5 ms·

Canon drops out of the megapixel race

52 points by Flemlord 17y ago

CWuestefeld 17y ago
This is good news, the resolutions don't need to be higher (or even as high as they already are) for any output device -- monitor or printer -- that any consumer will have. But it seems to me like Canon's ceasefire isn't unilateral. I get the idea that other manufacturers aren't clawing for pixels either. IMHO, what camera manufacturers need to focus on instead (pun intended) is eliminating noise. Improving the dynamic range would be nice too, but probably requires much more development of the sensors.
rimantas 17y ago
Finally. Let's hope now the more meaningful race for quality high-ISO images will gain momentum.
mustpax 17y ago
As a smarter man than myself once said: "Trying to judge digital cameras by their megapixels, is like trying to judge cars based on the maximum speed shown on the speedometer." Apart from increased noise smaller sensors are a lot less versatile. It's hard to keep the depth-of-field shallow to draw attention to the subject. The smaller the sensor, the deeper the depth of field.
sophacles 17y ago
Hopefully this will lead to a better metric for digital cameras... like the: Low-light ISO eQuivelency Rating (LIQR), in which a higher number means it takes better pictures at parties, the pub, etc. :) In seriousness, this is cool it's about time a digital camera manufacturer realized that I don't want to be a lighting expert when taking snapshots.
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
1080p is only 2 megapixels, but even the 10MP cameras aren't producing the same color depth as a quality 1080p video source.
- jacobolus 17y ago
  What do you mean by “color depth”, and what do you mean by “quality”? A lot of consumer-level digital cameras these days have pretty wide gamuts and accurate color capture.
e40 17y ago
My Canon D30 has 3.25 MP. I have an L lens, and I've blown up photos to 20x30 with no problem. I really, really hope this signals an end to the pixel arms race.
- jeroen 17y ago
  I loved my D30 and we made some very nice photographs together. Only for speed and focus points did I switch to a 10D. All the extra MPs do is eat up disk space.
- ShabbyDoo 17y ago
  >I've blown up photos to 20x30 with no problem. I'm sure they looked decent, but would they have looked better with more pixels? I think a 3MP image @ 20x30 with any reasonable printing density requires more data than your camera captures.
DannoHung 17y ago
On the one hand, this is all true. On the other hand, if you're shooting in good lighting conditions, a stupid megapixel count lets you do awesome crops.
- mustpax 17y ago
  While I agree with that, it's not just the megapixels that allow you to do that. In my experience the lens matters more if you want to magnify the detail in the picture, or crop it really tight. The sensor just gives you an upper bound, it cannot create optical information that is not there. As someone who has done old-school film photography, I've often seen the stark difference in detail within a single roll of film based on the lens quality. Chances are you have a decent enough lens that most of your megapixels are not going to waste, but most >10MP cameras I've seen in the market don't sport the kind of lenses that justify the additional MP. It's really a marketing gimmick.
  - DannoHung 17y ago
    I guess that's true... I have bought some budget priced glass.
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    I've recently thought about getting a digital SLR to take my photography up a notch (or several). My brother is a semi-pro nature photography, so I naturally asked him to give me some pointers. The biggest, most salient point he made was: screw the body, spend all your money on lens. The body is cheap, and even low-end stuff produces pretty great results in combination with a good lens. If you run out of headroom with the body, it is also likely the cheapest component to replace.
  - nimrody 17y ago
    Making a good lens for these small sensor cameras is much easier compared to film or even APSC sized sensors (most DSLRs)
- Tamerlin 17y ago
  1) sensors that small are very noise prone. 2) 2 megapixels doesn't translate to a significant difference in the size of the final image -- remember it's an area, therefore to double the size of the image, you need 4x the megapixels -- so this probably only amounts to a difference of a couple of hundred pixels in each dimension, not enough to make a significant difference in how much cropping you can do 3) larger photosites lead to lower noise So odds are the lower resolution sensor will lead to better image quality at any chosen ISO, even if every other factor remains unchanged, including the quality of the lens. While it's true that a good lens matters more than a few megapixels, it's also true that cameras with tiny sensors don't make images that print well due to noise.
tjr 17y ago
Did Canon actually state that they are "dropping out of the megapixel race", or did they just release a new camera with a lower-than-expected megapixel count and the author is inferring their intent? (Not that I object, as 10MP is plenty for most uses....)
- three14 17y ago
  A lower megapixel count than the previous version of the same camera, so it's a pretty explicit signal.
muon 17y ago
It's wise to invest in good quality lens than higher mega pixels. Finally, how many of us are going to make those huge prints?
ShabbyDoo 17y ago
I have seen photos taken with a G10 at an arena concert by a professional photographer (who didn't want to take in her expensive gear). At ISO 1600, they were a grainy mess.
- dagw 17y ago
  I have seen photos taken with the G10 at ISO 80 that can rival the most expensive SLRs. It's all about knowing your kit and working within its limitations.
  - ShabbyDoo 17y ago
    I agree that the G10 is a good camera overall, but she would have been happier with less resolution and lower noise. For most people, the design trade-offs are non-optimal.
jnovek 17y ago
I'm a rangefinder guy, so I shoot film. I'm still tapping my foot waiting for a small digital, interchangeable lens kit to come out that isn't a giant DSLR. My crummy eyes can't focus anything TTL.
- riffic 17y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Four_Thirds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Four_Thirds
- hristov 17y ago
  It has already come out. It is called the Olympus EP-1.
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    I'm shopping for something similar, and looked at the EP-1. It's got a lot going for it, but also has a lot of missing bits that may annoy the enthusiast: - Lack of fast, good AF. Word on the street is that this thing takes up to 2 seconds to focus. That's dog slow, and on par with point & clicks, not DSLR-level performance (or anything approximating it). - No viewfinder, and a highly substandard LCD. So you take away the viewfinder in the interests of compactness, fine, but in that case shouldn't you at least throw in a fairly standard LCD? (900K+ dots) After all, the LCD is now the user's only way of composing the shot. But no, the LCD on the EP-1 is a paltry 200K+ dots. - No built-in flash, but that's (somewhat) minor. I'm excited about the possibilities of the Micro-four-thirds format, but I don't think the EP-1 is going to be the game changer. Though it looks incredible. Damn people and their sexy electronics :(
    - hristov 17y ago
      I would not trust the "word on the street" about auto-focus. And by "word on the street" you probably mean "word on the internet". There is a lot of misinformation out there, because most enthusiasts have significant investments in other interchangeable lens systems and would be rather unhappy if a new system took off. If you are worried about AF speed, go to a store and give it a try. It's probably too slow for serious sport photography but I guarantee you it will be faster than two seconds. Regarding the screen, the resolution is probably lower to make it brighter. Higher resolution often reduces brightness (it requires more non transparent and semi transparent elements), so they probably could not get the 900k screen bright enough. Again the only way to check if it is a show stopper is to try it. BTW I have not tried it myself, but that is because I cannot afford it right now and am afraid that if I try it I will buy it.
yardie 17y ago
About time. I had to give my wife a lesson on why not to pay attention to the checklist on the front of the box. She bought a supposedly 8MP P&S. Which had 2x the resolution of my aging but still fantastic Olympus. Every shoot taken with it looked like it had been smeared in blue grease. And the box didn't have any of the information I considered important; 2GB card, 8MP res., avi capture are really useless benchmarks for a camera. Things you should be looking for are a fat sensor (1/3" in my case), very low f-stop, high ISO, and resolution. You can do a lot of things with high resolution except fix a bad photo. The first three things means you'll get the pass capture the device can give you.

52 points by Flemlord 17y ago

This is good news, the resolutions don't need to be higher (or even as high as they already are) for any output device -- monitor or printer -- that any consumer will have. But it seems to me like Canon's ceasefire isn't unilateral. I get the idea that other manufacturers aren't clawing for pixels either. IMHO, what camera manufacturers need to focus on instead (pun intended) is eliminating noise. Improving the dynamic range would be nice too, but probably requires much more development of the sensors.

rimantas 17y ago

Finally. Let's hope now the more meaningful race for quality high-ISO images will gain momentum.

mustpax 17y ago

As a smarter man than myself once said: "Trying to judge digital cameras by their megapixels, is like trying to judge cars based on the maximum speed shown on the speedometer." Apart from increased noise smaller sensors are a lot less versatile. It's hard to keep the depth-of-field shallow to draw attention to the subject. The smaller the sensor, the deeper the depth of field.

sophacles 17y ago

Hopefully this will lead to a better metric for digital cameras... like the: Low-light ISO eQuivelency Rating (LIQR), in which a higher number means it takes better pictures at parties, the pub, etc. :) In seriousness, this is cool it's about time a digital camera manufacturer realized that I don't want to be a lighting expert when taking snapshots.

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

1080p is only 2 megapixels, but even the 10MP cameras aren't producing the same color depth as a quality 1080p video source.

jacobolus 17y ago
What do you mean by “color depth”, and what do you mean by “quality”? A lot of consumer-level digital cameras these days have pretty wide gamuts and accurate color capture.

e40 17y ago

My Canon D30 has 3.25 MP. I have an L lens, and I've blown up photos to 20x30 with no problem. I really, really hope this signals an end to the pixel arms race.

jeroen 17y ago
I loved my D30 and we made some very nice photographs together. Only for speed and focus points did I switch to a 10D. All the extra MPs do is eat up disk space.
ShabbyDoo 17y ago
>I've blown up photos to 20x30 with no problem. I'm sure they looked decent, but would they have looked better with more pixels? I think a 3MP image @ 20x30 with any reasonable printing density requires more data than your camera captures.

DannoHung 17y ago

On the one hand, this is all true. On the other hand, if you're shooting in good lighting conditions, a stupid megapixel count lets you do awesome crops.

mustpax 17y ago
While I agree with that, it's not just the megapixels that allow you to do that. In my experience the lens matters more if you want to magnify the detail in the picture, or crop it really tight. The sensor just gives you an upper bound, it cannot create optical information that is not there. As someone who has done old-school film photography, I've often seen the stark difference in detail within a single roll of film based on the lens quality. Chances are you have a decent enough lens that most of your megapixels are not going to waste, but most >10MP cameras I've seen in the market don't sport the kind of lenses that justify the additional MP. It's really a marketing gimmick.
- DannoHung 17y ago
  I guess that's true... I have bought some budget priced glass.
- potatolicious 17y ago
  I've recently thought about getting a digital SLR to take my photography up a notch (or several). My brother is a semi-pro nature photography, so I naturally asked him to give me some pointers. The biggest, most salient point he made was: screw the body, spend all your money on lens. The body is cheap, and even low-end stuff produces pretty great results in combination with a good lens. If you run out of headroom with the body, it is also likely the cheapest component to replace.
- nimrody 17y ago
  Making a good lens for these small sensor cameras is much easier compared to film or even APSC sized sensors (most DSLRs)
Tamerlin 17y ago
1) sensors that small are very noise prone. 2) 2 megapixels doesn't translate to a significant difference in the size of the final image -- remember it's an area, therefore to double the size of the image, you need 4x the megapixels -- so this probably only amounts to a difference of a couple of hundred pixels in each dimension, not enough to make a significant difference in how much cropping you can do 3) larger photosites lead to lower noise So odds are the lower resolution sensor will lead to better image quality at any chosen ISO, even if every other factor remains unchanged, including the quality of the lens. While it's true that a good lens matters more than a few megapixels, it's also true that cameras with tiny sensors don't make images that print well due to noise.

tjr 17y ago

Did Canon actually state that they are "dropping out of the megapixel race", or did they just release a new camera with a lower-than-expected megapixel count and the author is inferring their intent? (Not that I object, as 10MP is plenty for most uses....)

three14 17y ago
A lower megapixel count than the previous version of the same camera, so it's a pretty explicit signal.

muon 17y ago

It's wise to invest in good quality lens than higher mega pixels. Finally, how many of us are going to make those huge prints?

ShabbyDoo 17y ago

I have seen photos taken with a G10 at an arena concert by a professional photographer (who didn't want to take in her expensive gear). At ISO 1600, they were a grainy mess.

dagw 17y ago
I have seen photos taken with the G10 at ISO 80 that can rival the most expensive SLRs. It's all about knowing your kit and working within its limitations.
- ShabbyDoo 17y ago
  I agree that the G10 is a good camera overall, but she would have been happier with less resolution and lower noise. For most people, the design trade-offs are non-optimal.

jnovek 17y ago

I'm a rangefinder guy, so I shoot film. I'm still tapping my foot waiting for a small digital, interchangeable lens kit to come out that isn't a giant DSLR. My crummy eyes can't focus anything TTL.

riffic 17y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Four_Thirds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Four_Thirds
hristov 17y ago
It has already come out. It is called the Olympus EP-1.
- potatolicious 17y ago
  I'm shopping for something similar, and looked at the EP-1. It's got a lot going for it, but also has a lot of missing bits that may annoy the enthusiast: - Lack of fast, good AF. Word on the street is that this thing takes up to 2 seconds to focus. That's dog slow, and on par with point & clicks, not DSLR-level performance (or anything approximating it). - No viewfinder, and a highly substandard LCD. So you take away the viewfinder in the interests of compactness, fine, but in that case shouldn't you at least throw in a fairly standard LCD? (900K+ dots) After all, the LCD is now the user's only way of composing the shot. But no, the LCD on the EP-1 is a paltry 200K+ dots. - No built-in flash, but that's (somewhat) minor. I'm excited about the possibilities of the Micro-four-thirds format, but I don't think the EP-1 is going to be the game changer. Though it looks incredible. Damn people and their sexy electronics :(
  - hristov 17y ago
    I would not trust the "word on the street" about auto-focus. And by "word on the street" you probably mean "word on the internet". There is a lot of misinformation out there, because most enthusiasts have significant investments in other interchangeable lens systems and would be rather unhappy if a new system took off. If you are worried about AF speed, go to a store and give it a try. It's probably too slow for serious sport photography but I guarantee you it will be faster than two seconds. Regarding the screen, the resolution is probably lower to make it brighter. Higher resolution often reduces brightness (it requires more non transparent and semi transparent elements), so they probably could not get the 900k screen bright enough. Again the only way to check if it is a show stopper is to try it. BTW I have not tried it myself, but that is because I cannot afford it right now and am afraid that if I try it I will buy it.

yardie 17y ago

About time. I had to give my wife a lesson on why not to pay attention to the checklist on the front of the box. She bought a supposedly 8MP P&S. Which had 2x the resolution of my aging but still fantastic Olympus. Every shoot taken with it looked like it had been smeared in blue grease. And the box didn't have any of the information I considered important; 2GB card, 8MP res., avi capture are really useless benchmarks for a camera. Things you should be looking for are a fat sensor (1/3" in my case), very low f-stop, high ISO, and resolution. You can do a lot of things with high resolution except fix a bad photo. The first three things means you'll get the pass capture the device can give you.