Olympus: 12 Megapixels Are Enough

[No1sFanboy]

I only just now graduated from a 3.2mp Canon S1IS to a Nikon D90 with 12.3mp. I'd like to shoot and archive in RAW format and really don't think I'd want to be handling even larger file sizes. Sure hard drives are cheap but processing time/transfer time etc. becomes a factor.

With the exception of some air show shots I never found a desire for more pixels with my old Canon. The big advantage with the new camera is the superior sensor and light gathering ability. This is the point of Watanabe's comment.

 

[JimmiG]

My 22" monitor is about as large as the largest framed picture in my living room. It can't see any pixelation on my monitor unless I look really close, even though it's only 1.8Mp. So 2Mp is fine for anything except ridiculously big pictures or very professional printing.

 

[turboflame]

Finally someone stops with the marketing BS. Even a 6 megapixel camera is overkill for 90% of consumers. Cramming a huge number of pixels into a tiny sensor degrades image quality significantly.

 

[tipoo]

Good. Olympus was one of the many camera companies that tried to cram too many megapixels onto too-small sensors, degrading quality.

 

[Guest]

The higher the pixel count, the more critical (-and expensive!) the optics becomes. I have seen some 23 MP cameras hobbled by run-of-the-mill lenses.

I am interested in the D90 myself, but mainly for the onboard chromatic aberration reduction and the Active D-lighting hoping that will increase the dynamic range some.

It is good that somebody like Olympus actually made a public stand on what looks like an MP race.

 

[Guest]

NOISE! People it's the NOISE that kills photos! A 3MP camera with low noise (i.e. Canon d30 - not the 30d) takes wonderful photos! If you want a new metric, sell high Signal to Noise (SNR) ratios!

 

[Guest]

We have a 6Mpix cam (The Nikon D40).
But after editing some quality gets lost.
With a 6Mpix camera we can make flawless edited photo's upto 14" (or about 8 by 11").

Anything larger (eg a flawless 17" photo) will need RAW editing, or the unedited 4MB Jpeg.

We've decided to go for 10Mpix. Many professional camera's only support upto 6Mpix.
the 10Mpix is good enough for extreme HD editing,good enough to display about 18" frames blameless photo's, or 32" frames with slightly rougher print, for eg: Livingroom portraits.

 

[Guest]

Another thought may be that SLR camera's are for amateurs and semi professionals.
Not for the leek who wants to make some holiday pictures with the family.

 

[LuxZg]

I haven't read ALL the comments but what I really miss in my 7Mpix Panasonic DMC-FZ8 camera isn't more pixels. It's sole bad point is shooting in lesser-light enviroments. Here I don't mean total dark or nightshots, but shots under artificial lighting (normal lightbulbs). It's either using flash (which mostly ruins the "mood" of the picture) or having visible artifacts. Sure, using advanced settings, a tripod etc will result in a better picture even without flash, but no point in using tripod when you have a "moving target" (eg. - people).

So I'm all with Olympus on this aspect, consumer cameras and those for semi-advanced users like me should improve in other aspects which bring true picture quality, and which can't be compensated with just stuffing more and more pixels..

 

[LuxZg]

Now I HAVE read all the comments, and most of them agree on one thing - it's about time to clean up those artifacts (noise) from the picture, and have them nice, clean and sharp even at high-ISO (low-light) values.

When they get that solved, they can start increasing pixels again, but only if they're keeping that noise-free looks on those higher resolutions as well..

I'm glad I'm not the only one having issues with this aspect of digital photos 😀

 

[Guest]

TeraMedia you are wrong, printed dot is not a pixel! One RGB pixel is interpreted by many dots in some mathematical order called raster. Since prints are subtractive lite you have to print with complementary color tu RGB and that's CMY. RGB is scalable with light intensity (since its additive light), so you can have more intensities of same basic color (i.e. 256 levels of R, G, B) but with prints you can only change the size of the dot, or the the density of dots on square inch (or better on pixel) to achieve more levels of the same basic color.
So DPI is NOT equal Pixels per inch.

 

[Guest]

I'd never owned a camera before I got my at&t tilt with 3MP camera. I've taken soo many photos. Some turn out really nice, others not so much (when it's dark). Either way, it's better than what I had, which was nothing. I think Olympus is taking a step in the better direction, but I believe the average consumer will still use the megapixel metric system since that's what's crammed down their throat.

 

[piper5177]

blackbeastofaaaaagh is right about the lens. With modern lenses...about as good as you can possibly get, the refraction error of the glass becomes apparent above 12 MP. The only reason to go bigger is to be able to crop even the largest of prints. But at that point become a better photographer and learn to frame so you don't have to crop 40% of the image. Dynamic range of the sensor and low light performance are where it's at. Even on a 6 MP full sensor SLR, a good lens will make great images. Most crappy pictures are not due to equipment.

 

[bustapr]

Well camera technolgy cant stop updating now and stay at the 12mp range. Some people actually want to see technology go higher and higher. Teres no reason to stop just because it is enough. Think about television. Sony cant stop and say, "1080p is enough , we wont make any bigger resolutions until another daring tv company(samsung) tries to make more pixels". See how that will suck. And what about those people that want to make their entire living room wall a family picture. 12mp wont be enough to make it look good!

 

[piper5177]

Well, that depends on the size of the wall. If it's a monitor or LCD TV then 4500 x 2667 should be enough to look pretty good.

 

[Tindytim]

[citation][nom]piper5177[/nom]Well, that depends on the size of the wall. If it's a monitor or LCD TV then 4500 x 2667 should be enough to look pretty good.[/citation]

I wasn't aware there are commercially available TVs with resolutions greater than 1080p.

 

[lexspecialis]

Finally, a company that realizes what really matters to users. I'm a Nikon user, but it's a good move by Olympus. The megapixel race is getting ludicrous. 14 MP on your pocket camera's ultra tiny censor? No thank you. With the current censor technology, 6 MP is enough for most users, especially in pocket cameras / most point and shoot cam. 10 - 12 mp is good enough for the entry to mid level DSLR class.

 

[demonhorde665]

i think this Definitely IS NOT a bill gates sayign "640 k is enough " kind of case my mom got a 6.6 mega pixel back eyars ago when they were new it is a high dollar camera that allows lense swapping , it's image is amazing .. however a more recent main stream fixed lense 7 MG pixel camera i bought .. looks like s--t in comparrison.

 

[Guest]

ok, pro or no pro photographer, high resolutions are difficult to achieve due to following reasons:
1. Lens sharpnes. Only very high end lenses make a 12mp look good at pixel level. None resolve enough detail for 22 mpx (at least I haven't seen such a photo from a 35mm cam)
2. Depth of field. The aperture in the lens controls 2 things: amount of light going to the lens and depth of field. While the first one is obvious, the second means how much of the picture is "in focus". Try taking a portrait at 3.5f at 22mpix and you'll get only 1/5 of the eyelash sharp and the rest will be "blurry" unless you view a smaller (lower resolution) picture, where the entire face seems sharp.
3. Not really an argument for "less pixels", but the anti-alias filters used on most camera sensors lower the actual resolution of the picture. It depends on the individual sensor, but usually you have only half of the pixel count that is advertised. I.e. take 6 mpix photo, resize it to 3 mpix than resize it back to the original 6 and you won't find any actual difference in detail (except a few resizing artifacts).

Now for the more practical side - I don't care how much megapixels the camera has as long as it's enough (lets say 8) because I don't keep any of them larger than 6 mpix. To my eyes the Canon 5DmkII takes excellent pictures quality wise, especially when resized to those 6 mpix 😀 The D700 from Nikon looks even better.
Anyway, know what would be really cool? Light field photography 😀 now those are the pictures I'd like to have in 100 mpix (assuming the computer can handle it

 

[nikrusty]

OF Course 12 MP more than ENUFF! I've got an old Nikon D70 6MP camera and I dont need anything higher. This MP is all BS for most of us. For PRO's where printing is imp, yes then I understand. But us the consumers...please! 4"x6" picture prints, even 3MP is enough.

After a point, lets say when you cross a certain point (which cameras have), you aren't limited by technology in the camera but rather by the technology in the mind. Learn to handle the camera better, simple post processing and you are good to go!

Though I am dissapointed that low light photography is still quite limited especially if the subject isn't still like my silly cat.