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What to Fight Over After Megapixels?
NewScientist has a quick look at where the digital image crowd is headed now that the megapixel wars are drawing to a close. Looks like an emphasis on low-light performance and color accuracy in addition to fun software tools are the new hotness. "For years, consumers have been sold digital cameras largely on the basis of one number - the megapixels crammed onto its image sensor. But recently an industry bigwig admitted that squeezing in ever more resolution has become meaningless. Akira Watanabe, head of Olympus' SLR planning department, said that 12 megapixels is plenty for most photography purposes and that his company will henceforth be focusing on improving color accuracy and low-light performance."
The megapixel wars may be drawing to a close, but they sure aren't doing it at 12 mp. Canon's 50D prvides 15mp in an APS-C sensor size, which is pretty tight, but users are achieving excellent results at that density... it just takes decent lenses, of which there are plenty in the Canon line.
15mp in APS-C format is a square sensel of about 4.6 m.
Canon's 5DmkII, on the other hand, is a full frame sensor, and it sports a whopping 21 mp... and does so by only going to 6.4 m, so there's quite a bit of room left there.
The 50D's got some noise issues, but the 5DmkII is a quiet design and they've clearly got some room to go.
So I think Olympus is actually saying that they can't, or don't want to, compete in the remaining space in the megapixel wars; withdrawal, if you will, rather than an actual end.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That not surprising. Look at the Amazon reviews for any camera with a huge megapixel count, like the Canon G-10, and you'll see dozens of people complaining that, yes, the megapixels are nice, but the sensor may be noisy or the colours may be off. Too bad the industry didn't give more attention to accuracy earlier. I'd be happy to have a mere 7 megapixels if noise is seriously minimized.
"12 megapixels should be enough for anybody." - Akira Watanabe
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I want the following from a digital camera...
1. Small phyiscal size (I wanna slip it in my pocket).
2. Good image quality
3. Good telephoto lens.
4. ???
5. Profit (sorry, couldn't resist)
Currently I use a Canon G9, but I'm sure they can do better!
To make the cameras of the future, you gotta have three things (any threebrain fans out there?): 1. HDR - floating point color channels to allow the adjustment of exposure in post. 2. Depth channel - either with stereoscopic setup or range finder. Allows depth of field focus in post. 3. Optical SVG - the ultimate! Forget pixels. Have cameras sketch accurate SVGs of a scene with the ability to show or print at any resolution.
I suspect there will be a need for quite some time, for some purposes, to keep increasing the resolution. Usage (at least in some subset of people) will adapt and innovate. After all, if all the digital camera was for was to replace those 4x6 prints you all have in your photo albums, 3 MP would have been the end of it.
Olympus needs to focus on battery life. With flash on, my Olympus camera gets about three shots per charge on a new battery.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
- Lower noise figures at various resolutions/speeds.
- Better performance in low light (i.e. indoors without flash, to avoid that overexposed-lightbulb-head look in so many of my snaps).
- Longer exposures
Sean Ellis
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The accuracy of the human eye is such that you can only distinguish ~4000 pixels in a line while still being able to see the whole picture. 4000x4000=16 megapixels for a square image, or 12 megapixels for a 4:3 aspect ratio picture. Having more resolution than that is only useful if you are going to take part of the image and blow it up or otherwise focus on just a part of the image. So yes, once they achieve 12 megapixels CCDs, they should focus on something else, like speed for example. I have several pictures of "the couch where my daughter was a second ago" because my Nikon Coolpix inserts a huge delay between the time I push the button and the time the picture is actually recorded. Color accuracy would be nice too, or perhaps doing something about the graininess the CCDs seem to exhibit in low light conditions.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
god damnit, I'm tired of having to risk getting arrested just to get a blurry up-skirt shot, I want to be able to have my camera see through anything!
Monstar L
This is coming from Olympus so they should sure as hell be focussing on low light performance. Simply because it's the weakness of the smaller 4/3 format they use. I expect that Cannon and Nikkon will have other priorities. However, I agree; at this point more megapixels is meaningless.
Low light performance has been a major sticking point for me on lots of digital cameras. My old 3.3 Megapixel Panasonic that wrote to LS-120's has outperformed most of the camera's that have replaced it in nearly every area except for Megapixels.
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As was the case in the 35mm film days, the cameras that are best are the ones with the good lenses and good auto focus mechanisms. Secondary are good light meters. The pixel density is definitely high enough at 12M. At the start of digital photography, the CCD was definitely the primary bottleneck for picture quality. But those days are definitively over.
The single most important part of any camera is the lens. My old Cannon is better with 2.2MP than the modern 'snapshot machines' with up to 16MP. Its got a decent lens, no snapshot thing or phone, for that matter does.
Optical SVG - the ultimate! Forget pixels. Have cameras sketch accurate SVGs of a scene with the ability to show or print at any resolution.
Good luck with that one. It's a lot harder than it sounds. Try tracing a simple 2-color bitmap in Inkscape sometime and zoom in real close. Now try tracing a full-color, full page photograph in the maximum number of colors possible.
Oh, BTW, hope you got lots of RAM and time to wait....
My blog
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/
http://www-bcs.mit.edu/people/jyawang/demos/plenoptic/plenoptic.html
I have a Canon Powershot A95. It's getting long in the tooth and is due for replacement whenever I can afford something better*.... over its service life, I've had one GLARING problem with it - with the flash off, under the camera's idea of low-light conditions, I have to take five, ten, two dozen pictures using various auto-mode settings to get something that's even moderately focused. It's fine for broad daylight outdoors, but indoors or starting at dusk outside, it's extremely frustrating to use.
Half that is, admittedly, dumbassery on my part. The other half has hopefully been fixed with newer camera technology.
I'd like to take one picture, in focus, and move on. Failing that, I'd like the response time to be fast enough that I can switch through modes and take pictures of moving objects while they're still in range!
* I can get "better" in almost every respect for much less than I paid for the A95. But if I want the Killer Feature - the flippy LCD screen - then a new camera is going to cost me about the same as the old one ($300+).
Oh yeah - 4. Liquid cooling in every camera. Don't bump the radiator with your finger when you take those pictures.
I thought nobody would need anything better than a 0.64 megapixel camera.
"Fighting over megapixels" -- for someone who knows basics of photography, this is like fighting over which laptop comes with more preinstalled software tools, or number of features a text editor has. Like, there is *some* point of the discussion up to a certain level, and not much after that, and definitely nowadays this is not the most important factor for a decision which laptop to buy. The "megapixel wars" have ceased a long, long time ago in most of photography-related forums.
Except for professionals, 10MP and more is something like audiophily. And definitely an overkill for a pocket camera, where you are much more likely to hit the resolution boundary of the optical system itself (this is why professional cameras tend to be rather large...). Even 3MP (which was standard years ago) is sufficient for many purposes (given a high quality of the lens).
For photographers, the main fetish was and remains The Lens. A good lens may cost an order of magnitude more than your camera body. In the times of analog film, people often referred to the camera body as "film box", disrespecting its features and extras, compared to the importance of selecting the right lens.
I think the whole "megapixel war" issue started because photography became very popular with digital cameras, however people were not yet aware of the more important points -- and started to project what they knew about image quality (i.e. resolution) to what cameras they buy.
Now the knowledge starts to slowly infiltrate the "casual" photographer community. Having a few cameras, they start to notice other things: quality of the lens, haptics (how the camera "feels" in your hands), stabiliser, reaction time (time between pressing the button and the camera making the photo) etc.
j.
Statement that N megapixels ought to be enough is no different than a similar one made by a certain Mr. Gates a while ago. Shortsightedness at its best.
Having said that, I've never been a megapixel chaser. Factors such as lens quality, maximum aperture and others are of much bigger importance for me. When it comes to sensors specifically, I would always trade one with 15Mp for another which can shoot at ISO6400 with less noise, for example.
Another indication that megapixel wars no longer make much sense is the fact that nowadays even mobile phones compete with SLRs on megapixel scale. But do they really outperform SLRs in general?
Every digital camera I've ever used has had a 100+ ms delay between pressing the shutter button and the picture actually being taken. This sucks compared to the "instant" response of a circa 1980 SLR (well, actually compared to every film camera ever made).
I don't need more pixels--give me a camera that's usable.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Let's see. 12 megapixels is 4000x3000. Yeah I'd say that's high enough. It's equivalent to what film can do unless you're using a very fine grain.
Now they just need to bring the price down where I can afford it - a $50 35mm camera is still the cheaper option.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Agreed (at least, I think I do since I don't know what any of that means), but the camera has to do all of it without the user ever knowing. That will be the camera of the future.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Pros and serious hobbyists aside, who even needs 12 or 16MP? These are going to get printed at 4x6 or 5x7 (people don't keep albums of 10x12s. Who wants to manage 10MB+ files? It's simply not needed.
When i last upgraded my camera, the megapixels didnt change much, thats not what i was interested it, but it went from a 3X to a 12X optical zoom, there is alot of stuff out there that is worth taking a picture of, but is too far away to get a decent picture of, obviously if you go much higher you are going to need a tripod, or better image stabalisation, so i wonder how long before people want better zooms for their holiday and wildlife snaps, with better image stabalisation to support it
For me the biggest problem in pt-and-shoots, and in DSLRs to a lesser extent, is not lack of megapixels, but the lack of performance in low-light. The latest D-SLRs from Canon and Nikon, the higher-end ones (not the entry level SLRs) are getting much better, but for the most part, low-light performance of the current CCDs sucks.
I'd like to see more dynamic range being captured and also outside visible spectrum. You could do some really cool stuff with being able to merge in stuff from an infrared channel (would be great for smoothing skin tones for example.) Also I'd like to see something akin to Sony's panshot mode, but implemented at a larger resolution (Sony's images top out at 1000 pixels of vertical resolution.)
"3. Optical SVG - the ultimate! Forget pixels. Have cameras sketch accurate SVGs of a scene with the ability to show or print at any resolution."
It's a fascinating idea. But where are you going to get enough imps to do the drawing these days?
That's as good as anything to get a 1-data-point comparison on camera sensors. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range)
Real -quality- factors, such as low light performance, color accuracy, etc, are a lot harder to quantify.
dave
My last camera was purely chosen for CHDK support. This means scripting and extra features on a Canon camera. I can imagine that more people want to do more than the basic press button and shoot, ok at least geeks and the industrial sector likes it.
Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
My dad can beat up your dad.....
After people get tired of that, I expect an uptick in the number of "Double-Dog-Uber-Dares"
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Digital cameras largely carry over the conventions of film, such as ISO film speed. But these notions that higher speed "film" equals noise/grain are going out the window, as newer cameras are able to achiever clean pictures that were impossible to do with film.
Similar notions go that exposure is rated the same way that film cameras did, such as stops above/below aperature+shutter speed.
Suppose if Digital cameras were invented without these notions of what film cameras did. Wouldn't there be a better way to measure aperature, shutter speed, exposure, film speed, etc than the conventions that we have now? Couldn't digital cameras redesign the scales so that they aren't measured in fractions of seconds or tenths of a decimal?
I want my camera to do what my brain does, in a high dynamic range setting: automatic tone mapping, so I can see both the bright parts (~sky) and the dark parts (~people) simultaneously and clearly, from a single shot. I've been waiting for this to be built into digital cameras for years, and am surprised it's still not there.
Camera-designer people in camera-designer land: How about having the camera snap two photos immediately back-to-back (...or save off a copy of the data during mid-shutter?), a quick one (for the foreground), and then a longer one (~4-16X) for the background, and then have some software that intelligently lerps between the two (variably at each pixel) and saves the final image.
My suspicion is that the only reason this hasn't already been done is because it might require some kind of flood-filling and, hence, be prone to error. (Any image misalignment, however, could be mostly remedied via a very fast, 8x8-pixel alignment performed at half-dozen locations on the screen.)
With this, the only photos my grandma could mess up would be due to motion blur, which (I believe) is just a physical limitation of lens size anyway.
I CANNOT believe the lack of foresight of those writing this article. They might as well say that 640k is enough for anyone. Just look at this graph. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hendys_Law.jpg see how well the points fit on teh logarithmic graph. I have no idea why anyone would ever say such a ridiculous statement which will inevitably be proven wrong. The megapixel march continues. I can't believe anyone these day would say that, knowing that the rate of progress in virtually all areas of computing is exponential.
The cameras need built in AIs that talk to you.
"Beep! This image is framed poorly."
"Beep! The subject requires better lighting."
"Beep! The subject needs clothes. Seriously. This is not porn material."
"Beep! The current angle will not sufficiently capture the dark and depressive mood for which you were aiming. I have wirelessly ordered you some Zoloft."
"Beep! Wow, that's just... really... may I suggest a different hobby?"
"Beep! This camera will now self destruct to save your family, friends and the world in general from your mind numbingly boring vacation photography. You have 30 seconds to reach minimum safe distance."
Now, certainly I'm not a professional photographer, and I don't ever print pictures on dead tree, so my primary concern is how pictures look on screen. And if the camera's lowest setting is 3200x2400, I end up throwing away most of that information anyway so that it fits on the screen.
Of course, I do keep the original too for down the road when we're using 320,000 by 200,000 pixel screens.
As someone who shoots weddings as a side business, I don't need any more megapixels. For me, it's all about low-light performance. I'd like to be able to shoot in a dim church without having to resort to flash. I currently shoot a Nikon D200, which is 10 megapixels. That is plenty for everything I do, even enlargements. I'm saving up for a D700 which has incredible low-light performance. I've seen shots taken with the D700 (or D3, which has the same sensor) at absurd ISOs like 3200 or 6400 that have as much noise as my D200 has at ISO 800.
More megapixels actually introduces the (relatively small) problem of storage. More megapixels = larger filesize = I need to buy more compact flash cards and long-term storage. But, this isn't a huge problem since storage is relatively inexpensive.
I got a digital camera when I was going on a trip and didn't really have any experience with one before that.
One thing that struck me is how incredibly better the human eye handles brightness than a not very cheap camera. Out in the sun, for the most part it'd be no problem. But in intense sun, white t-shirts nearly always came out as overexposed, as the sensor reached its limit. The result is a pure white blotch on the image. And inside a building, in normal light, the image often came out all grainy and required a flash to get anything decent.
My priority list for a camera:
1. Good lens, with optical zoom, 10X or so, with image stabilization. This seems the upper range for taking a photo without a tripod.
2. Good sensor: good low light performance, low noise, good color perception
2. Interchangeable lenses
3. Better flash. Why is it that it can't charge up for multiple shots? It's very frustrating when flash is required, I miss the right moment on the first try and have wait for it to charge. If the flash could charge in advance for 2 or 3 uses it'd almost eliminate this problem.
4. Non-crippled video capture. Pretty much every consumer camera on the market can capture video in a decent quality, but with either absolutely terrible sound (something like 11KHz), or stopping after a few minutes.
What to Fight Over After Megapixels?
Simple. Gigapixels.
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but users are achieving excellent results at that density
This is magical thinking. Making a 1:1 association between megapixels and the perception of "better" results is wrong, wrong, wrong. No amount of jargon helps your case.
"Resolution" is a decades-old optical problem. To prove my point and provide another reference, the Mars rover captured images with a "gigantic" 1 megapixel sensor. http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/pancam_techwed_040114.html
I acknowledge that gear geeks need some way to justify the new gear and I'm not going to change their behavior.
For those that don't know better, disregard the parent's jargon and go take pictures.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
although the megapixel count is still increasing, it's becoming less important than other aspects of the camera
For me compression is an issue.
The statement that 12 mega pixels is enough for general use has an information theoretic interpretation. namely for the standard lens fields of view and typical range of distance to target that there is no added information in having finer resolution. Or at least the amount of information useful to humans is diminshing.
Assuming this statement is true then it ought to be that the ideal photo compression algorithm produces the same size image file no matter how many pixels went into it. That is to say a lossy compression algorithm would only be discarding detail of no human interest.
This is not true, the compression does not seem to be getting better. This suggests that the compression algorithms in use are not scaling properly for increased pixels.
Hence more research is needed to find compression algorithms with this property.
I dislike high mega pixel cameras because they are increasing in stored picture size faster than my hard drives are keeping up. e.g. when I went from a 4 mega pixel camera to an 8 mega pixel camera my file sizes became 4 times larger. My internal disk drive did not become 4 times larger in that time so I had to start using external storage. It became harder to squeeze these onto ipods.
But you end up buying these 8 mega pixels ones because even though you might be happy with fewer megapixels, the 8 mega pixel ones take better pictures simply because they have better light sensors, greater sensitivity, anti-shake, and so-forth that the cheap 4 mega pixel cams lack.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The megapixel size, like the battery life, the clock speed on a CPU, the amount of memory, etc, is mostly used in ad copy to make people think they are getting a better product. In most cases what has in fact happened is that designers put in a badly integrated laundry list of features so that even though the components sound good, it end up being a cheaply made crap product. We see this, for instance, in computer with fast processors but slow front side buses.
The point where it is going to make sense to go to a higher megapixel count is when we move to a full size 35X24mm CCD. What is happening right now is that the pixel density is getting so tight, we are not seeing appreciable quality. Additionally, I don't think the current CCDs utilize the full field of the lens. Right now cameras like the D3X is relatively expensive, but as production ramps up we may see cameras that use the full size CCD appear in the 2000 price range. At that point the 25-30 megapixel will actually be useful. The density will drop from 4000 pixels per square mm to 3000 pixels per square mm. I have seen no definitive answer on this, but some have suggested that the CCD goes as high as 4000, the noise can become a big issue.
Which is just to say, the megapixel war for the past couple years has been a gimmick, and what we might be asking for instead is larger CCD and better optics, even if the number of pixels does not change.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
With respect to digital sensors, at least:
1. Better low-light / high-ISO performance.
2. Better dynamic range.
#1 is getting pretty good with the mid-range and better SLRs; to the point where I think dynamic range is a very close second at this point, although I don't think the general public currently has an appreciation for its utility. There is enough visibility of HDR photography that I'm hopeful it will get more attention.
Plenty of room for improvement in many areas, of course (better location management, lower weight, better battery life, faster performance, quieter shutters, better video, better white balance, etc. - and I'd _love_ to see biometric sensor on the shutter button such that the camera could mark a photo as taken by me vs taken by a friend or a family member on my camera), but in terms of really enabling photography, I think those two are easily the biggest wins (and many of the other things have little to do with actual image capture).
-andrew
Remember the scene in Bladerunner where Deckard scans a photo and then zooms in to find the ladies tatoo in a reflection from the bathroom mirror? Is detailed zooming like that a product of higher Megapixels? Would monumental increases in megapixel resolution allow for one to find small details in the background of photos that would be impossible to find today. Imagine taking a shot from the twenty-fifth floor of a building on Broadway, and being able to read the label on someones clothing sixty blocks away???
Or, pardon my ignorance, is this simply a factor of the lenses used? My thinking here is that with almost unlimited resolution you could just take distance shots and use the computer to zoom.
In other words, ASA rating?
I still hate digital cameras because by the time it takes the damn picture, my subject has changed.
Give me fast response and a good lens. I don't care if I have 6 megapixels or 16 megapixels.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I got a fast lens for my Sony a200 - a Minolta 50mm f1.7. It has really improved my low light level photography as it lets much more light in than a standard zoom lens. That's the advantage of SLR - you can get a better lens to do a proper job.
That's all I want. And, at least for the first item, you don't need supr-pro-plus cameras!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Many cameras still have somewhat poor dynamic range - people can fix that with HDR but it's better to get it right on the sensor.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Once the sensors are large enough and have enough density, we can start seeing plenoptic cameras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenoptic_camera) with decent resolving power.
With the current approach (at Stanford), a 16mp sensor only resolves to a 90kp image.
Plenoptic camera technology captures a 4D light field, allowing you to adjust focus and exposure after the shutter is released. This can be used for either photography or videography.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers
I have a several year old 7MP camera.
I'd happily take a 5MP camera that I can shoot freehand and not have to hold it rock solid to avoid blurring.
Here's a chart to see how many MPs you need for photo quality digital prints.
Of course, that doesn't take into consideration noise, dynamic range, or color accuracy of the sensor.
...those of us in the machine vision world desperately want larger sensors, both in physical size for noise reduction and in resolution. The larger the resolution, the better accuracy I have to measure things and detect textures, and lenses do not help that beyond a certain point. Sony's 24.8MP, 35mm sensor is a good start, but I want to see something around 100MP or so for certain applications.
A decade ago I was involved in digitising professional 35mm slides of wildlife. We used a resolution of 3000 by 5000; there was no point in a higher resolution since all we would have been doing was digitising the grain structure.
So, 12MPixel is probably sufficient for most purposes.
As someone that takes stereoscopic slides, I'll note that they require more resolution than you might think. I always use 64ASA slides, since the 100ASA slides are sufficiently grainy that the eye perceives the grain structure as depth variations.
Enthusiasts have been looking for low light low noise performance and largely ignoring resolution since about 2003. Higher resolution is sometimes nice, but the actual resolvable feature hasn't been growing nearly as well as the number of detected pixels, thanks to optics, an generally 6 megapixel images have been enough to be indistinguishable from higher resolutions for the vast majority of compositions.
And for those referencing Gates claim of 640k being enough for anybody, you know that statement is a myth, right?
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
You could do this with a little bit of user interaction. The user would just have to paint onto the touchscreen with the stylus to mark the areas to blend together.
Beyond pixel resolution, the largest thing digital lacks is dynamic range (range between the brightest areas and the darkest). What film still does better than most dSLRs is capture more details in the highlights while preserving detail in the shadows. This is critical to better reproducing what our eyes see. Digital tricks in post to mimic dynamic range (like HDR photography) usually just look awkward and incorrect.
1. low-light performance ... the LAST thing I want is software specific to the brand or model of the camera.
2. better optics (even my Canon has noticeable chromatic aberration)
3. better color fidelity (why doesn't a digital camera correct for the color of the flash?)
4. depth-of-field focus (like EOS, but it should be a common feature)
5. exposure bracketing
6. low-latency
Startup time to first shot. Expect to see lots of fudged numbers there, where they'll do start up to LCD screen on, or to first shot in "super crappy mode", or fast first shot, but massive reload times.
Battery life. It'll be marketed as "Get X thousand shots from a single battery" (in super crappy mode writing to a propritary format on a low-energy drain SD card using nucluar powered batteries that the end user does not have access to)
UI. Roll out the bells and whistles that let you wipe out Granny's redeye right on the preview screen. Omit the fifteen button presses it takes and the five minutes of camera-cpu processing time. I'm sure the words "warm" and "natural" will be used somewhere.
Interconnectivity. Snap a shot, have it instantly wifi 2.0'd to you faceblog picturebucket. 3G service fee extra.
Thinness. Our camera is thinner than our competitor. Oh, snap! (With snap being the sound your camera makes after parts warranty expires)
UTF-8: There and Back Again
16*20*300*300 = 28.8 megapixels.
I agree that 12 megapixels is fine for most people who never make big enlargements (or for those who do, do not care about viewing detail in these prints from a couple feet away).
Heck, I still shoot 4x5" large format simply because the quality is amazing even in a 8x10 print. They say the eye can only resolve 400dpi or so, but my prints say otherwise. 4x5" sheet film scanned at a modest 2000dpi gives (4*5*2000*2000) 80 megapixels.
Id be interested in a camera that samples at 24+ megapixels but records at 12. The math suggests that you could eliminate some of the sampling artifacts that way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_rate
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
More dynamic range.
Less noise.
Regarding more M pixels - There are times when I want to crop an image to bring out that "image within an image", and wish I had more M pixels. On the other hand, I'm going through hard drive space fast enough with the 12.7M pix I already have.
The dynamic range of our linear sensors is the weakest part of the chain. Film sucks compared to modern digital in all ways except their response curve: many films don't capture light levels in a linear way, so they can discriminate details in the clouds in a bright sky even while capturing details in the shadows. Almost all digital sensors are on the order of 9~12 stops of acceptable dynamic range, and they've been there for nearly a decade.
Cameras tend to expose for the midrange automatically. To avoid blowing the highlights, which is very visible on a screen or printout of our photos, we have to artificially adjust that exposure, called "stopping down," until we capture details in the highlights, at the expense of detail in the shadows.
There are some combinatorial techniques to achieving high dynamic range; you take multiple exposures and mathematically or artistically mix them to achieve both shadow and highlight details. But this technique is not well suited to movies or still-shots of moving scenes.
Sensors need to get a LOT better at achieving a dynamic range of 20 stops or more.
[
A few years ago, these things became diffraction limited. By that I mean, that at narrow aperatures, say f/11 and tighter, the spacing between sensor photosites is tighter than the smallest circle that the lens can resolve.
Give me a larger sensor with the same or fewer photosites, please. Not only will this avoid the diffraction limit, but noise and diynamic range will improve as well.
Plenoptic imaging or Wavefront coding methods can be used to achieve greater depth and lens speed by exploiting redundancy in the pixel count.
I'm out of mod points, so I can't help there, but damn straight, get the dynamic range up there.
Right now, cameras can't get even close to the mark 1 eyeball where dynamic range is concerned.
I'll raise you on the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging
Yes, there are people "abusing" the HDR process and producing things that "just don't look right" to many people, but done right, it's awesome.
This should be in the camera, not in post-processing SW.
Me as a user, I couldn't care *less* about the Million of pixels since a long time: 5 Million was good enough already..
But low light performance of compact digital camera *suck* currently.
I wish reviewers would test digital camera much more on this point, maybe camera makers would start improving this (very) weak point instead of competing on meaningless pixel number.
Akira Watanabe has a good reason for saying this, since he is the guy in charge of cameras at Olympus. Olympus makes digital SLR cameras using the 4/3 sensor format, which is smaller than the APC sized sensors that Nikon, Cannon, Pentax, and Sony use. The smaller the sensor, the fewer pixels you can fit on them and still have decent low light performance. Even so, the APC sized sensors seem to have reached their maximum at about 15 Mega Pixels, while Full Frame size sensors (same size as 35mm film) will probably peak at 25 MP or so (where they are now). Unless you need to make blowups larger than 8X10 or 11X14 a 12MP sensor is probably good enough (It WAS estimated some time back that Kodachrome 25 was the equal of about 50MP, so decide for yourself). It should also be pointed out that Kodak makes sensors the same size as Medium format file (6x6cm) currently at 50MP and this density will probably get a bit larger. Hasselblad makes a camera using this sensor (and if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it).
No way! I just saw a commercial for The Colour of Magic which will be on TV this week. Sounds like I need to watch it. Or do I need to skip it and hit the book?
just as the audiophile is willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money on gear to make microscopic improvements in audio quality that don't change the aesthetic experience of music one bit
so now will we have people spending obscene amounts of money on huge megapixel resolutions, and then insisting they can discern some kind of a difference
long live the emperor's new clothes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For a 16x20" print at 300dpi, 16MP is woefully inadequate. You'd need about 33 mega pixels. 300dpi is photo quality, btw.
"12 megapixels should be enough for anybody." - Akira Watanabe
For comparison, 1920x1080-pixel HDTV is about 4 Mpx: 2 Mpx for luma and about 2 for chroma. An 8x10 print at 150 lpi has a similar pixel count. True, more Mpx in a consumer product lets you do more digital zoom after the fact, but what else is it good for?
The delay from when you press the shutter to when the image is actually captured is still a big issue to many professional photographers.
All of the auto focus / anti shake / color balance / et al features require so much processing....
I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a picture, analog or digital, and wished I could turn a small part into a poster.
Back in the day, that's what they used large-format film for.
Imagine if a movie editor could decide, in post-production, to "zoom 10x closer" in on a subject?
Just because you can't benefit from them when viewing "full frame" doesn't make extra pixels worthless.
Besides, even if you aren't cropping, to emulate the resolution of 35mm at 100 a typical line-pair-per-mm resolution, you'll nominally need 5000 dots per inch, or 33 megapixels. I'd prefer 4x as many to handle worst-case situations. Now, in practice, how many of our photographs wind up as 2' x 3' posters? Not many. If the biggest you will ever enlarge is 1/3 of that, then your resolution can drop to 1/9th. Depending on how demanding you are, you won't need more than 4-16 megapixels to produce a nice 8"x12" print. Consumer- and pro- 16 megapixel cameras are here today.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
....there won't be as many of these
My web domain.
ISO is not a measure of noise.
And no, you can't make better measures than aperture, exposure, and sensitivity.
They're all related, you need to understand what they mean first.
Those are the basic numbers that define photography, and they're not going to change becasue of film's demise.
It's not a convention. ISO 200 is twice as sensitive to light as ISO 400. It has nothing to do with grain or noise.
It's no different than saying f/2 lets in twice as much light as f/2.8 or noting that 1/100 of sec. exposure lets in twice as much light as 1/200 of second.
ISO, exposure, and aperture are all interrelated. Change any one by "1 stop" and you change the other two proportional.
Thus:
f/8, 1/100s, ISO 400 is equivalent to
f/5.6, 1/50s, ISO 400 or
f/4, 1/25s, ISO 400 or
f/2.8 1/25s, ISO 200 etc, etc.
Those all give the same exposure, but each setting changes the depth of field, or motion blur, or any number of things that effect how a picture looks.
Many times I'll shoot a scene in which I'm only interested in a tenth of my image. One example is when my zoom lens is maxed out, but I'm still not close enough to fill the screen with the part of the image I'm interested in. Another example is when I frame more than my subject to make sure I get all of it included. Another is when I shoot something, and then later decide that I only want part, such as shooting a tree, and then deciding that I only want the branch.
So if my brain can only handle 12 M, then I want cameras to go to 100M. If the image I want only takes up a third of the horizontal and a third of the vertical, that's one-ninth right there.
Except all that Hendy's Law really reflects is the cost of higher-resolution sensors, ignoring, as many have stated above, the real bottle-neck: the lens system. The lenses sold with entry-level DSLRs, let alone the rinky-dink little lens in your point-and shoot, simply cannot resolve an image past 12 megapixels or so.
Now if you are a pro, you can pay 10's of thousands of dollars for larger lenses and a high-end body, just like you could have a few years ago for a medium-format setup rather than a 35mm. Over time you might spend a bit less on a 20 or 30 MP body, but lens-grinding is a mature (100+ years) technology. If you want to make use all of those pixels, you are going to price yourself right out of 99% of the consumer market, now or a decade from now.
There's nothing unreasonable about Olympus and other manufacturers focusing their efforts on improving other deficient features when they will have a far greater impact on product quality for the vast majority of their users. It's simply good business.
I think I've seen this camera about a million times already in B-movies. "Take those three gray pixels up in the corner, zoom in on those and refocus" and there's your man clear as day. For me it's pretty much all about camera size to quality ratio - it's not that I couldn't afford a honking huge DSLR it's that I don't want one. Oh yeah and a compact that actually reacts when I press the release, not a week later.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Maybe an amalgamation of megapixels and the ratio between the maximum and minimum depth of field, using mis-applied and spurious logic, the industry will agree on "Absolute Focal Perspective" (This camera has AFP of 59380!). Whatever it is, it will be just as meaningless as it is cheap to double it every 6 months.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
For a bunch of geeks I am shocked that no one has mentioned how cropping is related to Megapixels. Even when super telephoto lens are used it is common for digital images to be cropped for many reasons; and this means that 12MP image you captured is not only 8 or 6 or maybe even 4 MP. And this issue gets even more important when you are using a low end digital camera with fixed or limited lens selection. Classic example is parent takes a pix of their kid at graduation stiitin 100 feet from the kid on stage. The kid is less than 1/20 of the total area of the image. If you have plenty of MPs you can crop out the plane in the sky and the phone lines above the kids head, but if you are MP limited you are stuck.
Those who forget history are condemned to go to summer school.
oh wait, NEVER gonna happen.
What I mean isn't so much hardware as firmware, by the way... basically you can deconstruct a cameras into 4 pieces..
1. Lens.
2. Sensor
3. Body
4. PU+Firmware
dSLRs already have interchangeable lenses.. although you can't put a canon mount one on a nikon mount one, for various reason beyond the "we like them to be exclusive, thus causing lock-in, because nobody is going to switch to Nikon after buying $3,000 in Canon mount lenses" crap...
The sensor you currently can't easily exchange.. if you tried, most like you'll have destroyed your focus.
The body is what it is, unless you want to take a hacksaw to it.
Leaves the firmware. There is so much room for customizability in firmware that I don't even know where to begin with that. I'll just point to DD-WRT and its ilk as great examples of what can be done when a device can be completely customized in terms of internal behavior.
No longer would I be limited by whatever shutter time presets are in the firmware.. if it offers nothing inbetween 1/750 and 1/1000, I'll just load firmware that gives me 1/800, 1/850, 1/900 and 1/950 as well.
If the auto exposure mode currently favors closing the aperture over shortening the exposure time, and I want it the other way around, I would no longer be SOL - I'd just load the firmware that gives me that.
If I want to reprogram the various modes on the dial so that I can quickly switch between 3 common setups I use so that I no longer have to enter manual mode and adjust 3-4 options myself (aperture, shutter time, ISO, white balance), then I -could-.
But, again, it'd make a whole range of cameras obsolete and makes people less likely to buy a future model if their current model can already do it with a firmware change... so, NEVER gonna happen. Not from the big names anyway.
1. Sensor light sensitivity
2. Glass quality and speed
I dunno - USABILITY maybe? People shouldn't have to read the manual or do much of anything to get good pictures. Rocket science is for DSLRs, but even those should help you a LOT. The menu systems in cameras suck, there is no on-screen help if you want it (Why? Camera software could easily be 512MB on soldered flash and still add nearly zero cost to the camera. Why can't the "help" system HELP YOU - with full screen pictorial help, even animated examples?)
Cameras with huge microprocessors and fast DSPs still make crappy pictures in situations that are simple to identify. Cameras still let lots of people try to use the flash when it's useless because the photographer is 50M from the subject. Cameras could give users a countdown of remaining power in the batteries of the camera - in terms of number of shots left both WITH and WITHOUT flash. They could have built-in WiFi rather than requiring some kludgey flash slot after market WiFi thing to copy your pictures to your computer. Rechargeable cameras should use a STANDARD CONNECTOR for the charger rather than playing the stupid cell phone charger game.
We lemmings seem willing to follow the marketing folks over the cliff of ever more expensive, stupidly complex gadgets with higher and higher complexity, yet useless, capabilities. Why doesn't someone (Apple?) make cameras that are simple to use and do a good job without playing the game of higher gigahertz, gigabytes, megapixels, etc.?
I admit there are a few products (but not cameras, really) that exist that accomplish I'm talking about: Wii, iPod, iPhone, Tivo, probably others.
Yeah! I want a digital camera that has a mode that makes it so sensitive that it will be able to photograph the stars without even doing an exposure requiring a tripod. I want to just stand there holding the camera with my hands and be able to take pictures of stars that you cannot even see with the naked eye because they're too dim.
Is this possible?
I mean *really* faster. I recently acquired a professional-grade digital SLR and was astonished to find that the "3d matrix motion sensitive autofocus tracking" or whatever it's called, wouldn't accurately track a dog chasing a ball. The camera would graciously show me the autofocus points of successive frames -- clumps of grass, small pebbles, a trash can, and occasionally the actual subject. It was somewhat surprising to me that, to get accurate focus of moving objects, I could get better results by turning off all the "moving object" settings and rely on my own targeting skills. With all the computer power at our disposal, the durned camera should be able to recognize, not just distance and color and lighting, but the *shape* of the object I first targeted, and then track that object for successive shots as it moves around on the screen.
I've ranted about this on other subjects, but it's worth a small rant here: stop making memory -- in this case the memory buffer -- a selling point to get you to pay for overpriced pro models. Memory is *cheap*. The first major company that puts a substantial memory buffer in all their models, enabling a significant number of continuous frames before writing to the card -- is going to clean up. I have a friend who not long ago bought a pair (his and hers) of high-end snapshot cameras (you know what I mean -- fixed lens but mechanical zoom and nice glass) only to find (while on vacation) that the write speed was so poor as to make them unusable in the field. I know, you can fix this a little with faster memory cards, but ram will always be orders-of-magnitude faster than mass storage. This is a cheap addition that makes a huge difference in the user experience.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
As pixel density increases, image quality decreases. These companies are cramming more pixels into the same size sensor. Bigger pixels = better quality. By the same token, I think the wars could (and maybe should?) go to sensor size eventually. There are already several full-frame (35mm film frame sized) DSLR's out there now. The image quality of any of these cameras (even ones with less pixels) will blow any ultracompact point-and-shoot camera out of the water. Bigger sensors = better quality. Bring on the sensor size wars!
m@
and although i haven't bought a camera since 2001, it was my understanding that there are already cameras out that do this. however, you still have to do the HDR mapping later, it just takes 2-3 raw pictures. but couldn't the HDR mapping be auto'ed too? AutoHDR software to use autobracketed RAW files as input?
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I always looked at the optical zoom... at least until I could afford a DSLR
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Uneducated but hopefully not unrealistic. I have been buying digital cameras for about 9 years, and the improvements are just unreal. I would had not believed back in 2000 that Sony would sell a 12 Megapixel camera with shot stabilization, face AND smile detectors, and 1080x720 video for less than $300, when my 3 megapixel Sony DSC-S70 was close to $900 so many years ago.
1. Go crazy with HDR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging). Please. I am starting to see some companies starting to show some functionality related to HDR. The more, the merrier.
2. Better vibration reduction, and let us turn it off.
3. Better low-light performance. Usable performance, don't just tell me it is ISO 6400 if the image is unusable.
4. Proper HD video. It is a disgrace that $150 camcorders have proper HD video, and $400 P&S cameras don't (gladly, this is starting to change).
5. A real god damn hyperfocal distance setting, not just a dumb infinity focus toggle.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
See photoscala.de (translated from German)
By the way, when Olympus released their first Four Thirds lenses, they said they were designed to resolve 20 MP minimum.
Cheers,
d. d.
I took this picture corndog is SFW
You guys are a sad bunch really, when after 200 posts no-one mentions BATTERY LIFE!
The most important feature for the next "war" should be how many picture you can take out of a single alkaline battery.
AC
Absolutely right! *Not* just bit-depth, not just low light performance, but actual dynamic range. Video, photography, microscopy... all these recording media have dynamic range that is *tiny* compared to what humans perceive naturally. In part because electronic display media have dynamic range that's equally limited. The same is true in audio recording. In all these cases, human ears and eyes are cheating- my eyes mostly adjust fast enough when I move them that I don't realize that I can't see dim things inside and the bright things outside my window at the same time. It only becomes noticeable when I turn on a light in the night or step outdoors away from a building at night that it takes time for my eyes to adjust, but they're doing the same thing constantly. But this is no excuse- technology should be working to match what we actually perceive, and this doesn't seem to even be on the radar. Perhaps this is a case where there's no obvious easy avenue for improvement, so researchers and manufacturers just ignore it.
Tell me more about your personal accomplishments with CHDK. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I haven't charged my 5d2 battery in a couple weeks and have shot about 400 images. It just dropped to 3 out of 4 bars about 10 minutes ago. Battery life is no longer a problem for me.
Mod parent up. That's the big weakness of digital cameras today - not enough dynamic range.
Whatever happened to Fuji's dual-pixel system, with a big cell and a small cell at each pixel location? That was back in 2003.
What will they fight over after megapixels? Duh! Gigapixels, obviously.
Akira Watanabe is playing self-serving marketing games. It is not about any particular number of megapixels, it is about the size of the light well of each pixel, or "pixel density" if you will. That determines the dynamic range and sharpness per pixel. Mr. Watanabe's company has pushed that past their main competitors despite the fact that those competitors have larger number of megapixels in their top cameras. How is it possible? Sensor size. Let's look at some of the offerings today on the market (the smaller the density the better):
So yes, Olympus is now hitting 5+ MP/cm2 on their SLRs despite having much lower number of pixels than Canon with their 5DMkII, Sony A900, or Nikon D3X. This is because Olympus boxed themselves into a smaller sensor (4/3). All the posturing about how 12MP is enough is only designed to hide their shortsightedness.
(BTW, /. seriously needs to allow <pre> tags)
End anonymous moderation and posting on
In short, its going to be a feature war.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Translation: our puny 4/3 format and lens line just can't compete against pro-grade cameras, so we're shifting our focus to the low end consumer cameras.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Depth information has much more usefulness than just for DOF in post, too. It could also be *incredibly* useful as a segmentation tool in Photoshop, etc. By being able to just grab areas of common depth, selecting objects could often be a very simple thing.
Another very useful thing is that the "shape from shading" problem would go away, because now you would have shape from depth. Meaning that you could relight a scene fairly accurately.
I think that feature could be a huge advancement for the image manipulation crowd, at least.
...it just smells funny.
My "old" analog medium and large format cameras and lenses cost far less and offer better resolution. You'll have to pry them from by cold, silver-stained fingers you digital whipper-snappers!
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
If I was designing digital camera sensors, I would aim for greater dynamic range.
I have often wondered if it would be possible to use 2 cells per pixel, one with an ND filter. I wonder if anybody is doing something like this?
Especially when shooting outdoors, greater dynamic range is much more important than more resolution.
"For years, consumers have been sold digital cameras largely on the basis of one number - the megapixels crammed onto its image sensor.
In the summary, the article talks about the "digital image" crowd. The quote above applies to Joe Consumer, not a hobbyist or professional in the digital imaging field, because they already knew that megapixel count is meaningless. So what this story is really about is selling crap to consumers using misleading specs, nothing more, nothing less. "Prosumers" already knew this years ago.
Olympus, on their 4/3 system (along with Panasonic), uses a smaller sensor than even a standard DSLR, much less a full frame. So, 12 mp might well be a physical limitation of their design, both in terms of pixel density and optic size.
I think that is where we are running into the limits of physics: pixel density, not pixel count. Of course a full frame sensor is going to be able to reach higher resolutions, but for the size of camera that consumers are interested in, the megapixel density race may well be over.
Look at Nikon, who made big waves in the recent past by releasing the D3 for $3500 with only 12 megapixels. The thing is, the D3 packs a sensor that can push all the way to ISO 25,600 with little more noise than a normal camera at 1600. That means 16x more light captured, if I'm not mistaken. I think this camera offers much more utility for the average photographer than, say, the Sony A900 with over 20 MP. Honestly, having some acquaintance with Sony optics, half of their current lenses can't begin to resolve that kind of detail.
In order to get more pixels from this point onwards, I think we're going to see folks using full frame cameras, or even medium format. Pentax just announced their re-entry to the medium format market with a ~45 megapixel camera, along with their huge range of optics of commensurate capability. Of course, this has a price, as the camera pretty much mandates a tripod, and will need something like a small suitcase to transport.
then yes, 12MP is enough. You can make a 'good enough' 4x5
or 4x6 print that the average joe will be ok with it, that
is assuming they even print it (seperate issue of the coming
digital loss of life history).
But when you consider the way the sensors work, pixels are
alternating single colors based on a mask. Then in hardware
all that is interperolated to generate the 'real' image. So
saying 12mp is not the same as what most people think of -
that each pixel can record any color and luminosity.
Actually probably more important than low light sensitivity
would be a further increase to usable dynamic range so as
to prevent hilights from being blasted out and shadows
becoming blocky. People still insist on taking photos
of images which contain a near impossible dynamic range so
this will be way more appreciated than taking pictures of
the birthday cake with no flash.
Penis size?
And still yet probably 90% of all users still only print out 4X6 photos. Amazing what consumers will buy and upgrade into. Company's need to start focusing on their lens
Canon G10 does it
As usual, the commentators know more than the article-writer. With Pentax coming out with it's digital medium-format 645D, talking about an end to the megapixel wars is just plain silly. If you are only going to shoot pictures for yourself and your family, you don't need more than six megapixels and a long, long zoom. Lots of competition in that market. But if you are going to do any professional work you have to have a dSLR, and APS-C is limited. FF is the edge of the mainstream market, and even that will be less in quality than the medium format and full-format backs that cost what many people would like to earn in a year. Of course, megapixels aren't the be all and end-all of cameras. Bit-depth for real high dynamic range, rather than tone-mapping tricks for surreal images is a big factor in the future. Replacing Bayer's filters by having Foveon-style sensors perfected and increasing in megapixels and size is another, for getting better color reproduction. Higher quality zooms to eliminate the need for lens-changing (which introduces dust to the body and the sensor surface) and yet avoid CA, barrel-distortion and pincushioning is another. As nearly everyone has mentioned, eliminating noise in high ISO settings, an area where even common technologies haven't been tapped yet. Film is still 'better', but far less practical. Camera manufacturers and photographers won't be content until the quality of film is exceeded in every respect. Canon and Nikon will continue to focus on advertising and the sports market. Pentax will continue to focus on the outdoors market with build quality, weather-proofing, low battery usage, and in the near future, weight and size reduction. Sony will continue to focus on more features for the price. Olympus still makes great cameras, but the 4:3 alliance needs to do some re-thinking when the rest of the community is salivating for FF.
gigapixels?
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
The megapixel war is very very very very very far from being anywhere even near over.
This confuses most people because they don't understand the that the CCD (the part of the camera that is replacing the film) isn't the same size in every camera.
There is the "digital" size (nikon calls it dx). This is low-end consumer level stuff. I know a nature photographer that shots on a d300 and loves it, but if you're really doing anything serious you want something called a "full-frame image sensor" (thats is: its just a little tiny bit smaller than a piece of 35mm film, unlike dx, which is much, much smaller. check out this Link for an idea of how hard you are being screwed on DX).
A "full frame" is bigger than "dx". (these are nikon's terms I know, but I shoot nikon and don't know as much about canon, sorry).
Full frame sensors are what you're going to find in "prosumer" and professional cameras (in nikon, the D700, the D3 and the D3x). These can shoot at higher isos (without TOO much noise).
But that isn't where it ends...
There are also "medium format" digital cameras that are made by companies like PhaseOne and Hasselblad. These are NOT cameras that you are going to find at best buy, and probably not at your local camera shop either. These $30,000+ cameras shoot in the 100mp and up range...these are the cameras taking the photos you'll see on billboards, in magazines, or on the sides of buildings (and semi-trucks).
Consumer level stuff can stop at about 10mp, pro-level stuff cannot. There are people that even STILL insist on shooting film just simply for the resolution.
BTW, all of this is good for smart-prosumers...you can pick up the legendary hasselblad 500cm for ~$1200 now.
The point is: megapixel war was over for you nikon coolpix years and years ago...for pros it still rages on.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
The only company that's paying more than lip service to DR and colour is Fujifilm. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll ever see another DSLR out of them. I wish they'd license their tech out to someone with more mettle/money/foo.
--- Do you believe in the day?
BRAINS!!
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Shutter speed is really important.. if it is slow you will end up with blurry motion photos..
For consumer photography (as opposed to pro) all that really matters is
- easy to carry around (pocket size ftw)
- takes good pictures without the user having to do more than turn it on
- easy to put pics on the computer/flickr
- easy to get pics printed
- the camera looks cute
- pictures look good when viewed on a monitor and when printed at 4x6 size
A good wysiwyg lcd screen is a serious bonus, but not required.
All the rest of stuff people are bitching about in this thread (colours detected differently by ccd chips, needing more than $stupid_big_number megapix, etc) is NOT something the typical consumer-grade user cares about.
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
Modularity - This already exists in medium and large format camera systems, even for sensors.
You can lenses from another system on some 35mm format DSLRs but it's dependent on flange distance. There are adapters with optical elements to correct for that (say M42 on F) but they're pretty much universally shit. If you want a camera system that can use almost every other mount's lenses, look to 4/3rds.
Firmware - There are some point and shoots that have hacked firmware available but it's mostly useless. Offering RAW support and a few other things. The difference between 1/850th and 1/900th isn't worth having. If you want infinite shutter time variability, just use aperture priority. Most electronically controlled shutters are stepless.
Auto Exposure favouring - Get a Pentax. Hyper Program is the best damn thing and they've had it forever, I wish Nikon would rip it off.
User set modes - It's there, unfortunately you usually have to go to the flagship body to get this on a dial. Doesn't bother me since I never had it on film. If my needs are going to be changing so fast that I can't jump to the next custom mode, I'd just bring another body.
--- Do you believe in the day?
Hobbyists worry about cameras
Professionals worry about lenses
Photographers worry about light
--- Do you believe in the day?
is a camera that takes the picture when I press the shutter, not several hundred milliseconds afterwards when the moment has passed...
I hate having to anticipate the moment and hope it gets captured...
and being able to take another image right away would be nice instead of having to wait while the current image is written to memory...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Then let me tell you what I want on the next generation cameras: more dynamic range, the Fuji S5 paved the way but they can do better. Then a better signal / noise. Then a raw file format with at least some (lossless) compression (Jpeg2000 anyone). Then full 24x36 frame sensors on a tiny compact cameras (they used to fit such a film sensor, plus a roll, plus the winding space in much smaller cameras than the current crop of 7x9mm sensors). Then a self-detection when there is dust on the sensor and a warning on the camera. Then physical buttons to change the settings, not just menu functions. A hyperfocal distance setting (I've been claiming for that ever since the start of the 'D' line of Nikkors 2 decades ago and it's only a fucking simple software fix). Enough ? Get crankin'
Non-Linux Penguins ?
NEVER gonna happen. Not from the big names anyway.
That's what open source and reverse engineering are for. Check out CHDK - a firmware add-on mainly for the Canon Powershot and Ixus series. It allows several of the things you mentioned (maybe all, I only tried out some of the stuff), and in addition it gives your camera the ability to run scripts, making things like exposure or focus bracketing a cinch.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
There has never been a megapixel war in the pro-world. Pro-world and the advanced amateurs have always been primarily noise-conscious and have always ignored the megapixel wars. The fight for the sensor size is nothing else than the fight for the photosite size with constant mexapixel count.
Not really. All the standard conventions are kept because they're damned convenient. They allow the photographer to make quick judgements on how to setup the camera in order to achieve the results he/she wants.
It all boils down to reciprocity. If I go from F/4 to F/5.6, I immediately know that I need to double my exposure time if I want to expose correctly. If I can't afford the extra exposure time (Moving subject for example), I can bump the ISO up to compensate. The latter, in fact, is the huge win when it comes to digital. I can effectively change films on the fly, rather than being stuck with what I started out with.
Remember, light, as with sound, is inherently logarithmic. One step of exposure is either a doubling or halving of the amount of light reaching your sensor (or film). To organize things any other way just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and would make life much more difficult for photographers.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Keep thinking that digital is better than film. Some pros still use film, simply because it's better quality (the rest seem to prefer quantity). Some U2 spy planes still use film because digital can't approach, let alone beat, the quality of the image. It takes longer to get the film out, scan it, etc, but the 40yr old film tech is still the best thing we have.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
This is what they were saying 2 years ago, that the megapixel wars were over, that the sweet spot was 8MP. HAH.
Remember when 22MP was what you bought in a $30,000 digital back camera? At the same time, the Canon 1D line was 10MP or so. Um, yeah that was only 5 years ago.
I say no, the megapixel wars are definitely NOT over yet.
The other thing mentioned here is a concentration on quality. That's been happening hand-in-hand with the megapixel wars. So the latest in the Digic line of processors can both handle more pixels, faster, and produce better quality images at higher ISO, all at the same time. I would expect that to continue as well.
True, at some point physics will take over, as it was supposed to YEARS ago in the microprocessor market, but now we have 45micron processes that nobody dreamed of. The same will happen for CCD's and so on. Who knows where it will end.
Well, duh. Gigapixels. Terrapixels. Jessica Alba always insisting on working with clothes on... Not necessarily in that order.
My other sig is a knife wound.
Two things that would be increasing the fidelity of photographs by a giant bound:
* Stereo or depth. Automatically have two images or an image with depth information, such that when you're home you can put on 3d glasses of some kind and see the image as if you were standing there again.
* Panorama. An easy way to do panoramas without all the stiching perhaps? Maybe using a reflective sphere accessory? I love the ability to look around and see everything in context. If you could combine it with depth, it would be so gorgeous.
The next step would of course be turning your vacation photos into a level for a computer game. Playing Counterstrike in Carcassonne... or Ridge Racer in the vicinity of Lavelanet... well, I can dream.
I believe the resizing software Genuine Fractals did something along these lines to "increase resolution," although in practice it just rendered the same details differently.
You still get artifacts when enlarging an image, they're just different patterns than the ones you get with pixel interpolation.
The presumption is that we're talking about those consumer digital cameras that replaced 35mm SLRs. The minute you begin talking about larger camera formats, up to and including view cameras, the problems faced by the limits described in this article simply go away. There are 50 megapixel and larger photo arrays out there today, for professional photographers, and if you remember that Ansel Adams shot sheet film whose original dimensions were 8 x 10 inch, there's no reason to believe that truly huge digital cameras won't be available to do similar or even greater feats of image capture. The pixel wars are far from over, they're just going to move to different combatants. The prices for truly monsterous light buckets are simply too dear for most hobbyists and snap shooters.
My vote's for low light sensitivity!
My biggest complaint about digital cameras is that the photos I take when I'm drunk always come out blurry.
but not for the pros. When you move into the the medium format cameras you have things like this hasselblad which will give you 50 mega pixels. Their previous medium format digital camera had 36 mega pixels. Now granted these are ~$30,000 cameras new. Also keep in mind that these are also used for larger format prints rather than the 8"x10" picture that a regular consumer would produce. Also Hasselblad cameras have Ziess lenses which are about as good as you can get which is probably where the biggest improvements will be in cameras.
Time to offend someone
everything you list except the first two points is already (widely) available, maybe just not in the absolute cheapest cameras. So quit buying crap and you can enjoy that now.
Your K1000 was manual focus. That lag is mostly for autofocus, sometimes for flash metering. Both can be either disabled or done with a half-press of the shutter. Then the actual shutter lag is near instant. If yours can't then spend $130 on Canon's compact lines or any DSLR.
Again, only cheap ones have plastic tripod mounts.
I don't know of any that don't have removable cards. Ditch Sony and pretty much all of them use standard SD cards on the consumer side.
Canon's A series is all AA batteries, and I think Panasonic has a few as well. You pay with bigger size and worse battery life.
They all seem to have mute buttons or other way to disable sounds, and most have a way to tune the auto-off interval. Mine's usually set in the 5 minute range and my DSLR shuts the meter off after 15 minutes.
GPS isn't trivial because of the nature of GPS. You can't get an instant fix from satellites alone, and cameras are things that tend to only get used for a minute or two. Assuming you have little interference, GPS can take up to 6 or 12 minutes for a good lock. There are tricks to get a low-accuracy fix faster, but can you imagine the support calls for that? Sounds like a sleep mode that listens to GPS broadcasts would annoy you too because it would eat batteries. Your phone can use assisted GPS using the cell towers, but that's not available to cameras yet and would add significant size/weight/battery usage.
If you are a point and shoot photographer who doesn't plan on printing things larger than a 4x6 as it comes out of the camera, 3MP is adequate and 6MP is overkill. One of the biggest problems will be dealing with shutter lag found in point and shoot style digital cameras. Another would be handling different lighting conditions.
If you are a prosumer type who prints larger pictures and may even do some cropping, more megapixels is better to a point. Odds are you have a digital SLR and have gotten rid of the shutter lag problem. One of your biggest problems at this point may be how fast the camera downloads to memory. (I've missed pictures because the camera is busy moving images to the media.)
Pros will want more megapixels to a point, though they might prefer better low light and high speed capabilities over megapixels if they do event photography. Studio photography gives you better control of the conditions and allows you to use large format cameras that give you the high megapixel images.
At some point the megapixel wars will be over because the sensor chips reach a physical limit in terms of being able to handle incoming light.
How about 12MP for the 4/3 format, 24MP for the APS-C format, and 48MP for the full frame 36x24mm format? And 12 bits per pixel-color for 4/3, 16 bits per pixel-color for APS-C, and 24 bits per pixel-color for 36x24? And how about better video at up to 120 fps in 1920x1080 resolution?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The list describes what I call my Digital Instamatic. It is an 8MP Canon PowerShot SD850 IS that I carry with me more often than the pair of Digital Rebel SLRs I use for more serious photography.
I deal with its limits because it does the job AND it is available. It can get frustrating at times though.
When I want to do serious photography, I get out my tripod and SLRs and shoot in RAW format. I have full control of the results and much better optics, especially for telephoto shots. One of my favorite techniques is to take portrait grade photos from thirty or more feet away.
Thinking about it, I carry more weight/volume in batteries for the digital SLRs than the point and shoot occupies. But I was doing something similar when I swapped out my Instamatic for my first film SLR camera.
I don't think the megapixel wars are drawing to a close. People in the industry was saying that as far back as 2005, when 12 MP was "big". As you say Canon now sells the EOS 5D Mark II with 21.1 MP for $2700.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Good points.
A good photographer can take better pictures with a marginal camera than a lousy photographer can take with a top of the line camera system. Composition is more important than hardware.
A 12 megapixel camera with good low-level-light capabilities may be more attractive to a consumer than a 21 megapixel camera with problems in that arena.
That DSRL camera with the 21 megapixel sensor can shoot at an ISO of 26,000. Film with an ISO of 800 is considered low light.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
And there is a lot of stuff worth taking a picture of that is right in front of you but you can't get it all in the frame because the camera won't go wide enough.
Going from a 3x to a 12x is great, as long as some of that increase is in the rearward direction so you can actually get all of your family in the shot while they are at the christmas dinner table.
I'm a perfectionist but I'm trying to cut back.
We're already seeing the convergence of digital cameras and video cameras. There are lots of cheapo little "Post to Youtube" video cameras that also shoot 4-6 MP stills, and nice consumer camcorders are shifting to SDHC for storage.
Eventually there will no longer be a distinction between small video cameras and consumer digicams. While there will still be DSLRs for pros, those are gaining video capability in the prosumer area, as well.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
But seriously, perhaps you can ask one of them (you know so many, surely you'll be able to get in contact with one) what their reasoning is for shooting JPG because this simply doesn't make sense to me, and differs wildly from my own experience with other pro and semi pro photographers.
Shooting jpeg allows photographers to quickly submit a photo. Shooting both raw and jpeg allows them to send a preliminary photo to an editor or client then once back in the studio the raw file can be edited. Personally I'd like to be able to save in tiff as well.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
No need for more Mpx? Err, not quite.
You can trade spatial resolution for angular resolution (with bump-grid filters), for instance. The design space for optical devices is high-dimensioned and permits many such tradeoffs.
Who needs high temporal resolution for instance? Well, if you combine it with a fast shutter, you can trade it for high dynamic range images. Or for motion segmentation and correction.
Digital cameras are becoming more than "dumb lens and film" analogues, and is barely even started.
While customers' concern for high megapixel cameras doesn't make sense for *them*, it's been great for advancing the field. "How much sensor for how much money" is the bottleneck on many potential applications.
Turn off the red-eye reduction. The pre-flash is what's delaying the shot.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
I've looked at the Mamiya RZ67 Pro IID. I don't know about getting one though, it's a newer model. There's a photo shop close to me that sells used medium format cameras. When I last checked, they had some for less than $1000. That was with an SLR type eye piece and film back.
the digital backs for them are pretty pricey.
Yea, I see some for about $7,000. However I can start with film and scan it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
By this logic, a 12 MPixel image is about 36 Mpx: 12 for red, 12 for... you get the idea.
Only if you're using a Foveon sensor. Any other 12 Mpx sensor uses a Bayer filter mosaic of color filters over the CMOS or CCD pixels. One common configuration is 6 Mpx of green and 3 each of red and blue; demosaicing that won't get you 12 distinct Mpx of anything.
Trying to convince clueless slashdot nerds that organic film photographs still can beat the pants off your super duper megapixel computer/camera. It's organic, results in a hard copy from the moment of exposure (latent image), can be scanned if desired for a digital copy, can be shopped if that's your thing, is cheaper. I laugh my ass off as you morons drool over every new model camera that comes out making your old seem obsolete while I can photograph with my 20 year old Pentax K1000 or my Nikon F4 from 1989 and still create a higher quality image from your D2xysMarkXXMCEOSIV whatever. I'm laughing my ass off I'll tell you HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Losers.
Those of us in pocket camera land find pixels helpful. Some of us would even prefer it to go further and get grainy but smaller sub-pixels. We've been impressed with the practically improving low light performance of our smaller and smaller photosites which while noisy, provide usable non-flash snap shots in low-light social settings. We also know from experience that we can post-process these high res grainy images to a lower res "clean" image if we want, but we cannot recover the spatial detail in the other direction when we have already shot at lower resolution binned modes.
I have a Canon SD950IS which is 12 MP optically stabilized and I am amazed at the clear shots I am getting out of it without much effort. I can see the extra detail compared to my friend's 10 MP Canon in similar every-day shooting outdoors. I replaced my 5 MP Canon S50 and am extremely happy with the purchase of an even smaller camera body I can take with me, which takes better pictures under every condition I have tried.
Longing for the good old days of film is plain silliness.
You don't like the smell of a wet darkroom? It's been a long tyme since I have but I loved working in darkrooms. I'd like to set one up where I live.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Just ask my wife. She's convinced her 8mp phone camera is better than my 6mp DSLR.
'fixed' (ie. 'broken') focus, no lens cover so it's always coated in grease, CA up the wazoo, enough flash power to only highlight the grease on the lens.
- There is no point, it's like a sphere -
To prove my point and provide another reference, the Mars rover captured images with a "gigantic" 1 megapixel sensor.
According to TFA the sensor is "a palm-sized 9-ounce marvel". Up to a point, I don't know what it is, larger photosites make for better photos.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Honestly, having some acquaintance with Sony optics, half of their current lenses can't begin to resolve that kind of detail.
Zoom or prime lenses? At any given focal length prime lenses resolve more details than zooms. Of course all of my lenses except one are zooms. The one lens that isn't is a telescope.
In order to get more pixels from this point onwards, I think we're going to see folks using full frame cameras, or even medium format.
So far I don't have a DSLR, just a film SLR. But I'd like to get Canon's EOS 5D Mark II as well as a 645 medium format camera. I've looked at what Mamiya has, but I think I'll get a used camera.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Mine's changed from the standard DSC_ to something saner, so that I can pick up my photos from a mixed folder after we've all gone shooting
they are focusing on things like dynamic range, noise reduction and color accuracy to produce results that will have a noticeable impact on the end result.
If they are more concerned about colour accuracy then I think they need to switch from CCD sensors to CMOS sensors like Foveon's X3 and capture red, green, and blue at each photosite instead of interpolating what the colour's supposed to be. I'd love for Canon to use a fullframe sensor like it, preferably with at least 16 bit colour.
Sensor density will increase; but it'll probably be at the high end pro level where you see increased density simply because off their needs and willingness to pay a premium for the sensor quality needed to give the desired results.
I'd like to get into that market and make larger posters and fine art prints. As it is now though all I have is a film SLR, what I can do is scan the film and use up ressoftware, like Genuine Fractals or Extensis.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I haven't done any astrophotography for over a decade.
Though I don't shoot much any more, and astrophotography never, I do like shooting low light and would like to try astrophotography. When I saw the telescope in a camera shop at half price I jumped on it. I guess I'll get more use of it as a spotting scope than as a telescope though.
The issues are not so big with that - because you can make long exposures - you don't have to capture action (provided you have a tracking system, or want the stars to become lines).
I want to do some of both, track stars and planets for sharp closeups and have the camera fixed for star trails. The telescope came with tracking software and computer controller.
Usually you would use a slow film for astrophotography, to capture the detail.
What I'd probably do is start with an ISO of 400 then go to 200 and 800 to evaluate how it comes out. I'll want to make large prints, maybe poster sized.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Pictures are supposed to be what people see, not how they saw it. Humans see in panorama across the spectrum with light and partical artifacts as well as effects. All while in 3D at around 24 frames per second.
A picture printed on paper will never show.
I'm shocked no one has mentioned this yet. I want a depth/distance value. There's a lot of very interesting research that can be applied to pictures with an attached distance map.
My next desire is position/orientation of the camera body. Again, this is needed to enable some very interesting 3D reconstruction stuff.
How about some decent lenses to actually *focus* the light onto these fancy zillion megapixel CCD's.
not fighting, for a change? I would like to see some openness, with some teamwork (standards) and a pinch of creativity. That's about it.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I'm almost exactly like you (maybe just poorer ;-) but, believe it or not, last time I performed a serious hands-on comparative test in a large store, for compact cameras I ended in discovering that the best low-light imager around was... a camcorder!
(of course the costliest of them all).
I was so shocked that I didn't buy anything indeed, but if you have the occasion, do test the Canon HF11 -do it only for photos, and tell me...
Hervé
Herve S.
This is false. Increasing pixel density improves image quality and improves post processing options (CA correction, rotation, cropping). It is a common myth that increased pixel density decreases image quality. This is because people compare images at 100%. But if we have two sensors of the same physical size, one has 1 Mp, the other has 10 Mp, yes, on 100% level the 1 Mp sensor shows less noise, but we're comparing it to 1 Mp crop of the 10 Mp sensor (ie. 10% of the surface area of the sensor).
Somewhere around 10 MP you get to the limits of resolution for the typical reduced frame (2/3 the size of a 35mm frme) digital camera.
By extrapolation 16 MP would be around the limit for a full frame camera. (And then you have to buy a new set of lenses)
If you aren't pro you likely don't maintain your lenses clean enough to reach these resolutions. Indeed few lenses reach anything like theoretical resolution (Raleigh criteria)
I've got a Nikon DX70 which I love, but ...
* It's performance in low light is noisy.
* It only accomodates about 6, maybe 7 stops of illumination variation in a scene. Reminds me of shooting ektochrome slide film. Expose for the highlights, or for the shadows. You can't have both. Unless you use flash to fill in. By comparison film accomodates about 9 stops, and can be tweaked to 10-12 in the darkroom. (Much of the Zone system of the black and white photographers is based on these tweaks.) 10 stops is typical for a scene on a cloudless day.
The future:
With fast enough data collection you dump the CCD at 1000 frames per second, then post process for both noise reduction and image stabilization. Indeed: Collect during the time that the diaphram is closing and you may be able to get advantages of the speed of a wide open lens and the depth of field of a stopped down lens.
I suspect to do this you would have to build the processing into the chip. One proccessor per NxN pixel square? Each processor hands data back and forth to it's neighbors for handling image stabilization?
Set your camera up on a stand looking at a grey card. The camera takes a series of frames to calibrate the individual sensitivity of each sensor.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
If not for the fact that I want to be able to use the same lenses for my Canon film camera and a DSLR when I get one I might get a Nikon. That brings up something a lot of people don't know, even here on /. I've only seen a few people mention that good quality glass costs more than the camera body. That's why I get zoom instead of prime lenses. Now if and when I start making money from photography, I want to start a photography business but I don't think it's a good idea in the current economy, I may build a collection of prime lenses.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Very true... but bigger sensors also carry a heavy price premium. 50D street is about $1000; 5DmkII street is about $2700.
At $2700 the 5D Mark II does cost a bit, but it's only 1/3 the price of the 1Ds Mark II and III and way cheaper than a medium format digital back.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Olympus has a well-regarded 7-14mm rectilinear lens. The widest non-fisheye for APS-size sensors (Canon, Nikon...) starts at 10mm, which gives a bit narrower view than the Olympus lens. The widest rectilinear lenses for 35mm film/sensor start at 12mm, a bit wider than the Olympus lens, but there are only two choices, the Sigma 12-24mm (terrible corner sharpness and the usual Sigma quality control), and the 12mm Voigtländer Heliar, which is only available for rangefinders. I think Olympus has their bases well covered (that is, apart from the lack of primes and fast lenses).
What limits wideangle lenses is not sensor size (how many ultrawides do you see for medium format?), but the mirror box. The closer you can place the lens to the sensor, the more symmetrical (and smaller and well-corrected) you can make the lens (compare Biogons and Distagons). Making an excellent retrofocal ultrawide lens is a damn hard job.
(I'm not an Olympus apologist, I use the right tool for the right job.)
I've come to... anesthetize you!
And it's not like you can create detail from nothing.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Dynamic Range
That is what's really missing from the film days.
First, large format sensors are quite a bit more expensive....Second, I have a lot of hardware invested in smaller sensor sizes. I have a few full-frame lenses, but most of my lenses were bought for then-standard small format sensors.
Yea, fullframe sensors are more expensive. But if you're like me and only have lenses for 35mm film SLRs you get similar exposures using film and fullframe digital SLRs.
For me, the switch to full-frame would require investment in a more expensive body, as well as replacing a number of my favorite lenses, some of which have no equivalent in the full-frame world.
You don't have fisheye or other wide angle lenses do you? The smaller sensors on most DSLRs turn those wide angle lenses to normal lenses. If you still want wide angle you have to spend more for digital equivalents. Owning a number of lenses, it would be cheaper to get a fullframe sensor camera than replacing all your lenses, with prime lenses it would be even more expensive. If I had a fullframe Canon EOS 5D Mark II I could use the same lenses I'd use with my film based EOS with the 5D and get similar exposures.
when I bought most of my lenses, I did so with the belief that I'd have them for the rest of my life.
Same here but if I got a DSLR that wasn't fullframe I'd have to replace my lenses. And when I went out into the field I'd have to carry twice as much equipment. Yes, twice as much. I'll still shoot film even when I get a DSLR. I'll shoot it as long as film, chemicals, and the equipment is available at a reasonable price. Now the equipment lasts for years and so doesn't need to be replace often. And for developing film and making prints there are alternative processes. For instance orange juice can be used as a developer. There's a book I wish I had on alternative processing by a University of Chicago professor.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Cropping.
12MP with a 10x zoom is equivalent to 7MP with a 13x zoom
without the need for better, bulkier, heavier and pricier optics.
In short, no. The aperture, shutter speed, and ISO are fundamental exposure elements that describe: (1) the size of the lens opening, (2) how long the lens remains open, and (3) the light sensitivity of the medium.
All are completely independent of whether the light recoding medium is analog or digital, slides or negatives, CMOS or CCD, etc.
No offense, but it sounds like you simply have trouble working with fractions and the square root of 2.
You may have a perfectly-composed shot of a building, then when you get back home realize the gargoyle overhanging the 2nd floor would make a great shot. Thanks to the limits of your camera or film, you can't even make a decent 4x6.
If only you had a terapixel image, you could not only get the gargoyle, but the iris of the pigeon that's next to it.
Hindsight is 20/20.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I want megapixel war on displays (desktop monitor, EVF, mobile phone, etc). 12 Mpixel CCD sensor does not matter over 10 Mpixel CCD sensor in a small device but a 2 Mpixel display is much better than a 0.2Mpixel displays than we currently have in viewfinder or mobile phone. Even 1920x1200 computer display is barely 2 Mpixel display (or perhaps it's "6 Mpixels" if you count each subpixel).
_________________________
Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
As others have opined, my last upgrade was not for megapixels either. Moving from a Nikon D50 to a D700, the real issue was not going from 6 megapixels to 12, but that the new camera would accept all my old but still very serviceable film camera lenses, and had a full size CCD so I could shoot exactly as I had with film without worrying about a "crop factor". These things were important enough to me to justify the price.
As someone else opined, the larger file size of a 12 megapixel shot in raw format really is a problem. I had to double the size of my hard disk (fortunately disks are cheap)
Curiously, if you put a lens designed for a digital camera (with smaller ccd) on the D700, it automatically switches to a cropping mode that gives you an effective resolution a little over 5 megapixels. I haven't verified this, as I don't see the point in buying a lens that I can't use on all my cameras, including the film bodies that are still in use. But it's interesting that a D700 with a "digital" lens has just a little less resolution than the low end D50.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.