Obsessed with large files?

[!Nomad64]

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I ask here in humility as I'm blatantly ignorant in this matter.

 

It's common practice in professional environment to go as high as possible with file or negative sizes. It was already so when analogic ruled (fashion shoots were mainly taken in medium format, for instance).

When it comes to magazines such as the National Geographic or Vogue, where's the point to have a huge file when the pages hardly exceed the size of a letter or A4 sheet and magazines are not made out of premium photographic paper? Even a double page wouldn't exceed an A3 size, which can be printed out in full dignity even from an M8 file.

 

So where am I wrong?

[dave_d]

You are not wrong! All a larger file does for you is allow a larger maximum output size.

[chkphoto]

Good observation. And now that print (magazines, newspapers, etc.) is on it's way out and electronic presentation is becoming more mainstream, I then echo the question.

 

I know that some stock houses have size requirements but I think that is just because they don't know what the use of a given photo might be, so they go for bigger is better. And I think some publishers follow the same theory.

 

Display print photographers (such as myself) and wedding shooters would have the most consistent need of larger format sensors if they offer very large prints, And I've had my Digilux 2, 5 meg sensor images published both for cover and inside magazine pages and for annual reports and the publishers didn't require larger image sizes.

 

So what is the real reason. Good question.

[dave_d]

The real reason for a larger sensor? To impress the ladies... because size does matter.

 

My DMR's 10.2 Megapixel sensor is perfect for 99% of the work I do professionally for the reasons stated above. One reason I can think of to have a larger sensor is that we don't know where the technology will take us in the future and that larger file size might be useful. This is one reason for the ProPhoto RGB color space that has a color range that is not reproduceable on any hardware today but might be in the future. At least if you capture a huge color space on a large sensor you will have it to use in the future if the need arises and technology permits.