

The other parts of your comment sound about right... just this particular point somehow seems off.

[Edwin Herdman]

Yes, I think it's the case that it's not the shutter speed, but rather having enough light to satisfy the high sensitivity requirement of that ISO setting.

More light = less shot noise

[Radiating]

12 mp is plenty for almost any usage. In fact for most pro photographers more than 12 mp serves literally no purpose whatsoever. To this majority therefore Nikon provides cameras that have much higher ISO performance, much better A/F and much better ergonomics than Canon, Nikon devastates Canon in performance on it's bodies. Even the 1Dx is better for studio stuff. Personally though I like to crop my images a bit so 18mp is a must for me but beyond that i have no use for more MP. Either way Canon has superior lenses which is why I chose Canon. However Nikon really does have better bodies not the other way around and they are driving technology. Canon's dynamic range and USO are laughable in comparison.

In any case for me the 1Dx is the holy grail cropping + ISO + Dynamic range. It's perfect.

[dtaylor]

12 mp is plenty for almost any usage. In fact for most pro photographers more than 12 mp serves literally no purpose whatsoever. To this majority therefore Nikon provides cameras that have much higher ISO performance, much better A/F and much better ergonomics than Canon, Nikon devastates Canon in performance on it's bodies.

Hyperbole on every point. The D3s has better high ISO (not much better) because it's a newer sensor design than the 5D2. The D700 does not have better high ISO despite being 12 MP.

AF is better on the D700. With Canon you can get a low cost 21 MP FF body, with Nikon you can get low cost pro AF in a FF body. Only their sales departments know which differentiation is better. (That said, I don't understand it when competitors fail to take open shots. Canon should have put pro AF in the 5D2.)

Ergonomics is very much a matter of personal preference. There are things I like and dislike about both.

That said, 12 MP is enough for many uses, so Nikon is not at a huge disadvantage. But there are some popular uses which require more MP. I would rather shoot landscapes with my 7D than with my friend's D700.

Canon's dynamic range and USO are laughable in comparison.

A roughly 1 stop difference on either is not laughable, especially when Nikon has younger sensor designs. Let's see what the differences are with Canon's newest FF sensor.

[PeterJ]

short shutter speeds minimize the effect of read noise

How so?  Can you explain how read noise is affected by shutter speed?   Careful now...

The other parts of your comment sound about right... just this particular point somehow seems off.

I'd tend to agree, read noise is probably not the cause. Same ISO IMO would lead to the same amplification and the number of photons striking the sensor with the ND filter should be the same. I'd suspect it's thermal noise, I'm a bit rusty but think that increases either directly or with the sqare root of time. Also the dark current of a photodiode may have an effect, the low level when you get a reading when no light is present, it would make sense that accumulates over time.

Anyway bit of a technical argument, end result is the same that high ISO and lighting with short shutter speeds isn't a good comparison against low light with longer shutter speeds. Interesting discussion because I've seen a few test shots that look very different to my results and I've never given it much thought before.

[dtaylor]

In the example below (100% crops from the 5DII, processed with DPP using no NR or other adjustments), the light source illumination was the same.  For the shot on the right, ND filters were used reduce illumination by a fixed amount to match exposure, giving (IMO) a more common real-world situation where you might need to use ISO 6400.

Imaging Resource tests don't show as dramatic a difference as shutter speed drops. Are you sure you got the exposure right?

[epsiloneri]

In the example below (100% crops from the 5DII, processed with DPP using no NR or other adjustments), the light source illumination was the same.

Wow, that really looks convincing. I would never have guessed and am really at a loss how this can be. I will have to test it myself.

Yes, I think it's the case that it's not the shutter speed, but rather having enough light to satisfy the high sensitivity requirement of that ISO setting. More light = less shot noise

That would be he case if the exposures (the number of photons captured) for the two images were different. But in these exposures the total number of photons captured is the same, the only difference is that the photons arrive at different rates (hence you need to expose longer in the second case to get the same number of photons).

Same number of photons = same shot noise, implying that the noise must come from elsewhere. One suggestion is readout noise, but I can't see how that could be the case - the readout is normally independent of the exposure. Thermal noise (same thing as dark noise) grows with time, so that could be it, but normally dark noise is insignificant at exposure times less than a second. But perhaps it isn't, I really see no other explanation.

[Meh]

In the example below (100% crops from the 5DII, processed with DPP using no NR or other adjustments), the light source illumination was the same.

Wow, that really looks convincing. I would never have guessed and am really at a loss how this can be. I will have to test it myself.

Yes, I think it's the case that it's not the shutter speed, but rather having enough light to satisfy the high sensitivity requirement of that ISO setting. More light = less shot noise

That would be he case if the exposures (the number of photons captured) for the two images were different. But in these exposures the total number of photons captured is the same, the only difference is that the photons arrive at different rates (hence you need to expose longer in the second case to get the same number of photons).

Same number of photons = same shot noise, implying that the noise must come from elsewhere. One suggestion is readout noise, but I can't see how that could be the case - the readout is normally independent of the exposure. Thermal noise (same thing as dark noise) grows with time, so that could be it, but normally dark noise is insignificant at exposure times less than a second. But perhaps it isn't, I really see no other explanation.

@epsilonari good points this is what I initially thought when I first read Neuro's comment but struggled with the reason because his later examples do in fact show an obvious difference.   From your comments in other threads you seem to know much about this type of thing....  a couple of ideas occur to me that perhaps you can comment on...

1)  Since the ISO, aperture, and exposure is the same then we know that the same number of photons are collected.  However, they are collected over a longer time as you said.  Could the slower arrival of photons cause a greater spatial variation of the photons?  But this would be "shot noise" which normally scales with number of photons collected not exposure time and 1/60s shouldn't be long enough to cause any unusual effect.

2) The ND filter (4 stops in Neuro's example) is not a perfect filter... could it be causing the noise by unevenly blocking the incoming photons causing additional spatial variation?

[poias]

Okay, I will take most of what I say back.

I did not realize that Nikon has had a 24mpx FF, which is apparently its flagship. It is expensive, but it was there.

So, Nikon had the highest mpx FF and the highest ISO FF at the same time? I think I answered my own question -- that is why they are in business.