A Consideration of Megapixels

[@Adogcallednoortje]

‘I don’t want te be sitting in the 2050’s explaining why everything I shot in the 2020’s looks like it was shot in the 1980’s.’ -Nicolas Hornbrook That’s a great sentence.

[@DennisK47]

Great video. Sorry about the issues with the R5 (again), hope you arrive at a satisfactory piece of end-kit. I have been going through a lot of these same musings with my gear over the years. I want all the MP, but then all the sharpness, all the bokeh, in a light package, with the autofocus....and eventually it's just eternal compromises. I have mostly just decided that while I still want everything, I just rank them: Autofocus>Lens Resolving Ability>Lightweight Package>Resolution (MP)>Bokeh Everyone's priorities will end up different, but I basically ended up with two systems, an M43 kit with the OM-5 and a full frame A7RV & A7Rc. When I want more sharpness, more MP and more bokeh...full frame. When I want less weight and don't care about bokeh or resolution...M43. Neither is perfect, but they both have their niche in my life. My thoughts on resolution and sharpness = you can always turn them down, but you can never make a low resolution camera with a soft lens turn sharp and high rez. I usually down-sample my 61MP shots to 30MP anyway after processing/cropping/butchering them. Cheers.

[@DennisK47]

On this same topic, that's involved me shuffling lenses a lot. Turns out some lenses can barely resolve a full frame 24MP sensor, never mind 45 or 61. It just sucks because it's often meant heavier, and more expensive glass for me. Same thing on M43, where it seems like some of the lenses were made for old 12MP sensors, and really struggle on the more modern 20MP ones. *sigh*

[@NicholasHornbrook]

I love that formula @DennisK47. Great idea, that's actually extremely helpful.

Hey Dennis! Did you try brenizer panoramas? If you love bokeh and high res, it sounds like the killer combination (no matter which camera you use). Post processing these files is also a piece of cake, unless you shoot moving objects, of course.

[@DennisK47]

I never really shoot panos, because I'm lazy and it adds an extra set of steps. If I want a Pano I just use an ultrawide and crop to 21:9 or so. The A7RV and A7Cr both have a horizontal resolution of 9504. Waaaay more pixels than I need already. I have done a couple of stitched panos just to try it out, so not that I've never tried it, but just really didn't enjoy the process. That and I've actually fallen out of love with bokeh a lot lately and find myself stopping down more than ever.

[@Spekplant]

I think I will stick to my aged X-T1 and F3...

[@nicofuentes7149]

can't believe you got two R5 with actual issues. "coffe and photography talk" on yt once talked about the mgpx thing saying if you want more that 30 mgpx on full frame, medium format should be a consideration. about the gfx sistem I've been told its too heavy, that alone is a no from me (I could be wrong). hope all works out well!

[@StripedTailz]

Sony A7Ciii autofocus is really nice

[@NicholasHornbrook]

Sony is definitely a possibility. Though it's harder to talk myself in to giving up my investment into Canon lenses to transition to another full-frame system. If I were to make a clean break from Canon, moving to a larger sensor would make that hurt a bit less @StripedTailz. There's still the possibility of a setup where I shoot one Canon camera, permanently paired with my favorite Canon lens, and one Sony paired with a different focal length, and so on.

[@DennisK47]

@@NicholasHornbrook Switching systems is SO expensive. People on YT are switching constantly and it's nuts. You already have a lot of RF glass, and while sure you'll get some of your money back selling it you won't get all of it. I know that RF50 ain't cheap LOL. I've got probably 10K tied up in Sony kit for example (2 bodies, 7 lenses). If I wanted to switch to Nikon for example I'd probably only get half that back, maybe a touch more in return. If I got 6K back, that enough for what....a Z8 and two lenses? X_x

[@NicholasHornbrook]

Yep, agreed @DennisK47. And that RF 50mm is my favorite lens I've ever used, so selling it would probably lead to regret. If I were going to switch, 5 years ago would have been the ideal time to do it.

[@ChrisThe1]

In regards to the haze: I don't own an R5, but an original R and a GFX 100 II. The EF 35mm 1.4L II looks great on the R, but adapted onto the gfx it has that same haze. I haven't seen the same haze on any native GF lens, so it might be a thing related to higher resolution. What lens did you experience this on? I love the extra resolution for prints. Sure, 6 megapixels will still look great, but the more you have the more details you can find. It's not always necessary, but I like creating more dense photos where once you go closer you can find a lot more than just the one composition

[@cbernheisel87]

I think the pixel value should be dependent on how you shoot or what you shoot. I use a R6, because I like to shoot at night and do astrophotography. The bigger pixels allow more light per pixel which helps, and since I'm shooting such small points of light I get more light per pixel, how ever its not as sharp in the daytime.

[@hoodio]

while i'd love the 60mp of an a7cr, i'm so happy with the 26mp of the a6700 with amazing autofocus

[@iNerdier]

My advice, as a random internet commentator; rent a Fuji for a fortnight before you buy one. Rent any of them first. I just recently bought a digital camera again after previously owning a Nikon D300. I can’t say I ever found the 12mpx of the old camera a limitation and that was by no means particularly fancy when I bought it, (second hand) at the time. The 43mpx or whatever it is Sony is, fine. No in some ways it’s not fine, I hate the lack of optical viewfinder and the way my computer has to churn through the file sizes. All the accoutrements that I need to add, all the extra storage, the new memory cards, the new lenses. But it works. You talk about photos of their time. There are photos of me as a child from the ‘90s because there is a crate full of prints in the attic of my grandparents home. There are almost no photos of anyone from the 2000s because they’re all on computers and CDs that got thrown out or rendered unreadable. Digital was the future but now it’s this yawning chasm of family history and now ironically the shots I took on the hand-me-down 70s Minolta on cheap film as Kodak gasped in death throes are what remains of that period.

[@thomastuorto9929]

A good reasoning for the print. To me it is a must. Dgital adds the choice of choosing which ones to print vs sending out a 36 count roll of 35mm film.

[@BimeringPhotoVideoDesign]

I wouldn't buy the fuji for the resolution. I mean, that wouldn't be the main difference. From what you're saying, maybe Sony would suit you better. Amazing AF, image quality, resolution, and lens choices, specially compared to fuji

[@SpeedyBlaxx]

"A million billion" XD

As someone still shooting with the Canon 5D Mkii, let me just throw this bit of information in: 90% of the EF lenses are not able to produce the "best" possible image quality on these BIG FF pixels. In fact, NONE of the available lenses is reaching the theoretically available resolution of that sensor. I own the Canon EF 100 mm f/2.8 L IS USM macro lens which is a very sharp lens, even at f/2.8. I have never seen such blurry resolutions, on my photos with that camera, even if I zoom in 200% or even 300%. Not sure which lens you used here, but it was certainly the limiting factor, not the camera sensor. So, my point is - if 90% of L lenses do not even reach the maximum possible resolution on a 21 MP FF sensor, despite the crazy competition on the lens market to produce the sharpest possible lenses since 30-50 years or so, while reaching the physical limits all the time... Nobody can tell me that a 45 MP FF sensor (of the SAME size!) can have a much better resolution by just making the pixels smaller. Either, there is some trickery going on to make these shots look sharper, or really are RF lenses miraculously breaking the laws of physics? Regarding the trickery - they could apply internal sharpening without telling us, without giving us the option to see the original (softer) image. They could also use upscaling technology etc. - software "solutions". If that is the case - I can do the same with my 5D Mkii files, sharpening them and upscaling them, etc. If resolution really matters, I shoot a brenizer panorama anyway. My 100 MP files easily beat the R5, pretty sure. There is a reason professional cameras have bigger sensors - just making the pixels smaller doesn't seem to be the solution to get a higher resolution out of lenses, which were not even reaching the full potential of a 21 MP FF sensor.

[@DennisK47]

You've got a really great point there about lenses. I know I've experienced this with my Sony setup with their more modern G and G master glass. It's wildly sharper than their lenses from 5-10 years ago on the exact same bodies. Also, a lot of the shots in this video I see are shot wide open. Very few lenses from any brand are sharpest at this point. You almost expect some haziness, ghosting, loss of contrast and resolution when everything is shot at f1.2.

[@ericdomazlicky6413]

You realize that a lot of older film era "L" lenses aren't optimized for digital sensors and that isn't just marketing BS. Digital sensors are less forgiving of off-axis light than film is because they are physically deeper. The pixels literally sit in a well, much different than film. So I don't think we can really say you don't need a 100 MP camera because this particular lens can't resolve that much detail, maybe another specialized lens could. At the end of the day though if resolution really matters I just dust off my 8x10.

@@ericdomazlicky6413 Hi Eric! Yeah, I didn't mean the super old lenses, of course. But if you take the L-lenses which were produced the last 5-10 years before mirrorless was introduced, I think, those lenses were pretty much designed exclusively for the digital sensors. Also third party lenses like from zeiss were always aiming at the best resolution. I just think the lenses are the bottleneck for resolution and not the camera sensors. Of course with some of the best lenses out there, they might make good use of a 45 MP FF sensor, but I am sure 90% of lenses people use on such cameras, won't do it justice. As for the "cheating" part - mirrorless cameras are correcting much more in-camera already, since the DSLR cameras were not designed for that, or didn't have such features. I am not sure it's a great idea to correct distortions digitally, instead of designing a lens which is avoiding the distortion physically already. Yet, many mirrorless systems do exactly that. And nobody will notice this internal correction on a digital viewfinder which can already display the applied changes. Would be interesting to get an RF lens adapted to an old Canon DSLR (not sure that's possible, but didn't research it, either) to see what some of the images look like without digital corrections.

[@DennisK47]

On the topic of seeing the images without digital correction, I see this all the time via my Sony raw files. Unlike Nikon and others they don't bake the corrections into the RAW, so you can see it if you want (can ucheck the profile in LR). My 20-70f4 for example has pretty strong distortion at the wide end. It corrects nicely and is still sharper in the corners than some of my "less distorted" lenses despite this. I find that the chromatic aberrations and fringing are much more commonly corrected "in glass" with modern optics. It's the vignette and distortion that they're opting for software more commonly now.

[@thomastuorto9929]

Arizona, Utah?

[@cbernheisel87]

new mexico

[@garethwilliams976]

You worry too much about something that does not really matter. Shoot a 12 MP image and print to A3 and do the same with say 24, 45, 100 MP. View these at a sensible distance (1.5-2x the diagonal) and check whether there is any noticeable difference between them. If not-why worry? Of course you can print larger but increase your viewing distance proportionally and the same criteria will apply. Cropping? Of course you will notice differences but if you crop why spend money on interchangeable lenses? Actually something like 10-12 MP is adequate although manufacturers and some shooters will try to convince you otherwise. Remember, Adams, Weston,. Abbot Meyerowitz, Strand et al.....all used cameras inferior to yours so your shots must be better than theirs - right?