46mp sensor useless for landscape?

[TonyY]

very interesting, all the Nikon D800/D800E sample landscap images are taken at f/8, still no detail:

http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dslr/d800/sample02.htm
http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dslr/d800/sample01.htm

Canon 5D Mark III is even worth:

 

[Positron]

The source article seems very in-depth and while I'd love to spend enough time reading it to understand everything it's saying, I have actual work to do today, so I will shamelessly ask the question on my mind instead: assuming that what's said in the article is correct, how does it affect lenses that can tilt? For example, if you have a TS-E 24mm, can you leave it wide open or nearly wide open to maximize the effective resolution, and use only tilt to gain the DoF you need? Put more directly, will tilting provide more absolute resolution than stopping down, or is there some other loss from tilt?

 

[dtaylor]

I wouldn't necessarily say that. Go read about the lengths D800E users have to go to in order to get all the resolution out of their sensors. You have to use the _very_ best glass and hit the perfect f/stop with the perfect focusing (hyperfocal generally). It is already getting quite fiddly to feed 36mp... if Canon is going to do 46mp things are definitely going to get interesting.

I don't consider a 7D that difficult and it has a higher pixel pitch than the D800. There are plenty of lenses that can provide 46 MP of detail FF (18 MP crop).

Diffraction is not the hard, fast limit people think it is. There's a gradual loss of detail contrast. That's something people don't understand when discussing diffraction or lens testing. They will, for example, read that a lens "only" provides XY lpmm at 50% MTF, or that you can "only" achieve XY lpmm at Z aperture, and assume no sensor with smaller pixels can benefit. What they don't realize is that the lens or aperture setting can still saturate any sensor at 20% MTF. And in our digital world, PS can bring back much of the lost detail contrast.

You run into similar nonsense comparing FF and APS-C sensors, and especially comparing lens resolution on the two formats because of the way the major sites compute the resolution numbers.

 

[heptagon]

Ok, I think this is too technical for me. So 46 MP is same as 36 MP for landscap?

No, 46 MP is higher resolution than 36 MP, for any application.

This is not ultimately true. According to the Nyquist theorem you get the whole information about a bandwidth limited signal if your samples are spaced close enough. Making more samples provides you with no new information. While the airy function is no sinc function, it is rather similar. So there is supposed to be a pixel spacing below which the quality gains become marginal. However i suspect this isn't the 50% contrast assumed in the calculations and if you consider the effects of the bayer pattern there should be a lot more pixels than we have today.

 

[Radiating]

Color resolution and black and white resolution are different. It will still look sharper Even if you're not getting any more red redolution. The maximum resolution of the best full frame prime lenses is just under 30 mp (28.3 mp). Add a low pass filter into the mix and you can justify at least 31 mp as being usable. With 36mp bring usable in around 3 years.

46mp is just useless thoug for the next decade probably. But hey it's better than 20 mp even if its overkill.

 

[Loswr]

Ok, I think this is too technical for me. So 46 MP is same as 36 MP for landscap?

No, 46 MP is higher resolution than 36 MP, for any application.

This is not ultimately true. According to the Nyquist theorem you get the whole information about a bandwidth limited signal if your samples are spaced close enough. Making more samples provides you with no new information. While the airy function is no sinc function, it is rather similar. So there is supposed to be a pixel spacing below which the quality gains become marginal.

Yes, returns diminish, but we're not at marginalized returns yet. But note that I stated higher resolution, not 10 MP higher resolution.

Since you went and invoked Nyquist, I will ask - what is the physical phenomenon that we are sampling, and what property(ies) of that phenomenon provide the limits from which we determine the minimal frequency to adequately capture all information present, and the optimal oversampling frequency?

The maximum resolution of the best full frame prime lenses is just under 30 mp (28.3 mp). Add a low pass filter into the mix and you can justify at least 31 mp as being usable. With 36mp bring usable in around 3 years.

I'd love to see your evidence for this, especially since you post such a specific value as 28.3 MP. Do you have a link or data to share? Hopefully, the data will also explain how an APS-C sensor with a higher pixel density than the densest FF sensor on the market can resolve a higher level of local detail from those 'best full frame lenses' than a FF sensor.

 

[Policar]

So what if 19 megapixels is the most a FF red-sensitive sensor can resolve at f8? A 46 megapixel bayer sensor only has 11.5 million red-sensitive photosites. No problem at all...

At a certain point it does get kind of pointless, especially if you shoot landscapes without a T/S lens (in which case--what are you thinking?). We're not there yet. There's a test online between 80MP backs and 4x5 and 8x10 and 8x10 is still best by far, though 80MP is sharper with less fine detail than 4x5.

With film enlargements you're limited by the size of the grain. 4x5 isn't that much sharper than 6x7 when stopped down to equivalent DoF but the tonality and grain are better. Same with 8x10, you can make a wall-sized print (80''X100") that holds up to scrutiny even up close, but an equivalent enlargement of 135 (to 8''X12')' is sharper (just way, way smaller and with the same granularity and tonality). With digital, there's no grain, but when you can see the pixel structure, that's bad, so there's still that matter of tonality but to a much less significant extent.

And despite diffraction, landscape shooters have shot at f64 on 8x10 and even 4x5 for quite a while and made huge prints. We might not get sharper than that without stitching, but unless you're printing bigger than wall-sized in a venue where people will stand right next to the print (extremely rare, and obviously you would want to use stitching in these cases), then you'll be fine.

 

[Tammy]

There are some really smart people on this board. I love reading these threads.

 

[jrista]

Ok, I think this is too technical for me. So 46 MP is same as 36 MP for landscap?

No, 46 MP is higher resolution than 36 MP, for any application.

This is not ultimately true. According to the Nyquist theorem you get the whole information about a bandwidth limited signal if your samples are spaced close enough. Making more samples provides you with no new information. While the airy function is no sinc function, it is rather similar. So there is supposed to be a pixel spacing below which the quality gains become marginal.

Yes, returns diminish, but we're not at marginalized returns yet. But note that I stated higher resolution, not 10 MP higher resolution.

Since you went and invoked Nyquist, I will ask - what is the physical phenomenon that we are sampling, and what property(ies) of that phenomenon provide the limits from which we determine the minimal frequency to adequately capture all information present, and the optimal oversampling frequency?

The maximum resolution of the best full frame prime lenses is just under 30 mp (28.3 mp). Add a low pass filter into the mix and you can justify at least 31 mp as being usable. With 36mp bring usable in around 3 years.

I'd love to see your evidence for this, especially since you post such a specific value as 28.3 MP. Do you have a link or data to share? Hopefully, the data will also explain how an APS-C sensor with a higher pixel density than the densest FF sensor on the market can resolve a higher level of local detail from those 'best full frame lenses' than a FF sensor.

To further Neruo's argument (which is excellent), everyone has to keep in mind that the total "system" resolution of our combined camera+lens is considerably lower than the individual spatial resolutions of each system component. A high resolution sensor, such as the 7D (approx 116 lp/mm raw luminance spatial resolution) or the D800 (approx 100 lp/mm raw luminance spatial resolution) are theoretically capable of capturing FAR more resolution than we actually actually realize once a lens is attached. Total system resolution, when accounting for the intrinsic blur of each component (such as that caused by diffraction in a lens or the low-pass filter of a sensor) as well as non-ideal alignment of the projected image and the sensor pixel layout, is roughly the root mean square (RMS) of the blur of each component. On average, at best, were probably getting around 70 lp/mm at the most ideal aperture possible, and much closer to 40-50 lp/mm on average.

We would only be able to realize an approach to, say, the 116 lp/mm of raw spatial resolution the 7D (or a theoretical 47.6mp sensor, so 46.1mp is close enough) has to offer if we had an ideal, perfect, diffraction-limited lens at something around f/0.7. But thats just an approach...it would take an ideal, perfect, diffraction-limited lens of literally infinite dimension to actually achieve 116 lp/mm, which is flat out impossible (system resolution is asymptotically related to the spatial resolution of the highest resolution component in the system). We have a LONG way to go before the spatial resolution of a sensor actually becomes an issue at all, and then it will become an issue due to the diffraction cutoff frequency (the point where pixels become smaller than the wavelengths of light they are supposed to react to), not diffraction itself.

 

[PackLight]

If the original premiss of the OP is that the lens would be useless for landscapes, wouldn't it be just as useless for most all other types of photography. Green, Blue and Red come in other shades other than Trees, Sky and Soil.

 

[mb66energy]

I am shure, that a GOOD 46MP sensor will be very useful for landscape (and cityscapes).
Good means, that it has high dynamic range and low noise levels at least at lower ISOs.

Why? If you have subjects which reflect/emit light in the red, blue or green region they will excite just one type of subpixels (red, green or blue) substantially. In these cases a 46MP sensor will act as a ~12MP sensor for red and blue or a 24MP sensor for green.

All my cameras exhibit strange patterns around (nearly) monochromatic ("single colored") light sources like tail lights of cars (hopefully the right term?) which are often made of LEDs which emit in a narrow band around 650 nm. The same for blue or green LEDs. (EOS 20D, 40D and DPP for Raw development)

Another reason I would like to see higher resolutions is the fact that edges are rendered smoother with a higher number of pixels - some kind of antialiasing. I think, that is what Policar meant with the comparison of 6x7(cm) MF and 6x10(inch) large format.

But: Only if the noise levels/DR of the individual photosites in such a sensor are as good as the noise levels/DR of a full frame 12 MP camera! I think there is not much difference between 40D and 600D if it comes to "texture fidelity" (= how real look the complex textures of objects) The higher noise of smaller photosites cancels the higher resolution potential.

 

[TonyY]

I am not sure how good is the 7D sensor ;D:

Canon 7D (in blue) vs. others in dynamic range:

full test can be found at: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/cameras-and-camcorders/cameras/digital-slrs-hybrids/canon-eos-7d-642994/review/page:6#articleContent

 

[Loswr]

Maybe it's time to switch to Nikon or Sony...

No maybe about it. Canon sucks. As we all know, the sensor is of paramount importance - the other aspects of camera performance, not to mention the lenses, are irrelevant. TonyY, sell your piece-o-crap 5DII and your eight L lenses and switch. Please. Your repeated posts about Canon's exceptional inferiority will be sorely missed, but we'll all manage to get through, somehow. :

 

[TonyY]

Maybe it's time to switch to Nikon or Sony...

No maybe about it. Canon sucks. As we all know, the sensor is of paramount importance - the other aspects of camera performance, not to mention the lenses, are irrelevant. TonyY, sell your piece-o-crap 5DII and your eight L lenses and switch. Please. Your repeated posts about Canon's exceptional inferiority will be sorely missed, but we'll all manage to get through, somehow. :

Too late for me to switch as a hobbyist, but ppl has not heavily invested in Canon needs to know some of the facts. You don't know how it felt when my friend's Sony Nex 5N + 30yr old Carl Zeiss outperformed my 5DII + TSE24II.

 

[jrista]

Maybe it's time to switch to Nikon or Sony...

No maybe about it. Canon sucks. As we all know, the sensor is of paramount importance - the other aspects of camera performance, not to mention the lenses, are irrelevant. TonyY, sell your piece-o-crap 5DII and your eight L lenses and switch. Please. Your repeated posts about Canon's exceptional inferiority will be sorely missed, but we'll all manage to get through, somehow. :

Too late for me to switch as a hobbyist, but ppl has not heavily invested in Canon needs to know some of the facts. You don't know how it felt when my friend's Sony Nex 5N + 30yr old Carl Zeiss outperformed my 5DII + TSE24II.

I'd like to see the methodology and numbers for that test! The TS-E 24mm L II is one of the sharpest lenses on earth, and even pitted against a Carl Zeiss lens, I'd expect it to outperform. No more anecdotes when you make a claim like that. You need to produce some actual results, and the methodology used to achieve those results.

Subjective "Well he liked the results more with the Nex/Zeiss combo." a scientific analysis makes not. ;P

 

[Loswr]

Subjective "Well he liked the results more with the Nex/Zeiss combo." a scientific analysis makes not. ;P

My Nikon Koolpixx delivers better IQ than Canon's best sensor and lens. Everyone should know that fact. Trust me.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Maybe it's time to switch to Nikon or Sony...

No maybe about it. Canon sucks. As we all know, the sensor is of paramount importance - the other aspects of camera performance, not to mention the lenses, are irrelevant. TonyY, sell your piece-o-crap 5DII and your eight L lenses and switch. Please. Your repeated posts about Canon's exceptional inferiority will be sorely missed, but we'll all manage to get through, somehow. :

Too late for me to switch as a hobbyist, but ppl has not heavily invested in Canon needs to know some of the facts. You don't know how it felt when my friend's Sony Nex 5N + 30yr old Carl Zeiss outperformed my 5DII + TSE24II.

What does that tell you about the skills of the operator, when a inferior camera outperforms a better one whih a much better lens?

 

[PackLight]

Subjective "Well he liked the results more with the Nex/Zeiss combo." a scientific analysis makes not. ;P

My Nikon Koolpixx delivers better IQ than Canon's best sensor and lens. Everyone should know that fact. Trust me.

I read CR because I get factual information to base my equipment purchasing decisions on. Which model of the Nikon Koolpix will give me 46mp for landscapes? Also will they have a problem with the color red also?

 

[Loswr]

I read CR because I get factual information to base my equipment purchasing decisions on. Which model of the Nikon Koolpix will give me 46mp for landscapes?

Doesn't matter, any of them will do. SoNykon's sensors are so awesome that you can upsize an image from any of them (except the ones they sell to Canon for the PowerShots) to 46 MP and retain amazing IQ. Canon's senors, on the other hand, suck so bad that even if you downsample them in a futile attempt to increase their abysmal DR, it doesn't help.

Also will they have a problem with the color red also?

Sadly yes, because Nikon's logo is yellow.

 

[Razor2012]

Subjective "Well he liked the results more with the Nex/Zeiss combo." a scientific analysis makes not. ;P

My Nikon Koolpixx delivers better IQ than Canon's best sensor and lens. Everyone should know that fact. Trust me.

I read CR because I get factual information to base my equipment purchasing decisions on. Which model of the Nikon Koolpix will give me 46mp for landscapes? Also will they have a problem with the color red also?

Lol, Pack, you need to read CR a little bit more.