MP's...if less is more, than why do they add more?

Still pretty new here, and still learning copious amounts of information from this forum and from other sites as well. I have come across many posts about the newer bodies having more MP's, however there are just as many, if not more, who swear by thier 450D's and up who say adding more MP's actually creates a hardship as the pixels are smaller and don't come together as well. If this is the case, then why add more megapixels?
I've read posts and seen photo's taken with camera's with 10mp's which are clear and sharp and clean. My T1i is 15, the T2i and 60D are at 18.
I can read google responses and get a feel, but I'm more curious to know the opinions here, as there seems to be an immense amount of experience and knowledge floating around here.

More MP is an issue when you start pixel-peeping at 100%. So instead of looking at the entire photo as a... well, complete photo, people start staring at 1 pixel of color and asking why things do not appear sharp.

All you have to do to see the advantage of more megapixels is to take 2 cameras of the same sensor size but different resolution/pixel count (aps-c vs. aps-c OR ff vs. ff), take identical photos (same subjects/exposure settings, same framing/composition) and then match the resolution of both images. For instance, downsize the larger to match the lower res file... or upsize the lower to match the larger res file. You can then clearly see the advantage of more megapixel in detail retention.

Now... here's the nut-kicker: Do *you* need all that resolution? If you're posting to web, or simply printing no larger than 8x10s... then you most likely won't see a difference between a 12mp image vs. 21mp. And part of that is because of the printer... part of that is because our naked eyes aren't that perceptive (although I'm sure you'll get a handful of people who will chime in and claim they have the vision of a bald eagle).

Marketing is the ability to get a customer to buy a product.

Look at the local Best Buy circular--The MP rating is the first thing displayed, with the implication that more is better.

If they told the consumer that the results will be the same or worse than what they currently own they wouldn't sell many cameras.

for the life of me, i dont understand why the MFG's are uping the mp counts...just plain stupid. How many 20x30 or 30x40 prints have you sold this year

Gear heads are buying this stuff up like crazy. Im going to start buying used low count camera bodies. Its nuts whats going on. Low Count 5dc's are going for 1k now.The 5dc takes fantastic images. I just dont get why people do this. As long as everyone keeps feeding into this insanity, the MFG's will keep putting it out there for consumers to buy. Stop buyng the products and they will stop building cameras with more MP's.

umphotography wrote in post #11782009
for the life of me, i dont understand why the MFG's are uping the mp counts...just plain stupid. How many 20x30 or 30x40 prints have you sold this year

I do.

Megapixels are a number that can be printed on posters. A salesman or website can't sell "image quality" because it's not a number and requires more explanation than can be fit in a sales pitch...in other words, it requires a legitimate education on the consumer's part. HOWEVER, he or the website can easily say "this one has more megapixels so you can print bigger" and an uneducated consumer will buy it. Sale made in 30 seconds.

Yes, it's that simple.

Julian: No I don't need all that resolution, as I can't tell the difference, and for the most part I take photos for me, and I've actually impressed myself (maybe not that hard to do) with what I can accomplish with everything I have. I just didn't understand the hype which Dave touched on. He's spot-on when he says any store selling any camera will lead with the MP's, which makes it appear to be a superior camera, regardless of the other functions it possesses.

I recently had the opportunity to handle a 60D, and fell in love with it. I did some research and found the differences between the T1i and the 60D offer some benefits with the 60D, but when it comes down to IQ, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference with regards to CMOS and the other things that make the IQ what it is. The 60D would be nice to own, and it felt better in my hand and seemed pretty intuitive, lowering the learning curve, especially considering I'm pretty comfortable with the T1i, but I really can't justify owning 2 bodies (don't hit me, i'm new) and spending the money to acquire the parts and pieces I assembled for my T1i, i.e. the grip, extra batteries, those things which don't transfer over to the 60D, when I could spend the money on better glass. Why do we always want the next best thing to the thing we just bought?

With more MP you have more leeway to crop a photo. That's what I like about it.

But you get a benefit in downsizing the image also. Compare a 1MP camera image (1024x768, 1280x1024 maybe) to a 20MP image downsized to the same size.

All that said, I didn't buy the T2i for the MP count. I would have preferred less at the time, but I can't say I still feel that way.

the reason people say that lower is better is its all relative. just look at the 1D3 its only 10 mp, sure they would have wanted to go to 20 + mp, but at the time they couldn't keep the noise levels down with the pixels that close together. here, a few years later the 1D4 comes out and is just fine with more mp.

i think the best use for mp is it gives you crop ability. lets think about this, if you take an image that is 5184 × 3456 (17.9 MP). now if you crop one quarter of the image (half way up and half way to the side) you are only left with only 2591 × 1637 (4.2 MP) thats a big difference. think about if you only started with 10 mp. you would be left with only 2.5, hardly large enough for much of anything.

jay125 wrote in post #11781878
Still pretty new here, and still learning copious amounts of information from this forum and from other sites as well. I have come across many posts about the newer bodies having more MP's, however there are just as many, if not more, who swear by thier 450D's and up who say adding more MP's actually creates a hardship as the pixels are smaller and don't come together as well. If this is the case, then why add more megapixels?

It's not the case. The trend has been higher image quality with higher pixel densities, for any given sensor size. The only notable exception that comes to mind is the 10.1MP Sony sensor used in the Canon S90, S95, G11, and G12 (and maybe other compacts, as well). It had lower resolution, but lower "image-level" noise than the 14.7MP sensor used in earlier incarnations of these cameras. Sony can probably now make sensors the same sizewith 14.7MP with less noise than the 10MP one, as demonstrated by the 1.7 micron pixels in their 10MP Exmor back-lit 1/2.3" sensor.

Most people who think that IQ is going down with increasing pixel density, in general, are victims of illusion.

there are very logical reasons to upgrade a camera body. ISO and the new AF system was a big reason i jumped from a 40d to the 7D. MP count was not a factor at all. I would venture to say 90% of us do not need more mp's. Most of my clients dont order anything larger than a 16x20. We sold two 30x40 prints this season. Most HS seniors order 8x10's, 5x7's and wallets. None of our HS seniors ordered larger than 24x30 this year.

Brides ordered 10x10 and 12x12 albums and 16x20 and 24x30 framed prints. The majority wanted 11x14 framed prints for book shelves and decorating needs. Im sure im not the only guy that has the same type of demand on his business. The 40d and 5Dc was more than sufficient for printing purposes.

To go to 25mp, and im hearing 28mp and 40 something mp sensors on the new cameras just means more revised and updated lens to buy. My old 70-200 f/2.8 works just fine thank you very much. So do my primes. Im going to be the last one to jump on a higher mp count camera and have to buy updated lens.

I would venture to say that none of my clients could tell if their images were taken with a 5dc or a 5Dmk2. Im not going to get the camera mfg's fatter than they already are. I think what really PO's alot of guys is when they have a probelm and find out that the parts to fix something are no longer available on a 3 yr old camera or they send it in for repairs and the costs to fix it exceed what a low count 2 yr old camera costs. I really dont want the camera industry to follow the computer industry's programs of having a 2 yr old product that is outdated or costs more to repair than it would be to buy a new one........But unfortunately thats where its heading.

Go to a PPA trade show or a wppi trade show and listen to all the complaints about this very issue. People are very upset that their 5k 1 series cameras are outdated after 2 yrs of use or the real griping that was heard when the 7d came out. I Know many guys from our associations that we belong to that wont buy a 1 series any longer because of this.

SaxonIV wrote in post #11782147
the reason people say that lower is better is its all relative. just look at the 1D3 its only 10 mp, sure they would have wanted to go to 20 + mp, but at the time they couldn't keep the noise levels down with the pixels that close together. here, a few years later the 1D4 comes out and is just fine with more mp.

Just to expand on this -- camera research and development (R&D) has been very focused on improving technology, including efficiency in collecting light the result has been "cleaner" pixels.

From there, different makers follow somewhat different paths. Canon, who for years led the way in improving low-light/high ISO/low noise performance, has also been using this higher efficiency in increasing the pixel count while not creating noisier images but actually balancing the two enough so that the newer generations get better low noise performance even while increaing the megapixels. If you think about it that's pretty cool.

Nikon has made huge strides in its low noise performance -- they've held back in the big increase in pixel count to do this.

So, yeah, you could say that Nikon shows "less pixels are better" but then something to consider is that if you size a file from the canon 5D2 or the 1Ds3 down to the size of a "less pixels" Nikon body the noise is reduced as well.

So, really, having more pixels doesn't "take" anything from the image.

True that. Another way to approach it: with the "full frame" 5D2, we think "wow, 21 megapixles -- Canon really overdid it with pixels! And yet, in reality, these "full frame" cameras have the same "pixel density" as the old 8 MP 30D, meaning if you cropped down to the size of a "crop" sensor (cutting out over half the image) you would still have an 8MP image which you could get a great print of at a "real" size (like 12x18) that is suitable for framing and displaying.

And, the crop cameras, which have huge resolutions/pixel densities, have not yet reached a "limit" -- from what I've seen, they do not yet out-resolve a good lens shot in a way that optimizes sharpness. Until they do, there is not real "waste" of pixels, and you also have the huge benefit of cropping when you need to.

jay125 wrote in post #11781878
Still pretty new here, and still learning copious amounts of information from this forum and from other sites as well. I have come across many posts about the newer bodies having more MP's, however there are just as many, if not more, who swear by thier 450D's and up who say adding more MP's actually creates a hardship as the pixels are smaller and don't come together as well. If this is the case, then why add more megapixels?
I've read posts and seen photo's taken with camera's with 10mp's which are clear and sharp and clean. My T1i is 15, the T2i and 60D are at 18.
I can read google responses and get a feel, but I'm more curious to know the opinions here, as there seems to be an immense amount of experience and knowledge floating around here.

I own a 50D, 40D and 1D2. I have yet to take a shot where I needed more MP than any of these deliver. The 1D2, at 8MP, has produced images that I have printed at 20 x 30. The ONLY reason I bought the 50D was because my 40D needed a new shutter and I had work to do (this was before I owned the 1D2). I shoot real estate full time and landscapes on the side. The 50D is actually a pain for real estate because the larger images take longer to process. I take all the images off the 50D and resize them down to 2500 x 1667 so they will process faster. From there, the online viewer I have for my clients requires the images be reduced to 1500 x something and that is for the Full Screen Viewer.

The only time I need more resolution is for my landscape/nature stuff. I have some landscape/nature prints that have been printed at 20 x 30 for clients. The 8MP 1D2 does just fine. I also bring my tele with me so if I see a shot I want, I change to the tele so I don't have to crop in. I would rather frame my shot than crop in, when I can. I have heard people talk about the advantages of being able to crop in. To me, it is no different than using a tele. If I can frame my shot with my tele at 8 to 15 MP, I am happy.

Personally, I do not see the 'need' for 21 MP in my shooting. That does not mean there is no need, there is just no need for me. I can see myself getting the 1D3 down the road simply for the better LCD screen.

umphotography wrote in post #11782270
Go to a PPA trade show or a wppi trade show and listen to all the complaints about this very issue. People are very upset that their 5k 1 series cameras are outdated after 2 yrs of use or the real griping that was heard when the 7d came out. I Know many guys from our associations that we belong to that wont buy a 1 series any longer because of this.

yet at the same time the other half of the crowd is demanding more features. Personally i don't know if i agree with some of what you said. If i was going to buy a new camera after 2 or 3 years I would sure want it to be an upgrade from the one i have now.

and your other point about cameras becoming obsolete after 2 or 3 years of use, thats simply not the case. there are tons of people using 5D classics and 1d3.

to me i would never want to upgrade to something like the 1D mkIIN. there is simply no reason to upgrade because the features weren't there. then comes the 1D3 with loads of improvements. much more worth it.

gad, i have so much to learn. i was joe-consumer who believed that more megapixels and more bells and whistles made a better picture. obviously i didn't buy top-end, as i wasn't sure i was going to adapt to dslr easily, but as i said earlier, i have impressed myself, and a few others with what i've been able to do, and i'm loving it!

i know i've learned that having a better body doesn't make a better photo, that there is a science that goes into this. i often wondered if my pictures would be better with a better body,more megapixels, more settings, a better processor, but i've read endless threads which simply state that it's not the body, it's the glass, and the settings, and the technique. but like i said, the one thing that eluded me was the understanding of the importance of the megapixels themselves.
everyone here has given me a greater understanding, and i thank each of you for your input.
this forum is amazing!

SaxonIV wrote in post #11782331
yet at the same time the other half of the crowd is demanding more features.

This half is usually the amateur contingent that really doesn't really know how to use the basic functions--much less the "extra" features that most pro's and advanced hobbyist disable as soon as they get a new body.

Like the "intelligent" viewfinder and 63 zone metering