Really “Is it the end of M road”?

[StS]

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No disrespect intended to you or other members of your chosen profession, but whenever I inform my superiors that I'm exiting work for an appointment, I quip, 'Out of the office this afternoon, off to visit the medieval torture chamber.'  I suspect in this day and age, there are more than a few photographers who'd regard making images with an overpriced, underspec'd, manual focus rangefinder to be a conceptually similar form of punishment.  In my case, I can no more tolerate the pain of shooting with a Sony than that brought on by an abscessed tooth.  Some remedies are simply worth the cost, regardless. So not all that far off topic. 

 

Well yes, but fortunately for everyone the choice of cameras is very rich, so there should be something for everyone. Do you think that, say, an artisan making chairs considers this as torture, because he does not have an automatic CNC machine? I once helped a colleague to carry a plate to a carpenter over the street because he had a big saw, when my colleague commented, that he always wanted to be a carpenter, the craftsman just smiled and said "they all say this".

 

Stefan

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[Gobert]

I suppose that you are aware that it is virtually impossible to compare incomes between different countries, let alone the gross turnover before costs of a business.

The average income of a dentist in our country is three times the median income.

However, the dentist is taxed much less compared to the average worker.

[jaapv]

??? We have progressive taxes. How do you work that one out? I will happily hire you as tax advisor.

 

If this continues I'll have to split it and move it to the `bar.

[01af]

So how do three pictures all taken on the same sensor show what improvement (if any) I would get with a "better" sensor.

Sigh ... I was assuming you own that 90 mm Tele-Elmar for a while now and can compare its pictures on M10 to pictures from the same lens on film, M8, and M9. In post #185 it's you who said it shines on the M10. The better the sensor, the brighter these old lenses shine, even though they were never meant to be used on digital. Obviously, you don't feel like dumping your old lenses because they under-perform on a modern high-resolution sensor, do you?

 

And why do you feel that the current megapixel count is fine but the very next increase is going to be a problem? People always keep falling for this distorted notion. When everybody had 6 or 8 MP, people thought 11 MP are going to be a problem. When everybody had 12 or 16 MP, they thought current lenses cannot possibly serve 24 MP. Now everybody has 24 MP, and consequently they start fretting about 40 or 50 MP. And it's always about the very same lenses, most of them originally designed for use on film. High-resolution sensors don't out-perform lenses. Instead, the higher their resolution, the better they're making use of what the lens can do. If you don't believe me then simply look at your own experience over the past 20 years.

 

 

[adan]

Yep - no significant difference with that 90 on the M8, M9 or M10 - except for the M8 crop, and the M10's higher ISO range. It shone on all of them. What I said was that the clarity of digital (whether 10, 18 or 24 Mp - any of them) enhanced that particular lens over its film performance.

 

The megapixels really don't add anything, in themselves. In fact, per pixel, the M9 was slightly sharper than the M10 or the M240 ( I won't speculate why), with any lens - the only thing the extra pixels did was to make up for that failing. Equal detail resolved.

 

I bought the M10 for the higher ISOs and quieter shutter and smaller thickness and larger finder magnification and better color (than the M240, with the same pixel count). The 24 Mpixels were just something I got stuck with, as part of the package.

 

As to why the next pixel-count increase won't add anything much - once one has filled up a glass, it doesn't get any fuller by pouring in more water.  Look at the math I already posted - if the lens is outputting 80 lppm, it will output 80 lppm regardless of whether the sensor behind it captures 160 samples, or 200 samples, or 320 samples or 640 samples per mm. 160 is sufficient (per Shannon-Nyquist) to capture everything the lens can produce. Beyond that, one is just wasting 1s and 0s on fuzziness. The actual captured resolution curve goes flat for most lenses at or around 24 Mpixels, (or even lower depending on the lens).

Edited August 8, 2018 by adan

[pgk]

High-resolution sensors don't out-perform lenses. Instead, the higher their resolution, the better they're making use of what the lens can do.

 

No they are not. They are simply taking more samples of the image formed by the lens. Whether this is better use depends on many factors. As an example, if you take a large format lens and use varying MPixel Full Frame sensors to sample its central image you will find that you reduce noise and produce smoother tonal transitions as you have previously pointed out, BUT this is not actually making better use of the image in that it cannot increase resolution of non-existant detail nor combat any optical flaws - there is no additional image information for greater MPixel sensors to obtain.

 

If you want to think of it in more scientific terms consider an aerial 'mapping' image. Increasing the sensor's ability using greater MPixels will not help resolve detail unresolved by the lens, it will merely give a smoother, less noisy and tonally more even one. Is this relevant? Well I don't think so myself as I'm pretty sure that, could I be bothered, a similar result could be obtained using software, because there is no information gain in either instance.

 

If on the other hand a lens is capable of laying down information which a sensor can record then more MPixels are useful.

 

The problem with older lenses is that their performance is actually uneven in that some resolve very well centrally and then poorly peripherally. Using them on a high MPixel sensor allows central information to be resolved but its irrelevant at the edges. The overall impression is fine because we look centrally more than peripherally and many subjects are a good fit with this.

[M11 for me]

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This is very intersting discussion to me. Can someone maybe put all of that in relation to cropping. Many photographers claim that with a 50Mpix Sensor you can easily crop and you have still a sharp result as you have a lot of data. Cutting off half of it gives you still a picture with plenty of information. Think of photographers who shoot birds in flight with a 600mm lens and then crop in post. They claim to need the high resolution sensor. How true is that then?

[mmradman]

Regardless of Mp count of the latest M camera one thing remains constant here on LUF; defending current as best camera until next camera sometime with new sensor comes along.

 

If 24Mp was all that is needed to have maximum out of full frame than Canon, Nikon and Sony would never produce anything with more than 24Mp, ever.  Only for upmanship perhaps?

 

What OlaF is saying has been stated elsewhere in the past by knowledgeable pundits; picture quality is resultant of lens and sensor quality. Adan, you are knowledgeable but you really play rearguard "24Mp" action here.

[jaapv]

This is very intersting discussion to me. Can someone maybe put all of that in relation to cropping. Many photographers claim that with a 50Mpix Sensor you can easily crop and you have still a sharp result as you have a lot of data. Cutting off half of it gives you still a picture with plenty of information. Think of photographers who shoot birds in flight with a 600mm lens and then crop in post. They claim to need the high resolution sensor. How true is that then?

There are other things that come into the cropping discussion. It is not just about pixel numbers, but about pixel size, acuity, tonal and contrast transitions etc. The subject is a difficult one as soon as we start comparing a crop with a longer focal length, or extender. Actually, the only real way to get an answer is to test and judge.

[pgk]

What OlaF is saying has been stated elsewhere in the past by knowledgeable pundits; picture quality is resultant of lens and sensor quality.

 

It is! But only when the lens is capable of providing relevant data. Oversampling can change our perception of data but not the data itself. So to take the Super-Angulon f/3.4 as an example, no increase in MPixels beyond that relevant to record the available corner detail, will increase that corner detail even though it may record it as appearing to have smoother tonality (which can also be done via software). On the other hand the centre resolves well so higher MPixels may well help here.

 

Relative to 24MPixels, the 50/2 Apo-Summicron will probably benefit from many more MPixels but an old 1930'2 50mm Elmar probably won't in terms of what can be recorded.

 

I'm surprised just how little impact Canon made with its 50MPixel cameras - they should have been 'the next best thing' but haven't really impinged as much as might have been expected. Why?

 

The ideal way of appreciating how lenses and sensors interact should be by using MTF cascades but I don't see this being carried out so I suspect that its not as simple or marketable as all that.

Edited August 8, 2018 by pgk

[jaapv]

I'm not convinced that smoothing tonality through software is capable of obtaining the same result as doing so optically, However, isn't this conversation about photography? Which means that we are talking about the perception of the data.

[pgk]

I'm not convinced that smoothing tonality through software is capable of obtaining the same result as doing so optically, However, isn't this conversation about photography? Which means that we are talking about the perception of the data.

 

It should be because its mathematics should be reproducible unlike those of enhancing data when it doesn't exist.

 

Perception of data is what photography is ALL about but that said you still do have to have data to perceive. Do you think that using a 1GByte sensor to sample an image from a 1930s 50mm Elmar is relevant to this discussion? At some point no further gains in perceptible differences are going to be made. Perhaps that is the relevant limit to understand?

[jaapv]

And the way those data are rendered. The problem with this discussion is that it focuses on MP count and plain recording of detail.

We all know that there are a host of other factors that determine the rendering, Even if the sensor can resolve more detail than the lens can, things like edge transitions etc. will still benefit from the higher resolving sensor. Even if you don't draw more detail, using a finer pen will make a difference.

[pgk]

Even if you don't draw more detail, using a finer pen will make a difference.

 

But not necessarily a 'better' picture. Which is what those who contend that more MPixels are always better often fail to appreciate. As you say there are many factors which make up an image which is why bland and pointless statements like those linked to in the OP are so stupid.

[mmradman]

Lets take DL out of equation for minute due to his mis-use of the equipment, for instance insisting on EVF or RF camera.

Good picture, technically speaking, is always result obtained by good sensor and good lens.  Improving either sensor or lens or both should always produce better picture, unless for some quirk of combined factors opposite to good is the result, which again may be perception.

 

So, i think there is technical and emotional argument here.  Technically combining tow goods or betters always produces good/better.  Arguing that current Leica 24Mp against 3-rd party >24Mp seems always triggers tooth & nail response.

[pgk]

Unfortunately, objectivity is difficult to find on a web forum because many participants seem to want to be right without understanding what they are actually requiring. The basic problem here is that we want ever better image quality but don't want to understand that we are getting to the stage where image quality is:

 

a). Already sufficient for most needs

. Not going to advance dramatically because this would require substantial advances in technology and we are already into relatively small advances at this stage

c). Difficult to actually quantify and assess because the differences are largely nuances

 

For anyone who doubts this they should try a 'cheap' dSLR with relatively 'cheap' lenses. Being quite objective, it already difficult to justify in purely cost terms the better quality obtainable for equipment which costs 10x as much because the base quality of the cheap gear is already good.

 

Which is why anyone arguing that an M10 is not up to landscape photography is quite simply wrong.

[mmradman]

Already sufficient for most needs in context of the current M10 means that it is the pinnacle. For me 24Mp is more than enough but i don't accept argument that is the absolute.  

Even some 10 year old Nikon D40 [6Mp DX sensor] with Nikkor 35mm f1.8 DX lens at base ISO is exceptional image making machine, so why seek for more. 

[onasj]

Almost every photo I've taken has benefited from some cropping.  Sometimes, the cropped region is quite a small fraction of the total frame, as I noted and documented in some examples here:

https://leicarumors.com/2018/07/21/comparison-of-leica-m10-vs-sony-a7r3-with-the-best-of-leica-vs-sony-lenses.aspx/

 

In these cases, my experiences with the 36+ MP sensors (Nikon D800E/D810/D810A/Sony A7riii) is that they indeed offer more maintenance of image quality for tight crops... provided that the light is sufficient to allow every pixel to count.

 

That last caveat is important, since a capture that pushes the signal:noise (ISO) limits of the sensor can often result in unacceptable noise when cropped, regardless of the native resolution of the sensor.

 

In any case I have not found any real downside to higher-resolution sensors thus far; computer storage and processing speed continues to grow at a sufficient pace to make file handling not problematic for my workflow at least.  

 

We are fortunate in the Leica M world that much of the M glass is capable of outresolving Leica's current-generation M and SL sensors.  So long as that is true, there will always be potential benefits, under some circumstances at least, for higher resolution sensors.

 

It's true that 24 MP is more than enough for most situations.  But so is an iPhone, to be honest.  I suspect many who choose Leica cameras and lenses are not simply trying to cover "most situations", but rather situations that push the boundaries of available light, spontaneity, unique compositions, unusual environments, etc. etc.  It's totally reasonable for customers as discerning (and willing to pay) as many of Leica's clients to expect the best from these premium products.  I can't really see how 24 MP is the best currently, and I believe both the new S coming around late 2018, and future M/SL cameras, will see a bump up in sensor resolution over their predecessors.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[bocaburger]

Idk what Leica has in store for the future, all I know is I won't (nor did I ever) pay Leica's prices for anything other than an optomechanical rangefinder camera (because they're the only ones making one) and even then, I will only buy demo or pre-owned.  It's not a matter of affordability.  I tend to be rather extravagant in general.  It's a matter of personal perception of value. 

[Jon Warwick]

I don’t think 24mp is sufficient for me, given I like the flexibility to print large with an image quality that I deem acceptable.

 

If you make a very large print (say 50x33 inches), it may be that 40-50mp doesn’t record massively more “visible” fine detail compared to 24mp when you stand back to look at the print in its entirety.

 

But it’s pretty apparent that less resampling in post off a 50mp camera means less “blur”, higher acuity, less moire, less false colour, and more accurate tonal transitions.

 

All of those make it compelling to me to have a higher megapixel Leica full frame than 24mp.

 

Given the small sensored Leica CL is already 24mp, that should extrapolate to 40mp+ for Leica’s full frame sensors in the future.

 

I assume that will especially be the case when megapixels on Leica’s 35mm full frames aren’t boxed in for marketing purposes by Leica’s 37mp medium format S range.