Canon's answer to the D800E

[mkln]

So I was thinking, do Canon users really need a D800E?

I don't think so.

That is so old news.
We can have moiré on our pics too. Since forever.

Guess what this was taken with (hint: it does have an AA filter...)
http://i42.tinypic.com/i71uut.jpg
(upsized for a better display of the false colors)


No, Nikon fanbois, not a D800E, sorry!

 

[awinphoto]

While I personally dont need 36+ MP, I've always taken MP increases from canon in the past with a grain of salt. I've always welcomed increase in MP as long as image quality doesn't suffer and technology supports it. While I'm content with the 5d3's 22MP, i wouldn't have been overly fussed with the 36MP either if image quality resolution was as good if not better than the 5d2. There has been many very vocal photographers on this forum who have point in fact stated they need a high resolution camera for stock/agency/landscape/BIF, and for those, I can understand their plight... But canon will weigh the needs of the few and determine if there is a market for this nitche and if it's worth (to them) to develop such as camera. If they do, then we will see a MP monster around the corner... If not, then no soup for you (good ol' seinfeld.) I'm not going to argue if we NEED high MP out of a 35mm format camera, but will argue that canon undoubtedly will be looking into this market and if you NEED high MP, it's time you guys start communicating with canon whether it be email/phone/direct mail/petitions... If they dont know there's a problem, they wont fix it, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

 

[Neeneko]

Some people have a use for 36+MP, others do not. Some people benefit from an AA filter, some people get their factory built Canon bodies converted to remove the AAF (or even CFA) . There are a lot of use cases and there is no one perfect camera that meets all of them.

 

[awinphoto]

There are a lot of use cases and there is no one perfect camera that meets all of them.

100% agree

 

[torger]

I would prefer more MP for my landscape work.

But lately I'm kind of starting to change my mind about this. I'm afraid that corner sharpness for a ~40 megapixel DSLR will suffer a bit too much for landscape work. When I shift my 7D to the "full-frame" corner of a TS-E 24mm II I can see how that lens will look in the corner for a 45 megapixel full-frame camera (without shift). It is not that sharp, and then the TS-E 24mm II is the best 24mm lens out there, concerning corner performance. So is it worthwhile making that high megapixel DSLRs? Well, center sharpness will be good, so in much photography I guess it would work out.

But for landscape work where corner sharpness is important, it may be that you really have to go to medium format to get 40+ megapixels resolved with good quality.

It shall be interesting to see how the D800 will perform in landscape photography with the Nikon lens lineup.

 

[mkln]

I would prefer more MP for my landscape work.

But lately I'm kind of starting to change my mind about this. I'm afraid that corner sharpness for a ~40 megapixel DSLR will suffer a bit too much for landscape work. When I shift my 7D to the "full-frame" corner of a TS-E 24mm II I can see how that lens will look in the corner for a 45 megapixel full-frame camera (without shift). It is not that sharp, and then the TS-E 24mm II is the best 24mm lens out there, concerning corner performance. So is it worthwhile making that high megapixel DSLRs? Well, center sharpness will be good, so in much photography I guess it would work out.

But for landscape work where corner sharpness is important, it may be that you really have to go to medium format to get 40+ megapixels resolved with good quality.

It shall be interesting to see how the D800 will perform in landscape photography with the Nikon lens lineup.

btw the moiré picture I posted was taken precisely with the TSE24II (the crop is in the center of the frame, f/9)

I honestly think 36 mp would be GREAT. It's the same pixel density of 16mp crop bodies, and that's the current "sweet spot" of APSC...

my point here was to ask whether or not an AA filter / no AA filter really makes a significant difference in terms of IQ.
I think it does not. and as my pic tried to show, with great lenses and in certain situations an AA filter does not serve the purpose it was designed for.
that's why I wouldn't go with +$300 for the D800E...

then isn't an AA filter increasingly useless going up with resolution?
I can see why Leica wants no AA filter on a 18mp FF, but with 36?
I'll be really curious to see real world comparisons of D800 vs D800E.

 

[Neeneko]

But for landscape work where corner sharpness is important, it may be that you really have to go to medium format to get 40+ megapixels resolved with good quality.

It shall be interesting to see how the D800 will perform in landscape photography with the Nikon lens lineup.

*nods* I am wondering how far from a cap on MP we are with FF cameras. While new lenses can always be produced I would wager they would get progressively more expensive to produce, and of course people like being able to use old glass.

I would not be surprised if Canon/Nikon/Sony/etc start looking into other ways to get high MP like titled sensor + MF lenses or something. If they could find a way to bring the price down there is quite a bit of pent up demand for MF cameras that is not willing to pay the much higher cost of current digital backs.

 

[jwong]

I would prefer more MP for my landscape work.

But lately I'm kind of starting to change my mind about this. I'm afraid that corner sharpness for a ~40 megapixel DSLR will suffer a bit too much for landscape work. When I shift my 7D to the "full-frame" corner of a TS-E 24mm II I can see how that lens will look in the corner for a 45 megapixel full-frame camera (without shift). It is not that sharp, and then the TS-E 24mm II is the best 24mm lens out there, concerning corner performance. So is it worthwhile making that high megapixel DSLRs? Well, center sharpness will be good, so in much photography I guess it would work out.

But for landscape work where corner sharpness is important, it may be that you really have to go to medium format to get 40+ megapixels resolved with good quality.

It shall be interesting to see how the D800 will perform in landscape photography with the Nikon lens lineup.

How feasible is it to use a pano setup? Obviously, it wouldn't work well where there is a lot a of motion (i.e. ocean waves), but it seems like a good way to get a lot of pixels using the sweet spot of the lens.

 

[jaduffy007]

D800E for landscape photogs will deliver 90% of a Phase One IQ140 ($25k) for 1/8 of the price. D800E will be stellar for its intended audience....and clearly beat the IQ of the D800. The 5d3 will not even be close. There are online samples already showing this. It's a specialized piece of gear though.

 

[psolberg]

I would prefer more MP for my landscape work.

But lately I'm kind of starting to change my mind about this. I'm afraid that corner sharpness for a ~40 megapixel DSLR will suffer a bit too much for landscape work. When I shift my 7D to the "full-frame" corner of a TS-E 24mm II I can see how that lens will look in the corner for a 45 megapixel full-frame camera (without shift). It is not that sharp, and then the TS-E 24mm II is the best 24mm lens out there, concerning corner performance. So is it worthwhile making that high megapixel DSLRs? Well, center sharpness will be good, so in much photography I guess it would work out.

But for landscape work where corner sharpness is important, it may be that you really have to go to medium format to get 40+ megapixels resolved with good quality.

It shall be interesting to see how the D800 will perform in landscape photography with the Nikon lens lineup.

more MP will show how much better the center is compared to the sides. but you're still resolving more detail even at the edges than with a 22MP sensor. The center will off course be even more optically outstanding than it was before. So yes, your gains are not even, but you gain detail overall across the entire frame with the higher MP sensor regardless.

IMO in the case of landscapes this difference in detail from the side to the center will not be perceptually noticed even if you can measure it with algorithms and software.

What you want to compare, and what I think justifies the use of higher MP sensors in landscape, are the results of the same region of a 22MP image vs a 36MP image when printed at the same size. There you'll see an improvement in larger prints, and you'll have smoother graduations from color to color. Obviously for web sharing, where things are resized to tiny sizes, the extra MP matters little.

Ultimately, I don't see a downside. You can crop, downscale, and tweak images to match the results of smaller sensors, but you can't up scale without creating a lot more data that just wasn't recorded even using modern scalers like Genuine Fractals software. So IMO 36MP or more is a full win for landscape artists and definitively something canon feels to have abandoned, or at least postponed.

I already saw a very wide crop of a D800 file that looked stunning and couldn't have been captured by a pano+stich because of the motion in the scene. 36MP and higher MP sensor are going to open a whole new avenue of very extreme HxW ratio photography and that is very exciting indeed.

 

[torger]

I think in general that it is a good thing to outresolve the lenses, one would want to get the max out of the expensive glass right? One can always downscale.

However, if one does expect really good corner performance with ~40 megapixel sensor I think there will be a bit of disappointment.

Medium format is a disaster price/performance too of course. I've looked into tech cameras, and the camera and lenses are not too expensive if you choose those with better price/performance, similar to pro DSLR equipment, but the digital backs... arrghh... as an amateur what you need to do is to get a second hand back several years old. A 22 megapixel 48x36mm back can be had for $4000 if you keep your eye on ebay, in a couple of years you can probably upgrade to 40 megapixel back for a similar price. The sensors are quite good despite old actually thanks to the large pixels, but user interface is a joke. So one really have to looooove those sharp corners to go there .

 

[moreorless]

But for landscape work where corner sharpness is important, it may be that you really have to go to medium format to get 40+ megapixels resolved with good quality.

It shall be interesting to see how the D800 will perform in landscape photography with the Nikon lens lineup.

*nods* I am wondering how far from a cap on MP we are with FF cameras. While new lenses can always be produced I would wager they would get progressively more expensive to produce, and of course people like being able to use old glass.

I would not be surprised if Canon/Nikon/Sony/etc start looking into other ways to get high MP like titled sensor + MF lenses or something. If they could find a way to bring the price down there is quite a bit of pent up demand for MF cameras that is not willing to pay the much higher cost of current digital backs.

Couldnt border performance be potentially improved by increasing the size of the image circle? perhaps thats actually what the new 24-70 does hence the larger front element ahd high price?

 

[Neeneko]

Couldnt border performance be potentially improved by increasing the size of the image circle? perhaps thats actually what the new 24-70 does hence the larger front element ahd high price?

It probably would. That is one of the reasons I am pondering playing with MF=>EF adapters. Ok, that and parallax free shifting ^_^