Is 22Mpx Really Enough?!!!

[Fishnose]

But! Here is the question that I have been wrestling with: is more than 22 or 24 mp too much for a 35mm sensor? Canon is probably developing a 39 or 50 mp camera, presumably with a 35mm sized sensor. The size of the pixels (pixel pitch) is very important. I think my hasselblad's 50mp are the same size individually as my Canon's 22. So that means, roughly speaking, if canon goes to 39 or 50 mp, the pixels will be many times smaller. This would make low light/noise performance suffer I think. But maybe it will cause other issues as well. Or will it? Perhaps the developers have some new tricks up their sleeves.

Until now, I thhought 20-25mp is perfect for 35mm format. Any more and quality suffers. But maybe that sweet spot for packing pixels on the chip, with about 6 micron sized pixels, is not the plateau I expected it to be. Can a 50mp canon be good? Will it be as good as my hasselblad? Better?

The short answer is: look at the incredible results from a D800 (or even better, a D800E) with a really good lens in front. The results are quite fantastic. So 36Mp is not at all too many in 35mm.
Considering the fact that the D800 is the first ever 35mm to go over 24Mp, and does it so well, just think what the future holds....

Here's a comparison from DxO - sensor results. Just the sensor. But this is what you were discussing.
Lenses is another issue.

 

[itsnotmeyouknow]

I think people get so obsessed with technology that they often forget another word starting with tech - technique. It's not just about sharpness. There is so much more to it than that. I have been at exhibitions of the main photographer for Mohammad Ali and an exhibition of Cartier-Bresson's work in Seoul. Sharpness is not the most important thing in either of their work. Capturing the moment through technique is.

 

[gmrza]

Until now, I thhought 20-25mp is perfect for 35mm format. Any more and quality suffers. But maybe that sweet spot for packing pixels on the chip, with about 6 micron sized pixels, is not the plateau I expected it to be. Can a 50mp canon be good? Will it be as good as my hasselblad? Better?

I think we are getting into the territory of diminishing gains. As you increase sensor resolution, you need glass that can cope with the sensor. At the same time, you become more and more limited by diffraction. There will be a point where there is no alternative but to go to medium format if you want better quality.

How many MP is enough? That is a question for each individual photographer, based on their needs. There are a lot of times people shoot in the lower resolutions offered by cameras (SRAW/MRAW etc.) - because the resolution is enough for the use case at hand. - If you only need a 11x14 print, 10MP is enough. If you are only shooting for the web, even less will do.

Provided you can get lenses that can handle the resolution at a reasonable price, 50MP may be reasonable. (The pixel density of the 7D is roughly equivalent to 46MP on full frame.) A 35mm lens that can cope with that kind of resolution is still much cheaper than an equivalent quality lens for a medium format system. However, your diffraction-limited aperture is going to be getting down to somewhere in the region of f/6.3, I suspect. That raises the question of how much headroom you have until diffraction kills the benefit of any more MP?

 

[Ryan708]

The SoNikon Or Nikony sensor is great indeed. But Dxo's scoring is rubbish. Not saying the haselblad isnt worse. But the d800 sensore does NOT have 14.3 shops of dynamic range. An absolute 100% efficient 14 bit system can only get a max of 14 stops DR. Dxo obviously has a flawed testing method.

 

[tron]

Well a few year ago when 1Ds was introduced 11Mpixes seemed enormous. The same later when the 16Mpix 1DsII and the 21Mpix 1DsIII. The pros always chose these cameras and many of them produced superb work! Now that a higher Mpix camera was introduced it just raised the "standard". They just forget how good a job was being done by these "old" pro cameras. Now when someone introduces a 45Mpix camera they will feel that 36Mpix is not adequate. It is ... a little ... ridiculous!

 

[RLPhoto]

Please don't beat the DR dead horse again because according to DXO, the d800 is superior to all MF backs. Which is a ridiculous claim.

35mm will never ever resolve more detail than a larger format. That's why LF and MF still exist today.

There is no replacement for displacement. ;D

 

[dtaylor]

If one converts a 8x10 film with a modern scanner ... say with 4000dpi ... a single 8x10 film will look like (4000 ppi)(8 in)(4000 ppi)(10 in) = 1280 Mpixels or 1.28Gb !!!!

Ahhh...no. Medium format digital backs were arguably a match for 4x5 at around 40 MP, and definitely by 80 MP.

Still...that's more than 22 MP. (Though part of the IQ comes from the larger format.)

There aren't very many artist / subject / print size combinations which call for 4x5, 8x10, or high resolution MF digital. The difference is obvious when you have a combination which calls for it. But it's rare.

 

[Caps18]

I like the gigapan system and the photos it produces, and it is hundreds or thousands of equivalent megapixels.

21MP has been enough for my photos, but it isn't to say that a few of them could have been better with twice the resolution (if all the pixels were good and not noisy). I ran into that problem with my small point&shoot camera. They jammed so many low quality pixels on the sensor, that it started to get blurry when you zoomed in and pixel-peep.

 

[Ellen Schmidtee]

I think I probably heard a thousand times in our forum ... "22Mpx is more than enough ... how much more do you need?" ... Whenever this question pop-up at me, I always wonder ... if there is ever a living Ansel Adam or Richard Avedon hearing this .... what will be their responds?

The average photographer isn't exactly Ansel Adams or Richard Avedon, neither in technical needs nor talent. Some are, but the rest don't need as much, e.g. in terms of mpx.

 

[pdirestajr]

I think it is silly comparing 35mm cameras to medium format and large format.

They are different tools for different types of photography. I always thought 35mm was for photojournalism, events, etc. It was never intended to be used for billboard sized prints or massive works of fine art. Isn't the "smaller format" the whole point? Portability, hand-holdable, faster focus, faster shutter-speeds, etc. is the trade-off to a smaller image.

If it isn't enough, get a different tool.

 

[risc32]

sorry, but i second what RLPhoto said. Larger formats have a big advantage. go to imaging resource and use their comparometer. then pull up one of the MF formats -vs- whatever else and get ready to be depressed by our sissy 135 format. also, as Ansel aged his equipment got smaller. i think he ended up with a 6x6.

 

[awinphoto]

Point is, for the 135 format, which the 5d3 is, 22mp probably outresolves what the format was initially designed to do... as I've mentioned in prior threads...the 135, in film, really optimized out at 8x10... 11x14 you were risking softness and grain even at ISO 100 film. The 5d3 can natively pump out what... 12x19? give or take... Many photographers can print 30x40's with the camera at 150 dpi without batting an eye. In the film days 30x40's were only printed with 4x5 or 67 film... And at 67 there was the compromise such as 11x14's were to 135. Heck the compromise was so great most pro's would add a texture or lay the print on canvas to distract from that fact... Digital has surpassed what film file formats were ever designed to be for... is the 5d3 or D800 as good as an old 8x10 film? Probably not, but i would wager they probably rival many of the 645's and 67's of the day with good glass.

 

[RLPhoto]

Please don't beat the DR dead horse again because according to DXO, the d800 is superior to all MF backs. Which is a ridiculous claim.

35mm will never ever resolve more detail than a larger format. That's why LF and MF still exist today.

There is no replacement for displacement. ;D

Again you are talking about two things, is it DR we are talking about? Then it is clear that Nikon is the winner. FWC and read noise, nothing else than pure physics.
Is it resolution we are discussing, then you can optimize lenses who are smaller in diameter = 24x36 just like the manufacturers do for smaller sensors than 24x36mm . What's needed is gained contrast and resolution that is in proportion of the loss with the smaller sensor. BUT the 24x36 is light years ahead of a MF sensor and MF lenses has lower contrast and lower resolution per area unit so that is not so big deal as it is to use the same Canon lens on a 24x36 and a APS 18Mp to get the same contrast. signal/noise etc
You must be the one of the most uncomprehending persons here at CR. I suggest that you read and study the subject and try to understand a little before you so consistently pronounce your things

35mm does not have the detail of a larger format. Period. End of story. There is no argument here, it's a fact.

 

[RLPhoto]

Please don't beat the DR dead horse again because according to DXO, the d800 is superior to all MF backs. Which is a ridiculous claim.

35mm will never ever resolve more detail than a larger format. That's why LF and MF still exist today.

There is no replacement for displacement. ;D

Again you are talking about two things, is it DR we are talking about? Then it is clear that Nikon is the winner. FWC and read noise, nothing else than pure physics.
Is it resolution we are discussing, then you can optimize lenses who are smaller in diameter = 24x36 just like the manufacturers do for smaller sensors than 24x36mm . What's needed is gained contrast and resolution that is in proportion of the loss with the smaller sensor. BUT the 24x36 is light years ahead of a MF sensor and MF lenses has lower contrast and lower resolution per area unit so that is not so big deal as it is to use the same Canon lens on a 24x36 and a APS 18Mp to get the same contrast. signal/noise etc
You must be the one of the most uncomprehending persons here at CR. I suggest that you read and study the subject and try to understand a little before you so consistently pronounce your things

35mm does not have the detail of a larger format. Period. End of story. There is no argument here, it's a fact.

read my answer above and try to understand it.

Re-read my response and use some discernment.

 

[RS2021]

I think it is silly comparing 35mm cameras to medium format and large format.

They are different tools for different types of photography. I always thought 35mm was for photojournalism, events, etc. It was never intended to be used for billboard sized prints or massive works of fine art. Isn't the "smaller format" the whole point? Portability, hand-holdable, faster focus, faster shutter-speeds, etc. is the trade-off to a smaller image.

If it isn't enough, get a different tool.

+100000!

Sums up what I have to say. The folks who just think bigger nubmers are better are whom the market unfortunately relies on to sell more and more bodies....as has been said before here a 1000 times, once the high MP fans have the 100MP body, they will want 110MP. But you probe a bit deeper and ask what format Adams used, there you would run into a void.... "Format? I think Adams probably used a PC not a Mac for sure" . One can't but wonder if some of these people will not benefit from learning a bit about the history of Photography, and learning to recognize the works of innovative photographers through the decades all the way through the 80's (which will shock some belonged to film). Comparing apples to oranges is common among the "I want more MP" crowd.

To be clear, I am not against more MP's per se, clearly there is a little bit of MP that can still be sqeezed out in the 35mm frame, but I do believe after that, there is going to be diminishing return in the near term. Sensors and lenses will have to evolve significantly more to eek out benefits after about ~50MP. The image circle and the lens that produces it will dictate this as much as the sensor...and oh...lets not forget technique which you can't buy at the big MP store.

So if you wanna belly ache, the answer is to move to a larger format. The 35mm format evolved in the context of larger frames to fit a much needed segment for smaller formats (which has now grown to our current jaw dropping mass market level) but it was never envisioned as a substitute for larger formats.

 

[denisbergeron]

The fact that picture made by Yousef Karsh and other great photographer that use 8x10 camera, are so great, it's not because of the number of pixel but by the physics of the light.
With bigger sensor, the lens doesn't need to be perfect to have a crisp picture.
With bigger sensor, the lens doesn't need to have a pig aperture to have a nice bokeh blur.
With bigger sensor, you need a tripod.
With bigger sensor, you spend more time compose your shoot.
If a compare my work with MF and 35mm, for approching the quality of a 6x7 with a 120mm f3.5 lens I had to take my 85mm f1.2 and event there, the bokeh is not that nice.... but again, it's not a 8x10

 

[JohanCruyff]

Back in the old film days, these two Grant Masters used 8x10 films to create the absolute best images (both in terms of IQ & creativity) in the field of Landscape (Ansel Adam) and Fashion & Portrait (Richard Avedon) respectively ... and I am sure their works will always remain in the books and museums for generations to come!

Probably Ansel Adam and Richard Avedon spent little time on web forums, and most of their time shooting or carefully preparing shoots.

 

[jrista]

Please don't beat the DR dead horse again because according to DXO, the d800 is superior to all MF backs. Which is a ridiculous claim.

35mm will never ever resolve more detail than a larger format. That's why LF and MF still exist today.

There is no replacement for displacement. ;D

Well, that really depends. An 80mp 35mm sensor could "resolve" the same amount of detail as an 80mp MFD sensor, assuming you get the same number of pixels on subject. For that matter, when you get the same number of pixels on subject with the same physical aperture (entrance pupil), S/N of the resulting image would even be the same, regardless of whether you have huge pixels or tiny pixels. See this article:

http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/telephoto.system.performance/index.html

 

[Nishi Drew]

When so many photos these days end up straight on a webpage where the size of the image won't be viewed any larger than the screen it's displayed on, and when you frame and compose the shot as you want it to be (or just don't like cropping much) then 10 mp is good enough. "Look at this casual snap of my cat, it's got so much res I can count the hairs... on a flea!" Just a lot more data used up, where speed and storage priority could be instead. And stitching multiple photos together, when done right with the utmost precision... well there's still a lot more to the whole thing as everyone here is discussing over

 

[RLPhoto]

Please don't beat the DR dead horse again because according to DXO, the d800 is superior to all MF backs. Which is a ridiculous claim.

35mm will never ever resolve more detail than a larger format. That's why LF and MF still exist today.

There is no replacement for displacement. ;D

Well, that really depends. An 80mp 35mm sensor could "resolve" the same amount of detail as an 80mp MFD sensor, assuming you get the same number of pixels on subject. For that matter, when you get the same number of pixels on subject with the same physical aperture (entrance pupil), S/N of the resulting image would even be the same, regardless of whether you have huge pixels or tiny pixels. See this article:

http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/telephoto.system.performance/index.html

If you have an 80MP 35MM sensor, That same pixel density on a MF sensor would be Well over 200MP. Its no competition.

Thats the whole point of larger formats.

Bigger is better for resolution.