
Canon drops out of the megapixel race - Flemlord
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/08/19/thank-you-canon-for-dropping-out-of-the-megapixel-race/
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sophacles
Hopefully this will lead to a better metric for digital cameras... like the:
Low-light ISO eQuivelency Rating (LIQR), in which a higher number means it
takes better pictures at parties, the pub, etc. :)

In seriousness, this is cool it's about time a digital camera manufacturer
realized that I don't want to be a lighting expert when taking snapshots.

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mustpax
As a smarter man than myself once said: "Trying to judge digital cameras by
their megapixels, is like trying to judge cars based on the maximum speed
shown on the speedometer."

Apart from increased noise smaller sensors are a lot less versatile. It's hard
to keep the depth-of-field shallow to draw attention to the subject. The
smaller the sensor, the deeper the depth of field.

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yardie
About time. I had to give my wife a lesson on why not to pay attention to the
checklist on the front of the box. She bought a supposedly 8MP P&S. Which had
2x the resolution of my aging but still fantastic Olympus.

Every shoot taken with it looked like it had been smeared in blue grease. And
the box didn't have any of the information I considered important; 2GB card,
8MP res., avi capture are really useless benchmarks for a camera.

Things you should be looking for are a fat sensor (1/3" in my case), very low
f-stop, high ISO, and resolution. You can do a lot of things with high
resolution except fix a bad photo. The first three things means you'll get the
pass capture the device can give you.

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

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mustpax
While I agree with that, it's not just the megapixels that allow you to do
that. In my experience the lens matters more if you want to magnify the detail
in the picture, or crop it really tight. The sensor just gives you an upper
bound, it cannot create optical information that is not there.

As someone who has done old-school film photography, I've often seen the stark
difference in detail within a single roll of film based on the lens quality.

Chances are you have a decent enough lens that most of your megapixels are not
going to waste, but most >10MP cameras I've seen in the market don't sport the
kind of lenses that justify the additional MP. It's really a marketing
gimmick.

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potatolicious
I've recently thought about getting a digital SLR to take my photography up a
notch (or several). My brother is a semi-pro nature photography, so I
naturally asked him to give me some pointers.

The biggest, most salient point he made was: screw the body, spend all your
money on lens. The body is cheap, and even low-end stuff produces pretty great
results in combination with a good lens. If you run out of headroom with the
body, it is also likely the cheapest component to replace.

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CWuestefeld
This is good news, the resolutions don't need to be higher (or even as high as
they already are) for any output device -- monitor or printer -- that any
consumer will have. But it seems to me like Canon's ceasefire isn't
unilateral. I get the idea that other manufacturers aren't clawing for pixels
either.

IMHO, what camera manufacturers need to focus on instead (pun intended) is
eliminating noise. Improving the dynamic range would be nice too, but probably
requires much more development of the sensors.

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

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

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

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

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e40
My Canon D30 has 3.25 MP. I have an L lens, and I've blown up photos to 20x30
with no problem.

I really, really hope this signals an end to the pixel arms race.

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ShabbyDoo
>I've blown up photos to 20x30 with no problem.

I'm sure they looked decent, but would they have looked better with more
pixels? I think a 3MP image @ 20x30 with any reasonable printing density
requires more data than your camera captures.

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tjr
Did Canon actually state that they are "dropping out of the megapixel race",
or did they just release a new camera with a lower-than-expected megapixel
count and the author is inferring their intent?

(Not that I object, as 10MP is plenty for most uses....)

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

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jnovek
I'm a rangefinder guy, so I shoot film.

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

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hristov
It has already come out. It is called the Olympus EP-1.

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potatolicious
I'm shopping for something similar, and looked at the EP-1. It's got a lot
going for it, but also has a lot of missing bits that may annoy the
enthusiast:

\- Lack of fast, good AF. Word on the street is that this thing takes up to 2
seconds to focus. That's dog slow, and on par with point & clicks, not DSLR-
level performance (or anything approximating it).

\- No viewfinder, and a highly substandard LCD. So you take away the
viewfinder in the interests of compactness, fine, but in that case shouldn't
you at least throw in a fairly _standard_ LCD? (900K+ dots) After all, the LCD
is now the user's _only_ way of composing the shot. But no, the LCD on the
EP-1 is a paltry 200K+ dots.

\- No built-in flash, but that's (somewhat) minor.

I'm excited about the possibilities of the Micro-four-thirds format, but I
don't think the EP-1 is going to be the game changer.

Though it looks _incredible_. Damn people and their sexy electronics :(

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hristov
I would not trust the "word on the street" about auto-focus. And by "word on
the street" you probably mean "word on the internet". There is a lot of
misinformation out there, because most enthusiasts have significant
investments in other interchangeable lens systems and would be rather unhappy
if a new system took off.

If you are worried about AF speed, go to a store and give it a try. It's
probably too slow for serious sport photography but I guarantee you it will be
faster than two seconds.

Regarding the screen, the resolution is probably lower to make it brighter.
Higher resolution often reduces brightness (it requires more non transparent
and semi transparent elements), so they probably could not get the 900k screen
bright enough. Again the only way to check if it is a show stopper is to try
it.

BTW I have not tried it myself, but that is because I cannot afford it right
now and am afraid that if I try it I will buy it.

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potatolicious
I agree, the word is extremely mixed - and btw this stuff comes from photo
review sites that I have found in the past to be fairly well balanced in their
opinions. In fact, all of them are absolutely in love with the _concept_ of
the EP-1, but many are disappointed in its execution.

My brother, who is a serious photography nut, is very tempted, but too poor to
buy one right now, but he hasn't tried it himself either.

I agree that I should try it - and I definitely will before buying my camera,
but if the AF thing turns out to be 2 seconds it's a deal-killer.

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

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dagw
I have seen photos taken with the G10 at ISO 80 that can rival the most
expensive SLRs. It's all about knowing your kit and working within its
limitations.

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ShabbyDoo
I agree that the G10 is a good camera overall, but she would have been happier
with less resolution and lower noise. For most people, the design trade-offs
are non-optimal.

