Why do some people shy away from high megapixel cameras/sensors

On one hand I am hesitant to start this thread but I think the replies may be interesting.

I get it to a degree, but just a small degree. Someone with an older computer that chokes on 30MB-50MB file size per image may have a valid argument. But if your computer is that old you'll probably be upgrading in the not to distant future anyway. And, a new computer that can handle these images can cost far far less than a $3000-$6000 camera body.

I see people say they don't print billboard size images and just don't need 30 megapixel to 50 megapixel images, 20 megapixels is just fine, forever. Okay. But is printing really a primary concern in this Internet era, year 2021 ?

Crop-ability, more and more pixels on the target, high resolution when viewing zoomed, why isn't that priority 1? Now, of course that has to delivered in a great sensor and producing sweet images but today that's happening more and more and more.


Post your opinion or reasons on either side of this argument.

Thx.

Heya,

I keep it small. I print. You can print large from just 10~12MP up to 16MP and it still look great. You don't need 50MP let alone 100MP to print a decent photo. Obviously depends on context, like Billboards and stuff. I have some 15~16MP 30 inch prints of landscapes that are lovely on the wall and don't look like some horrible smear of umsampled low resolution wizardry. Plenty of portraits in the 24~30 inch range from a 12MP file and they are sharp, easy to see eyelashes and eye detail still. So I just have not found a compelling need, for me, to have a denser pixel count on the sensor at this time. And anything good enough for print is way good enough for mobile/internet sharing, where people are spending less than 1 second to view your image, literally, and move on, and they could care less if it's 4k or just a 720p class image frankly. Very, very, very few people browse other people's photos at max resolution on their 4k displays, other than maybe pixel peeping would-be photographers and actual photographers alike, but they're the minority of actual views of the images online.

I would love a 100MP file for the ability to have better sampling for the focal-ratio of the lenses when operating fast (F1.2 to F4) and for the ability to crop and maintain a high density on the subject, in addition to being better sampled. If my day job was photographing birds, or other tiny things with lots of detail, I'd want that 50MP+ sensor for sure, just for this reason alone. Let alone other subject matter, where heavy cropping is a potential.

And finally, why I don't do that, well, I for one deal with video imaging a lot and so my haul for the day will be in the 60Gb to 250Gb range often. Copying this much data over USB, even on modern hardware to an internal NVMe with USB 3.1~3.2 generation portable SSD, etc, is not terribly fast and directly from a SD card is significantly slower even with one of the better ones. Then, just sorting through all that, takes a while. Just previewing that many images, when they're 20MP or more, takes a while even on a good system that is fast. Software often is not optimal, and is the actual bottleneck of the hardware being used. So it matters what you use. But when I think of having 100MP files and go for a birding session or something, the reality is, when I get home and unload 32+ Gigs of images potentially, I'm going to have a lot of anxiety thinking of just browsing through the RAW files and A-B'ing them to see which I move forward with for processing. It would take so long just to start that. Let alone finish processing. That I'd lose interest fast in those big files, despite their benefits, because I'm a slave to convenience, and that's simply not convenient. And again, that's in the context of a good PC for handling this file type and size.

So I'm on both ends. I know I want big 100MP files with tiny pixels because the ability to crop and maintain a better sampling of the focal-ratio to pixel size would be great for recording higher actual resolution (angular resolution) of a subject's light. But, it comes with a heavy compromise in workflow if you're dealing with a significant pile of images, per session, and it's not the capacity of storage if you want to churn out some images quickly, as often times a session isn't just something that can wait in terms of the purpose of the images, and maybe those images need to be available for their purpose within minutes to hours of their creation. That's going to be very, very hard with 100MP files just from a copying standpoint from camera media to PC media, let alone the increased time just to preview and browse the RAWs for which images you want to move forward on, and then the actual processing, and then moving the final images to wherever for their purpose. Time sensitive can matter big time here for this.

Very best,

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I would LOVE to have a super high mega pixel camera, because I would like to print bigger than I print now, and stitching multiple exposures together doesn't work for action shots like birds in flight, or running deer. . I'm getting by with a 30 mega pixel 5D mark 4, which allows me to print adequately detailed images up to 48" across, but I really want to print much larger than that.

BUT .....

I dread having big files that fill up my computer's main (internal) hard drive.

Because of the image storing and editing software I use, external drives don't work efficiently for me, so it is very preferable to have all of my image files right on the main drive. . With a main drive of only 3 TB, this is a huge challenge, and means that I have to spend hours and hours every week going through old images and figuring out which I can delete and which are worth keeping.

Storage space is very limited, and therefore very precious to me, and this is one of the reasons why I haven't considered upgrading to a 45 or 50 MP camera yet. . But I don't like being limited to 48" prints, and would love to be able to print at 72" or even 96" and still have awesome resolution of very fine hair and feather detail in the mammals and birds that I photograph.

I hate it when one good thing comes at the expense of another. . Reality sucks for a dreamer like me who wants the whole world, but isn't willing to give anything up to get it.


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malveaux started the discussion in the right direction. If you print rountinely to 16" x 24", you need 4800 x 7200 (34.56 Megapixels) to have 300 pixels per inch of print. Assuming you were unable to 'move closer' or 'shoot with longer FL', so there was something you needed to crop off to print the 16" x 24" print, you might need to start with a 50Mpixel image and crop to the needed 35 MPixels.

But you do not have to have that in original sensor resolution, to make a very presentable ultralarge print!
I printed a 12" x 60" print based upon 12 MPixels shot by a Canon S120 point & shoot, and I upres'd it until I had sufficient pixels to make a print that size at 300ppi...and unless I told you what I started with, you would never know the original resolution was much lower! Even some very knowledgeable photographers have looked at that print from only a few feet away, and unware of what camera shot the photo, they have never commented, "You should have used a higher res camera!"

Why the resistance to bigger files? If you never printed larger than 13 x 19" and mostly printed to 8x10", you could start with a much smaller Megapixel count and do just fine. Why shoot huge files for every photo, when the intention is NOT to make massive prints?! If every pnoto was 50MP rather than 25MP, your disk storage has to be twice as big, your backup storage has to be twice as big, and if you had to make a copy of the entire disk full of images it would take twice as much time. So why increase your overhead if it is not generally used to full advantage? Ergo the logic behind the choices made by some.

And if you never print, but merely share photos with friends who view the photos on a computer monitor, the highest res monitor today is 4k, 3840 x 2160 pixels, or 7.5 Megapixels. Even when 8k monitors get afforadable, they are still only 7680 x 4320, or 33.2 MPixels. So why bother storing 50 MP for every photo?!

3 things that keep me looking at the R5

1-ability to crop into a file
2- ability to shoot in crop mode and get a 17mb file
3- animal eye focus

other than this....just too many negatives for me to use a high MP sensor

Depending on the sensor used, some people will say there is more noise from the smaller pixels in a high-megapixel sensor. Some people will claim there the smaller pixels will show motion blur more than the larger pixels. Based on the images posted on PoTN, I don't agree with those statements.

More pixels means more data to move- that might affect the number of images captured in a given time or fill up data cards faster.

- More pixels on the same surface area = Higher pixel density = Increased noise ~ More in camera noise reduction?
- More pixels are a poor substitute for properly filling the frame
- More pixels = More disk space use

For a good few years now I've had two camera bodies at my disposal, and more by chance than planning one body has often had a significant megapixel advantage over the other, e.g. 7D / 30D, 5DII / 5DIV, and now R / R6. Admittedly none of these has had the gobsmacking resolution of the 5DS/R bodies, but still in each case one body has offered a fair bit more cropping potential than its counterpart. With only one exception that I can recall, I've never really used that cropping potential.

The exception was some product photography where I had the choice of going slightly into macro territory but having to do a bit of focus stacking, vs. just framing loose and cropping. I knew that if I used the higher MP body the crop would be just fine for the intended image use and I'd spend less time shooting and processing, so that's how it went. Other than that, the MP difference between the bodies rarely if ever enters into my decision over which camera gets used for which shots. The lens that happens to be fitted at the time, AF capability, high ISO behavior, general handling preferences and occasionally max fps: all of those get considered way ahead of megapixels.

Now I know there are plenty of situations where the ability to crop hard could be really useful, but I don't typically find myself in those situations (e.g. I don't currently shoot wildlife, and I rarely shoot macro). Equally, I've heard it said that having significantly higher MP brings more to the table than just enhanced cropability and that may be so, but IMO lighting, framing, timing etc get much higher priority and I'm still very capable of screwing them up.

For me, higher megapixels just mean more used card space, slower transfer to the computer, slower processing, and more storage/backup headaches. I really don't think I need 'em, and if I'm being honest, I don't really want anyone to convince me otherwise

Tom Reichner wrote in post #19213243
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I would LOVE to have a super high mega pixel camera, because I would like to print bigger than I print now, and stitching multiple exposures together doesn't work for action shots like birds in flight, or running deer. . I'm getting by with a 30 mega pixel 5D mark 4, which allows me to print adequately detailed images up to 48" across, but I really want to print much larger than that.

BUT .....

I dread having big files that fill up my computer's main (internal) hard drive.

Because of the image storing and editing software I use, external drives don't work efficiently for me, so it is very preferable to have all of my image files right on the main drive. . With a main drive of only 3 TB, this is a huge challenge, and means that I have to spend hours and hours every week going through old images and figuring out which I can delete and which are worth keeping.

Storage space is very limited, and therefore very precious to me, and this is one of the reasons why I haven't considered upgrading to a 45 or 50 MP camera yet. . But I don't like being limited to 48" prints, and would love to be able to print at 72" or even 96" and still have awesome resolution of very fine hair and feather detail in the mammals and birds that I photograph.

I hate it when one good thing comes at the expense of another. . Reality sucks for a dreamer like me who wants the whole world, but isn't willing to give anything up to get it.


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A USB drive acts just like a main drive, so I am unsure how the software you have couldn't be configured to use the F: vs C: if windows, or a USB mount point on a different system.

A 1TB SSD drive can be found for $100, and would hold about 45,000 CRAW files from the R5 or about 15,000 RAW files. If you store JPG and RAW together, then yes, you may be able to hold about 1/3 or 1/4 of these numbers in images. Much cheaper than to replace an internal drive I think.

Wilt wrote in post #19213245
malveaux started the discussion in the right direction. If you print rountinely to 16" x 24", you need 4800 x 7200 (34.56 Megapixels) to have 300 pixels per inch of print. Assuming you were unable to 'move closer' or 'shoot with longer FL', so there was something you needed to crop off to print the 16" x 24" print, you might need to start with a 50Mpixel image and crop to the needed 35 MPixels.

But you do not have to have that in original sensor resolution, to make a very presentable ultralarge print!
I printed a 12" x 60" print based upon 12 MPixels shot by a Canon S120 point & shoot, and I upres'd it until I had sufficient pixels to make a print that size at 300ppi...and unless I told you what I started with, you would never know the original resolution was much lower! Even some very knowledgeable photographers have looked at that print from only a few feet away, and unware of what camera shot the photo, they have never commented, "You should have used a higher res camera!"

Why the resistance to bigger files? If you never printed larger than 13 x 19" and mostly printed to 8x10", you could start with a much smaller Megapixel count and do just fine. Why shoot huge files for every photo, when the intention is NOT to make massive prints?! If every pnoto was 50MP rather than 25MP, your disk storage has to be twice as big, your backup storage has to be twice as big, and if you had to make a copy of the entire disk full of images it would take twice as much time. So why increase your overhead if it is not generally used to full advantage? Ergo the logic behind the choices made by some.

And if you never print, but merely share photos with friends who view the photos on a computer monitor, the highest res monitor today is 4k, 3840 x 2160 pixels, or 7.5 Megapixels. Even when 8k monitors get afforadable, they are still only 7680 x 4320, or 33.2 MPixels. So why bother storing 50 MP for every photo?!

It's better to have and not need it, then to want and not have it. You can always resize your images down or set up the camera to resize and store smaller JPGs if so desired. To go the other way is always detrimental to the final IQ of the images.

umphotography wrote in post #19213251
3 things that keep me looking at the R5

1-ability to crop into a file
2- ability to shoot in crop mode and get a 17mb file
3- animal eye focus

other than this....just too many negatives for me to use a high MP sensor

A few other pros...

- More detail is captured with a higher resolution sensor
- Better noise management from a larger file that is later resized down
- If you have to do any photoshopping of things (like removing something that detracts, etc), much better final results with a higher resolution file.

I think Canon did themselves a disservice by removing the ability to control the raw sizes that can be recorded. No more Mraw or Sraw, etc...

I would love an R5 but be able to decide on an event by event basis, what my raw file sizes are like on the older cameras. If I know I am just doing a shoot for smaller results, I wouldn't waste the bandwidth by using a full raw, but would choose a smaller raw. No such choices on the R5 or R6....

If this was an available option, I would always choose a high resolution same sized sensor over a lower resolution same sized sensor every time. ISO noise is so well controlled these days, it just isn't that big an issue. File storage options are also very cheap these days. Other than DPP being a memory hog with large raw files, I see no real downside. My i7 laptop cannot run DPP on high resolution raws like the R5, it just hangs up. It isn't a well written piece of software using processor or memory properly.

umphotography wrote in post #19213251
3 things that keep me looking at the R5

1-ability to crop into a file
2- ability to shoot in crop mode and get a 17mb file
3- animal eye focus

other than this....just too many negatives for me to use a high MP sensor

The three things that have kept me from owning an R5
1. RF 15-35 f/4 doesn't exist and I do not want to pay for the f/2.8
2. The RF 100-500 I cannot locate and I need that.
3. The EF-RF converter cannot be found.

So, I went into the 5d Mk IV waters instead and maybe in a couple of years the upset world economy may settle down and these items will be available with the new and improved R5 Mk II??

Edit to add: With respect to umphotography comments. Not trying to down him, Just my aggravation about unavailable systems.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #19213268
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A USB drive acts just like a main drive, so I am unsure how the software you have couldn't be configured to use the F: vs C: if windows, or a USB mount point on a different system.
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As an iMac user, I greatly prefer to use Apple's program, "Photos", as my:

1: . RAW converter

2: . for all of my archiving

3: . almost all of my image editing.

The thing about Photos that is different from Lightroom or Photoshop or whatever is that all of the image files reside right in the program itself, whereas programs like LR and PS use "directories" to access image files that are stored elsewhere on the computer.

I think that the program "Photos" can be loaded on to an external drive, along with my entire image library, but the Apple Support folks told me that if I did that, it could not also be on my main (internal) drive. . They said that Photos, along with all of my archives, could only "live" in one place - EITHER on an external drive, OR on the main drive.

I do not have the computer acumen to attempt to move my entire image library and the program from the main (internal) drive to an external drive. . Nor do I trust myself to do so. Keep in mind that when I bought Photoshop Elements several years ago, it took hours for me to figure out how to download the program onto my computer. . And whenever I get a message saying that I have to update Adobe Flash Player, it takes me hours and hours, and a call to Apple Support, to figure out how to do that.

If you had my extremely limited know-how and skills, and a propensity toward confusion and panic when it comes to anything computer-related, would you trust yourself to move your life's work from one drive to another?

So I think that you are correct when you say that things COULD be configured to use an external drive the way my main drive is now being used, but getting this to happen, well, that is unlike for me to do because of what I am like when it comes to computer stuff. . We all have personal limitations, and I feel mine rather acutely.

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I can't really qualify the following observations as there are too many variables for me to isolate. It seems as if as I increase the mp size (D200 12mp, D800 36mp, D850 46mp) the more I see finer distortion in my pictures. I know some have been to do with focus, some vibration, some exposure. Increasing the quality of my lenses have been a must. Adding Topez to my workflow helps. A steadier tripod and going as far as using Mup have also helped.

Now maybe this has to do with expectations of the camera's performance as well. I have had to upgrade a lot of gear to realize what I was expecting from the D850.