HOW MANY MEGAPIXELS IS TOO MUCH?

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

When I was thinking of moving from film to digital photography a few months ago, I was loaded with greed for megapixels. Then digital SLRs were just inching up their standards from 6 megapixel to 8mp with Canon launching EOS 350D/Rebel XT. But technology in DSLRs is moving fast and more and more megapixels were getting squeezed into those few inches. Canon is slowly moving towards full frame sensors and at the same time increasing the resolution beyond 10mps. But how much do we really need?

I was pondering about it yesterday and was wondering if it won't take too long for my 8mp camera to go obsolete and 12mp become the norm. At the same time, I thought about problems that would be coming with it. The 8mp raw image converted to tiff format comes up to as big as 46MB. And it is common knowledge that big prints can be taken comfortably with the resolution offered. On the downside, my computer which can be said as "normal configuration" with 512MB RAM and 80G hard disk starts crawling real slow when I load my imaging softwares - Canon Digital Photo Professional(DPP) and Photoshop. Upgrading to 10 or 12mp would definitely require me to upgrade to a more powerful computer and more investment.

Another factor is the lenses: ask Michael Reichmann(of luminous landscape) and he will tell you about it. When he bought his EOS 1D, his existing 100-400L was no longer good enough for the camera and he had to upgrade to a sharper prime. The problem is that bigger resolution shows all the flaws that it can, and you can no longer shoot with your good old lens which you thought gives you ultra sharp images.

I am sure soon we will discover that we will require upgrading to new and robust softwares as we move up the megapixel ladder. Many more such things may soon be needed. That would only make us gear junkies and we will end up spending more time acquiring latest stuff, researching and working on the images at home than spend time taking pictures. At the same time, when the whole world would be moving up the value chain, you may no longer feel secure and comfortable staying behind and watching, holding your old 8mp camera. Eventually digital cameras I think might become like computers - upgrade or face obsolescence!

I did some searching around to see what others have to say about it. See Ken Rockwell's opinions on The Megapixel Myth.