“My right eye is at a fine five megapixel. But the left one, I feel, has only a VGA resolution.”
See if you agree with this. Add your two cents.
Forget the silly debate over pixel counts among digital cameras. There is little visible difference between cameras with seemingly different ratings. For instance, a 3 MP camera pretty much looks the same as a 6 MP camera, even when blown up to 12 x 18!” I know because I’ve done this. Have you?
The megapixel myth was started by camera makers and swallowed hook, line and sinker by camera measurebators. Camera makers use the number of megapixels a camera has to hoodwink you into thinking it has something to do with camera quality. They use it because even a tiny linear resolution increase results in a huge total pixel increase, since the total pixel count varies as the total area of the image, which varies as the square of the linear resolution. In other words, an almost invisible 40% increase in the number of pixels in any one direction results in a doubling of the total number of pixels in the image. Therefore camera makers can always brag about how much better this week’s camera is, with even negligible improvements.
[…]
One needs about a doubling of linear resolution or film size to make an obvious improvement. This is the same as a quadrupling of megapixels. A simple doubling of megapixels, even if all else remained the same, is very subtle. The factors that matter, like color and sharpening algorithms, are far more significant.The megapixel myth is also prevalent because men always want a single number by which something’s goodness can be judged.
If you do fret the pixel counts, I find that it takes about 25 megapixels to simulate 35mm film, which is still far more than any practical digital camera. At the 6 megapixel level digital gives about the same sharpness as a duplicate slide, which is plenty for most things. Honestly, I have actually had digital files written back out onto film to see this.
Tired of ordinary images of landscapes? Here’s a way to make them far more vibrant.
didn’t know I could still get a 3-4 megapixel camera…
The difference between my 3.3 and my 8 is HUGE… so I call bullshit on this.
I can do so much more with the extra detail. Granted I use my camera for a little more than family snaps, but still….
The article is VERY pompus. However it raises a good point – most people don’t need more than 4mp for their uses. Especially as the lower resolutions tend to be nice and clear (better resolution vs size of CCD).
It sounds to me more like the article should have tried to educate people on how they could use the new higher-resolution cameras to best advantage than tell people they don’t need more resolution.
wow.. camera freaks abound..
what about good black and white shots?
Film is still best for B&W. You can make a digital image monochrome, but film has such wonderful subtlety and depth.
Not true anymore Smartalix. You’d be amazed at what modern digital cameras can do with B&W. It’s not as simple as a just doing “monochrome” in Photoshop anymore.
Everything I shoot is about 90% B&W.
Good to know, I may try it (B&W) myself. I used to shoot a lot of it in the service, because I liked the look.
Why are so many people reading so much into his objection to people judging cameras purely by pixel-count?
I strongly agree with the last paragraph of his introduction:
Resolution has little to do with image quality. Color and tone are far more important technically. Even Consumer Reports in their November 2002 issue noted some lower resolution digital cameras made better images than some higher resolution ones.
Anyone want to compare sample photos – especially in low/available light – from a Panasonic FZ 30 [8Mp] against a Fuji F30 [6Mp] and tell me I should get the FZ30 because it has a 2MP advantage over the F30?
Or, that I would be better-off with the FZ30 than my Nikon D50 because I suffer from the same 2MP “deficit”?
How about an “apples to apples” [ …not! ] example of an [8Mp] Panasonic FZ30 to an [8Mp] Canon 350D:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicfz30/page14.asp
Increased pixel-count is only useful if the rest of the camera – sensor, lens, processing electronics, controls – are pulling their weight. Otherwise you just have more noisy, off-color, smeared dots making-up your picture.
Mike,
You are right that there are many factors which contribute to an image. But to take that fact and stretch it to fit the premise that pixels are unimportant means the writer is an idiot or a shill.
According to the writer’s position, your Fuji has too much resolution, too.
He starts with a rant about how the “artistic” merits of a photo don’t require huge pixel-counts or expensive cameras – his reference to pictures taken with cheap Holga cameras, 6Mp Nikon D70, etc
He then launches into another rant against all the marketing hype that existed in 2004/2005 as pixel-counts were steadily increasing just because they could…[and uses a reference to Consumer Reports from 2002 – which dates this even more].
But the last two paragraphs show he is not arguing against increased numbers of pixels, just the mindless appetite for them, driven only by marketers trying to sell another new camera:
For images seen at arm’s length you need to have about 300 real pixels for every inch of your print’s dimensions. …Stand further away as you would from a huge print and even 100 pixels per inch (DPI) can look great. … Multiply the inch dimensions by these DPI figures to get the total resolution … you need for a decent image, and multiply these together to get a total number of pixels (usually in the millions, or megapixels.)
For instance, for an excellent 8×10 you need [8″ x 300 DPI] x [10 x 300DPI] or 2,400 x 3,000 pixels, or 7,200,000 pixels, or 7.2 megapixels. ….
He seems to have no problem with higher pixel-counts, if you have a legitimate need for them…
He just needs to take some writing classes, or hire an editor to clean-up his meandering prose. [grin]
Okay, I’ll give you that one. He didn’t mean to sound like an idiot, it just came out that way.
😉
If they need a good tech editor, I’m available…
Also, I should point out that this article was put out a while ago and for some reason other places are picking it up.
It should be noted that the author shoots with a Nikon D200 quite a bit now…which has crammed 10 megapixels in a still APS size sensor. The D200 is a fine camera…if you stay under 800 speed. When the ISO goes up, the noise goes up quite a bit. So much for his “megapixel myth”. And where is he coming up with his “I find that it takes about 25 megapixels to simulate 35mm film”? Where’s he pulling that out of?
Look at what Canon did with it’s 30D. It’s the same sensor as the 20D, but they updated the camera itself in other ways instead of just throwing more megapixels at it. Some people were pissed about this as they wanted more pixels, but I think Canon did the smart move really. There IS a cut off point in megapixel count and the size of the sensor when it comes to IQ (image quality)…but 3 megapixels ain’t it.