Why megapixels dont matter

Also, there is the "agency" issue. People hiring pro photographers want to keep their jobs, so they will consider sometimes foolishly the photographer's equipment in making a hiring decision. If they believe more megapixels is better It also let's me create headshots out of medium shots. I'm in the process of printing for an upcoming exhibit.

I'm only printing 17 X 22 most are full frame.. I just upgraded to an XF and the difference 24 vs 12 is stunning. Soon I will purchase a D for the reasons you have outlined. You forgot to mention what the difference is. I am curious about that. Could you explain and maybe upload some samples? Like getting 2 lenses in 1. When will people learn that the amount of mega pixels has no direct influence on ISO performance.

Within a chosen sensor size the total amount of light gathered stays the same, regardless of the amount of pixels. It seems to me that it's been turning up in discussion on sites all over the place, lately, as the camera manufacturers try to "squeeze the lemon" by introducing more and more models with more and more pixels. And cameras these days are so class to "perfection" that the camera manufacturers will now have one hell of a struggle on their hands, trying to convince their market that "new" is somehow "better".

Part of that struggle is more pixels. And ever more after that. Another part is adding more features to their latest model. But there it is. As far as I'm concerned, the primary reason for "more pixels" only works if you crop the image, or if you make a large enough enlargement print of it.

Commercial photographers have no choices - they are usually told by their clients what is acceptable. If I had a nickel for every time this same Megapixel article has been written over the years I could go buy myself a Hasselblad H6Dc.

WELL other situations mandate mp or more; YOU need to decide for yourself if you use your experience it will become quite clear. Due to moving the camera back eliminating the need to shoot too many stacked shots. Landscape heck you can crop like hell and still have a very large file left to print big.

The other reason and maybe more important is including the discussion of sensor size along with MP this alone giving you 15 stop of dynamic range and 16bit files is worth the ticket! One of the major roles played by all advertising is reassuring us that we made the right buying decision.

My advice is to value the reviews written by consumers with a gigantic grain of salt. More like a Five Star ton of salt. An overwhelming number of positive or negative reviews may indicate a trend, but keep an open mind and read what credentialed professional reviewers have to say, too.

True: Professional Photographers Are Better Than Amateurs There are many, many truly outstanding amateurs just as there are some absolutely lousy professionals.

But by and large, pros are better than hobbyists. After all, there is a natural weeding-out process. Plus, professionals rely on their talents to eat regularly and live under a roof. And even those with only meager skills in the beginning improve with practice. Anyway, amateurs classify themselves as pro or semi-pro to indicate that they deserve the same status as those who earn their daily bread via photography.

You can see the disconnect. Amateur, by definition, means someone who does something because they love it. That best describes me and probably you, too. True: Prime Lenses Are Not Always Better Than Zooms There was a time when primes single focal length lenses shot rings around zooms, metaphorically speaking, just as there was a time when bicycles were faster than automobiles.

Today there are many zoom lenses that are far superior to some primes. How do I know? I use both types quite extensively and compare. Yes, there are some primes that are better than any zoom, and prime lenses often have other beneficial attributes like faster maximum apertures and faster focusing. Just keep in mind that when you choose a prime over a zoom you surrender the ability to change image composition without changing the distance between you and the subject.

First things first: how else do we create sharper, cleaner images? How do we apply a 'quality, not quantity' mindset to imaging technology?

One way is by having larger pixels. Similar to the ability of your eye to dilate and increase in size to gather more light in a dark room, the larger the pixel, the greater the ability to capture light. Therefore, larger pixels lead to better low-light performance or better ISO performance. One way to do this would be to decrease the number of pixels on a single sensor.

However, this is counterintuitive, as the industry has just spent the last fifteen years working toward an affordable high-megapixel count so we can have great enlargements. The other way to make larger pixels is to increase the size of the sensor. Of course, manufacturers are slightly limited, as compact cameras can only hold so large of a chip. Still, these aren't quite the size of a full-frame the common 35mm film size sensor; but they are fast-approaching.

Another way to practice the 'quality, not quantity' ethic is to introduce new sensor technologies. As touched on earlier, the Fuji X-Pro1 features a new sensor technology that helps overall image quality tremendously. Aside from the X-Pro1, every digital camera has something called an AA filter anti-aliasing filter.

This isn't exactly precise, but for the ease of understanding, the AA filter keeps the sensor from getting tricked by straight lines and patterns i. Fuji found a way around that with a new sensor design, allowing for the first camera in its class without an AA filter, which vastly improves image quality. For the first time, nothing but air comes between a lens and the sensor. The new Fuji camera doesn't sport a full-frame sensor, but its APS-C-size sensor is supposed to out-perform some of its larger, full-frame cousins.

New technologies such as Fuji's will help image quality in the future in a new way entirely. Companies like Leica leave the AA filter out completely, but let users deal with moire in the few images that it does come up in. They have yet to introduce a similar technology to Fuji's. Fovean, a company bought by Sigma a few years back, also has an interesting technology.

While Fovean-sensor cameras still use an AA filter, they make use of a different technology to eliminate moire in cameras such as the Sigma Merrill cameras we briefly discussed a while back. We've all seen images taken with point-and-shoot cameras and wrinkled our foreheads as everyone points at Sarah's dress and says, "That's not really the red it was It was fabulous! Sony has a new, much-touted back-lit sensor that's supposed to make colors really pop. Are they more accurate? I'm not entirely sure, as I haven't tested it.

But it likely improves upon color accuracy in consumer-grade cameras at least slightly. Naturally, all of these new technologies rely on getting the image in focus to begin with. The relatively new camera by Lytro, also covered before on our site There's still time to win one here! Need to grab a quick snapshot? Point the Lytro in the direction of your heart's desire and shoot away. With a resolution of 16 million light rays, whatever that means, the Lytro already sounds like something out of science fiction.

But imagine this: what if you could choose your point of focus after the image was taken? No really, what if? It's not science fiction anymore. Lytro images require a special viewer to be able to select focus and see it change on the spot, but click on any part of the image and I guarantee you'll think something is rigged.

This is a journalist's dream come true! When we have cameras such as the Nikon D, just remember: those 36 megapixels are nice, for the first hundred images.

But then they're slow to work with on the camera and on the computer, they take up a ridiculous amount of space. And really -- who really needs all of that? While it's still the best deal Nikon has in that price range, I say wait on the rumored and much-anticipated Nikon D I think that will be the camera we've all been waiting for. In all, 24 megapixels seems to be the prime number. Until hard drive space becomes so cheap and so compact that we really don't care about another ten terabytes of data, 36 megapixels is just too much for the average user -- even for the average pro, save for the few in the fashion industry.

In reality, the megapixel sensor size allows for perfect HD video downsampling at 22 megapixels and great cropping flexibility that even the news industry could find useful time to time, even if 12 megapixels is usually more than enough. Being able to take a portrait of three people and pull out a perfectly sharp 8x10 headshot of one of them is a great feature. But no one needs to pull out an eyelash from that distance…. Most people use monitors that are sub-4K resolution, so all those extra pixels are going to waste.

When it comes to printing photographs, megapixels DO matter. Generally speaking, professional prints are done at around DPI which means each square inch is approximately X pixels in size. So if you had a 24MP camera with a x pixel resolution, you can safely print up to 20 X Not at all.

Using modern imaging software, smart upscaling, and understanding viewing distances, you can produce outstanding prints with lower megapixel cameras. Most people think that billboards have to be printed with massive amounts of resolution. But the truth is that billboards are actually printed at extremely low DPIs. Many times billboards are printed at only or even 50 DPI and they look great!

If you are printing large photos for an art gallery where people are viewing up close, megapixels become more important.