biglou Posted December 2, 2015 Share #61 Posted December 2, 2015 Advertisement (gone after registration) I don't want to put a sign before my prints forbiding to come closer than three meters. The best prints i ever saw in my life are direct contacts prints from large format black and white negatives. You see that precision from close and also from distance. You are praising acceptable impression of sharpness from an average person positionned at an averadge distance of a print printed by an average printer. What others (and me) are talking about is recording as completely as it is possible the light some marvelous Leica lenses are sending into the camera. If you follow your own reasoning about why more resolution sensors are then you should extend it to lenses, why then bother build excellent lenses when their qualities and resolution will be mostly lost in the process ? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted December 2, 2015 Posted December 2, 2015 Hi biglou, Take a look here Keep your 50 megapixel sensor and give us more DR!. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
mmradman Posted December 2, 2015 Share #62 Posted December 2, 2015 Don't blame Engineers, given half chance they would go beyond what technology can offer, it is the management who calls the shots (sometimes they are right). ---snip--- But that is what engineers are for. They can't expect to earn a living by adding and removing levers, changing red dots into screws, selecting LCD covers from a catalogue, paint it green, scrape the paint off, reuse an old lens design, ... for ever. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted December 2, 2015 Share #63 Posted December 2, 2015 biglou, on 02 Dec 2015 - 12:45, said:I don't want to put a sign before my prints forbiding to come closer than three meters. The best prints i ever saw in my life are direct contacts prints from large format black and white negatives. You see that precision from close and also from distance. You are praising acceptable impression of sharpness from an average person positionned at an averadge distance of a print printed by an average printer. What others (and me) are talking about is recording as completely as it is possible the light some marvelous Leica lenses are sending into the camera. If you follow your own reasoning about why more resolution sensors are then you should extend it to lenses, why then bother build excellent lenses when their qualities and resolution will be mostly lost in the process ? but where will it end? Will we have to view the prints through a microscope? I' m not talking about the present day, but speculating on the point that enough will be enough. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
biglou Posted December 2, 2015 Share #64 Posted December 2, 2015 " but where will it end? Will we have to view the prints through a microscope? I' m not talking about the present day, but speculating on the point that enough will be enough. ? I thought you were talking about the present situation, sorry then. When will enough be enough ? Depends if we are considering large averadge consumer cameras or brands that pretend to be optically much above average. A brand like Leica should be more ambitious about final quality of pictures (resolution included) than other brands, not only for their lenses but also sensors, don't you think ? I understand the reasoning behind a concept of news and travel light camera mostly used without tripod and optimized for that purpose, with an " average " resolution. They could also offer an option for nature or stills photographers with accent put on maximum image resolution and quality at low isos. When you think about it the new SL weights the same and is, with zoom, as big as an Alpa camera with a 60MP or 80MP sensor back. Not the same price thought but no so far away also. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pgk Posted December 2, 2015 Share #65 Posted December 2, 2015 A brand like Leica should be more ambitious about final quality of pictures (resolution included) than other brands, not only for their lenses but also sensors, don't you think ? The digital 'problem' is that ambitions may be defeated by physics. By which I mean that the differentials between cameras and lenses will eventually have to be considered by attributes other than resolution and 'quality' (whatever that is). I have no doubt that sensors prices will be driven down and down. Lens characteristics will probably be adjusted/optimised by software - perhaps even by 'intelligent' software which will 'interpolate' missing or anticipated data. Trying to outpace such technology by the traditional methods of ever higher precision assembly and design will probably prove uneconomic. The current crop of digital cameras that we see are evolving and they will continue to do so. What will differentiate cameras in the future will be the user interface and controllability based on either traditional (such as M series) or other, more innovative design. Absolute image 'quality' is of low relevance given that the vast, vast majority of photographic images are never used at sizes which can differentiate it. Leica can be ambitious, but I am of the opinion that this ambition will be ill founded if its based on image 'quality'. If we can only realise that it is the way we interact with cameras which is of higher relevance than might be considered, we might understand why the choices provided are important for more than this ambiguous image 'quality' factor. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeuBu Posted December 3, 2015 Share #66 Posted December 3, 2015 Right, jaapv. Thanks. For me it's nearly always a trade-off between depth of field and diffraction (sharpness). That's for me the limiting factor (but system immannt). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
kkonkkrete Posted December 3, 2015 Share #67 Posted December 3, 2015 Advertisement (gone after registration) Nobody responds primarily to IQ. They respond primarily to motive, emotion, mood. I'd much rather listen to a crackly 78 of Godowski than a flawless 24bit recording of a boring modern pianist. The only artistic purpose of high IQ is to enable the expression of motive, emotion and mood: to ensure that the camera is not the limiting factor in the creation of the artwork. Sometimes higher IQ is actually the antithesis of the intended motive, emotion and mood! Worse lenses, analogue film, careful use of post-processing are sometimes required to add the very grit that brings a work to life. It's only that reducing IQ to add flavour is usually easier than to improve IQ. Hence the value of high IQ to begin with. But we are already in the land of diminishing returns when it comes to sensor resolution. It is generally far more likely that detail will be missing from your image due to lack of dynamic range than due to lack of pixels. If you really need more pixels: move to a larger sensor (you'll get more DR too)! For most purposes what limits the creation of the artwork is the process of seeing and capturing the moment, rather than the medium. That's why there'll always be a space for small, unobtrusive high IQ cameras. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mirekti Posted December 8, 2015 Share #68 Posted December 8, 2015 An interesting reading here http://aboutphotography-tomgrill.blogspot.com/2015/10/what-sony-a7rii-taught-me-about-my-42mp.html?showComment=1449527272715#c8880151571009317452 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bencoyote Posted December 13, 2015 Share #69 Posted December 13, 2015 Until someone can present a reasoned argument for more Megapixels I am happy with 24 MP. First let me begin with, I'm not in the I want more MP camp. I'd rather have more DR and 24MP is fine for me. I don't really do this however, I'd say that a reasonable argument for more MP is that it allows you to crop in and achieve the field of view of having a more telephoto lens when using a wider lens while still retaining enough detail to be able to have a shot that is acceptable when printed large or viewed up close on a screen whatever. The ability to crop in gives you more flexibility in selecting your shot out of the pixels that you captured. For example you could use your 50 as if it were a 90 and just throw away the excess. So you can have your fast 50 and sort of use it like it was a zoom lens. So it allows you to use the smaller lighter wide angle lenses rather than having to carry a bigger heavier telephoto lens. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soden Posted December 13, 2015 Share #70 Posted December 13, 2015 Sounds like a recipe for a poor photograph. Why not use a 12mm for all your work? Besides the fact that digital zoom is always worse than optical and at that point you can forget about DOF. There is a device that uses this concept to its technical limit. It's called a iPhone. Not bad, but not something I want to use my M for. So I'm not sure that using a M like a iPhone is good reasoning for more Megapixels. Besides I already have 24TB of storage, I really don't need larger images. There is nothing I can think of that can use that much resolution anyway. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted December 13, 2015 Share #71 Posted December 13, 2015 I don't want to put a sign before my prints forbiding to come closer than three meters. The best prints i ever saw in my life are direct contacts prints from large format black and white negatives. You see that precision from close and also from distance. You are praising acceptable impression of sharpness from an average person positionned at an averadge distance of a print printed by an average printer. What others (and me) are talking about is recording as completely as it is possible the light some marvelous Leica lenses are sending into the camera. If you follow your own reasoning about why more resolution sensors are then you should extend it to lenses, why then bother build excellent lenses when their qualities and resolution will be mostly lost in the process ? You don't need a sign. The distance is given by the field of view of the human eye. Up to a certain distance you will be able to see the whole photograph, get in closer and you will indeed become a detail-searching microscope. In that case the limiting factors would be the size of your printer and the wavelength of light. I would suggest that the way to view a photograph is by looking at the (whole) photograph. About lenses, there is indeed a reasoning in optical design that a resolution over 80 LP/mm does not improve lens quality. Higher resolutions at the optimum aperture/distance would only be needed to ensure that quality is maintained with less favourable parameters. The Rayleigh diffraction limit is 68 LP/mm. That means that the lens/sensor system will resolve no more detail beyond this number. The only way to increase detail is to increase the size of the sensor. Theoretically the maximum needed on a 25x36 sensor would be 38 MP( subject to correction by experts ) if my calculator does not fail me. In that case 24 is rather close, given that the increase in resolution is linear. A 36 MP sensor would be optimal, but one would be hard pressed to see the difference. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jto555 Posted December 13, 2015 Author Share #72 Posted December 13, 2015 I just photographed a set of portraits of a management team for a large multi-national company, (for Linkedin and web use) where I used my M 240 with a Leica 135mm APO at ƒ4.0. Result, the images are almost too sharp! I had to do quite a bit of skin softening, while retaining skin pores, to keep my subjects happy. So do I need more detail in my portraits... No. I do understand others may want more, but for me, I have enough already. If I need more then I will move up to medium format. On a side note, the worst comment I have had on a shoot, was while doing portraits of people who did not really want to be photographed and my client kept telling everybody "Don't worry, I (my client not me) will retouch all the pictures we get". AAAAAAAAAH, like I am going to supply bad un-retouched portraits. A quick Valium tab and I was fine... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdlaing Posted December 13, 2015 Share #73 Posted December 13, 2015 Ow about give us the 50 megapixels AND more dynamic range? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted December 13, 2015 Share #74 Posted December 13, 2015 I would rather a higher shutter speed than more bits - or both. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mirekti Posted December 13, 2015 Share #75 Posted December 13, 2015 I would rather a higher shutter speed than more bits - or both. No matter what higher ISO will come and faster shutter speed is not a bad request at all. I'd prioritize like this: Dynamic range - No.1 Shutter speed - No.2 More MP - put it in Sony instead ;-) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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