R
RayS2121
Guest
First, this is a tongue-in-cheek missive to the high MP hogs who discount the need for high ISO and I typed it smiling. I hope you read it in the same spirit.
I liken those who want just high MP in a 35mm format to those guys who drive a duster of a car with a super-sized 25inch polished wheels on which their newly-painted clunker is perched. He drives by with music blaring, windows down, seat all the way back, content yet clearly clueless. You don’t design a high performance car based on this guy’s needs or opinions (hold the flames please). If you show him a high end car, he’d ask where are the flashing neon wheels? So the high MP maven is keen on comparing “sizes” (*ahem*) with other manufacturers and owners…”I own a higher MP camera, my uncle can beat up your uncle”-crowd.
Then we come to the all too familiar and all so reasonable-sounding, “Oh, but I am a landscape photographer” gripe. We are at the threshold if not well beyond lens resolution with some of the current sensors and lens combinations. Just adding more MP to a cramped image circle is simply taking a fuzzy image “unit” projected by the lens and projecting it on 3 pixels when one pixel would have done it just as much justice. There is no additional information to be gleaned from more pixels. This is besides the physics of the light gathering power of pixels of varying sizes and all that good stuff. Original resolution for the area in which the image is projected is limiting (a lot of impressive “lines/per….insert-awesome-math-terms-here” technical discussions are out there but I am trying to keep this to where the guy driving the duster in a 25inch wheel will understand ;}).
Instead of relying on obscurantist math, look at this in layman’s terms: many of the current 35mm lenses that fare well with smaller sensors, perform at a much lower level when you look at them in the full frame context. Just look at the evolution of 70-200mm versions in the EF line if you want evidence of lenses given the same sensor size. Medium format, with larger image circle have the potential to capture more detail, provided you have good lenses. So if you cannot move to medium format, then you are simply asking to put larger and larger wheels on a duster
Higher ISO on the other hand is not an abstract concept or a trivial issue. It has the potential to increase the reach of the equipment we already have in the market. It is not based on pie-in-the-sky, coming soon to your hood in 20 years wishlist of 25 inch car-wheel enthusiasts. As someone covered earlier, even with the current crop of lenses, high ISO will expand the use of slower lenses in general, will allow substantive leaps in using them in sports photography and nature photography and the use of super-telephoto lenses which are already pretty slow wide open. Advantages to videography have been covered extensively before.
So, Canon is doing the right thing trying to update ISO performance and opting not to up the MP. Despite the rampant, if not rabid rumors, Nikon has not actually released a 38MP (12 inch phallic long-dong-silver equivalent for the 25 inch wheel lovers) and I will believe it when I see it. I am not averse to higher MP if they can decrease noise and up the inherent lens performance but this really eventually will have an upper limit in the 35mm image sensor arena. So if you are that much of a landscape lover, move to a medium format and hope they develop as many lenses as there are among the 35mm now (Aunt Ethel probably told you they already exist in medium format in droves from 5 different manufacturers for a few bucks as it does in the 35mm field).
If you need higher MP, stick to 5D2 which in all likelihood will survive or a replacement with bells and whistles which Canon will introduce just to appease the “I-am-a-landscape-photographer-who-wants-Medium-format-level-performance-from-a-35mm-image-circle-and-you-can-too-do-it-cuz-my aunt-Ethel-said-so-hold-your-thought-I-gotta-super-size-my-Quarter-pounder-with-Cheese-Order”- Crowd.
Now be nice. You know I love ya.
I liken those who want just high MP in a 35mm format to those guys who drive a duster of a car with a super-sized 25inch polished wheels on which their newly-painted clunker is perched. He drives by with music blaring, windows down, seat all the way back, content yet clearly clueless. You don’t design a high performance car based on this guy’s needs or opinions (hold the flames please). If you show him a high end car, he’d ask where are the flashing neon wheels? So the high MP maven is keen on comparing “sizes” (*ahem*) with other manufacturers and owners…”I own a higher MP camera, my uncle can beat up your uncle”-crowd.
Then we come to the all too familiar and all so reasonable-sounding, “Oh, but I am a landscape photographer” gripe. We are at the threshold if not well beyond lens resolution with some of the current sensors and lens combinations. Just adding more MP to a cramped image circle is simply taking a fuzzy image “unit” projected by the lens and projecting it on 3 pixels when one pixel would have done it just as much justice. There is no additional information to be gleaned from more pixels. This is besides the physics of the light gathering power of pixels of varying sizes and all that good stuff. Original resolution for the area in which the image is projected is limiting (a lot of impressive “lines/per….insert-awesome-math-terms-here” technical discussions are out there but I am trying to keep this to where the guy driving the duster in a 25inch wheel will understand ;}).
Instead of relying on obscurantist math, look at this in layman’s terms: many of the current 35mm lenses that fare well with smaller sensors, perform at a much lower level when you look at them in the full frame context. Just look at the evolution of 70-200mm versions in the EF line if you want evidence of lenses given the same sensor size. Medium format, with larger image circle have the potential to capture more detail, provided you have good lenses. So if you cannot move to medium format, then you are simply asking to put larger and larger wheels on a duster
Higher ISO on the other hand is not an abstract concept or a trivial issue. It has the potential to increase the reach of the equipment we already have in the market. It is not based on pie-in-the-sky, coming soon to your hood in 20 years wishlist of 25 inch car-wheel enthusiasts. As someone covered earlier, even with the current crop of lenses, high ISO will expand the use of slower lenses in general, will allow substantive leaps in using them in sports photography and nature photography and the use of super-telephoto lenses which are already pretty slow wide open. Advantages to videography have been covered extensively before.
So, Canon is doing the right thing trying to update ISO performance and opting not to up the MP. Despite the rampant, if not rabid rumors, Nikon has not actually released a 38MP (12 inch phallic long-dong-silver equivalent for the 25 inch wheel lovers) and I will believe it when I see it. I am not averse to higher MP if they can decrease noise and up the inherent lens performance but this really eventually will have an upper limit in the 35mm image sensor arena. So if you are that much of a landscape lover, move to a medium format and hope they develop as many lenses as there are among the 35mm now (Aunt Ethel probably told you they already exist in medium format in droves from 5 different manufacturers for a few bucks as it does in the 35mm field).
If you need higher MP, stick to 5D2 which in all likelihood will survive or a replacement with bells and whistles which Canon will introduce just to appease the “I-am-a-landscape-photographer-who-wants-Medium-format-level-performance-from-a-35mm-image-circle-and-you-can-too-do-it-cuz-my aunt-Ethel-said-so-hold-your-thought-I-gotta-super-size-my-Quarter-pounder-with-Cheese-Order”- Crowd.
Now be nice. You know I love ya.
