# Another how much is enough :-)



## privatebydesign (Jul 30, 2016)

So there are a few interesting threads at the moment talking about pixel counts and who needs or wants more or less of them. There is the 5DSr thread of Dustin's review ( http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=30383.0 ) the rumored 30MP count for the 5D MkIV ( http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=30388.0 ) and the entertaining 'Mega Pixel Chase' which seems to be deliberately misunderstood ( http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=30391.0 ) nothing new there then  .

As some of you know I have posted images and crops before with the idea being to illustrate how much, or not, do we really need as photographers to get the images we want. Recently in a thread Eldar posted a crop of an image from his 1DX MkII where he was impressed with the modest sized output, particularly considering he had mistakenly shot in sRAW. Now I am a printer at heart and he made me a challenge, _'how big could I print it?'_ ( http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=1280.msg608514#msg608514 ).

After some emails back and forth Eldar gave me permission to post not only my rework of his file but the full PS file with my adjustments on it. ( https://www.dropbox.com/s/lox5ywzakopdyj8/_V4I2480.psd?dl=0 ) It is a touch over 1GB, it is 16bit layer TIFF in the ProPhoto color space. It is like that because I did it as smart layers on smart objects so people could play with the adjustments themselves if they liked.

I did a very simple resample, I then made two layers and sharpened one and denoised the other and used appropriate masks on both.

Now all our standards and expectations are different and some have previously said mine are too low, to give some perspective I print for other photographers for exhibitions (I am a pro photographer and printing is my 'hobby'), I say that not to sound like the big I am but to put my experience in some perspective. Some of the people I print for are very demanding! But the real point is how do we make sure we are all looking at the same thing at the same size? So I link both the original PS file and a screen grab with scale. 

This file prints to 16"x24" at nose to print distance exceptionally well, the crop below is a screen shot of the file at print size with a life/print sized inch scale included. Just zoom the image in your browser, or download it, and zoom to get the scale to life size (hold a ruler to your screen) to get an accurate idea of the print detail. Remember this started as a 2,736 x 1,824 px image shot at 4,000 ISO. Second image shows full image.


I'll be interested in peoples opinions.

P.S. In the inline display the screen grab is resampled, you need to click on it to be able to get it the right size.


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## arthurbikemad (Jul 30, 2016)

Interesting stuff! I love to print my photo's, I used to work with large format printers so was easy to run a few tests  then Mitsubishi Dyesubs and so on, amazing back then how 150dpi looked so good! Anyway now I only have my 3880 so workflow is limited to that but with fineart papers and so on some of my work is flattered by such great media! Shooting with the 5D3 for the last three years has given me GAS for a Mk4 or 1DX2 (sold my 1DX1) however I have been looking at RAW from the 1DX2 and have been asking myself do I need more.... This year I have added some nice glass, 200 2.0 and a few others, now I am thinking sod the Mk4 and 1DX2 and buy a 500/4Mk2 to use with my teles and the old 5D3, then when the 5D3 dies check out whats what..


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## beforeEos Camaras (Jul 30, 2016)

wow that is from a s raw file iso 4000 it seems I need to learn more.

thank you for the example


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## Sporgon (Jul 30, 2016)

Private; that's amazing ! Your editing skills in turning that butterfly into an owl are fantastic.

Not sure that that is the output that Eldar would have had in mind, but Hey ! What the hell ! You're obviously a guy who has a thing for owls


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## privatebydesign (Jul 30, 2016)

Sporgon said:


> Private; that's amazing ! Your editing skills in turning that butterfly into an owl are fantastic.
> 
> Not sure that that is the output that Eldar would have had in mind, but Hey ! What the hell ! You're obviously a guy who has a thing for owls



Ha! Thanks for that Sporgon, link corrected


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## RGF (Jul 30, 2016)

To address the topic question, "how much is enough", there is a simple,e stupid answer that is true.

What ever the customer wants? Since IQ is a foreign concept to most of the buyers of cameras, MP is the key metric. If IQ were to be front and center photographer's skill set would be important and what company is going to tell the customer's that they are not good photographers?


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## brad-man (Jul 30, 2016)

Sporgon said:


> Private; that's amazing ! Your editing skills in turning that butterfly into an owl are fantastic.



I must be too late for the owl link, but I still think it's pretty impressive that he was able to make a butterfly look like a moth 

Did it involve Rogaine?

Too much?


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## GuyF (Jul 30, 2016)

arthurbikemad said:


> ...sod the Mk4 and 1DX2 and buy a 500/4Mk2 to use with my teles...



Buy one and don't look back. Expensive, but there is no substitute for quality glass (which is what I keep telling myself when I think that I don't use my one as much as I should!).

(Will UK prices go up after 1st Aug as per the Brexiteers' opinions?)


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## Sporgon (Jul 30, 2016)

brad-man said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > Private; that's amazing ! Your editing skills in turning that butterfly into an owl are fantastic.
> ...


Touché ! I obviously couldn't see the moth for the owl ;D


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## privatebydesign (Jul 30, 2016)

RGF said:


> To address the topic question, "how much is enough", there is a simple,e stupid answer that is true.
> 
> What ever the customer wants? Since IQ is a foreign concept to most of the buyers of cameras, MP is the key metric. If IQ were to be front and center photographer's skill set would be important and what company is going to tell the customer's that they are not good photographers?



No generally customers are very poorly informed. Especially back in the 4mp 1D days many times I have done basic resampled to give them the numbers they say they want and not one has ever rejected it or even been aware of what I did!


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## Dylan777 (Jul 30, 2016)

Great question  I'm currently own 42MP, 18MP and 12MP. I do find all have special places in my everyday photos. 42MP gives me SUPER detail on my 4k monitor, while the 12MP gives me excellent high ISO shots.

So, back to OP question "how much is enough"? To me the answer is let's the shooters decide the cameras that fit their shooting styles or type of photography they do.


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## privatebydesign (Jul 30, 2016)

Dylan777 said:


> Great question  I'm currently own 42MP, 18MP and 12MP. I do find all have special places in my everyday photos. 42MP gives me SUPER detail on my 4k monitor, while the 12MP gives me excellent high ISO shots.
> 
> So, back to OP question "how much is enough"? To me the answer is let's the shooters decide the cameras that fit their shooting styles or type of photography they do.



Your 4K screen is just over 8mp..........


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## Dylan777 (Jul 30, 2016)

privatebydesign said:


> Dylan777 said:
> 
> 
> > Great question  I'm currently own 42MP, 18MP and 12MP. I do find all have special places in my everyday photos. 42MP gives me SUPER detail on my 4k monitor, while the 12MP gives me excellent high ISO shots.
> ...



Yes and I do see HUGE different between 42MP Vs 12MP.


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## Sporgon (Jul 30, 2016)

So this is from the guy who said, and I quote, "Put the 5DsR sensor in the 1Dx body and take my money" ! 

Pretty good image, good enough for me anyway, but then again I am mainly interested in print. Did you say this was from a 3mp file ? Says a lot for the original data. 

As we go into these dense larger sensors I'm finding that even though I prepare the full size image with no sharpening applied at all I am still having to apply a subtle gaussian blur on the smaller output files to stop them looking brittle. If Canon did produce a 5 series with a "low" mp sensor option around 12 to 14 mp I'd certainly be very interested, especially as I do a lot of stitched images. 

As private and unfocused have said in other threads, it is the effect on work flow speed, and that worries me with the very large file sizes, especially when working is multi-layer 16 bit and hundreds of images at a time, and I have a pretty powerful iMac that is about one year old. I was recently going through some old 5D files and working on them was bliss, the processor zipped through the work with these 13 mp files. 

I thought that the 50 mp sensor would show a significant improvement in colour definition over say a 22 mp one, but I'm not so sure now; I think now that a larger format, even if it has less mp is better in this regard, so for instance stitching three vertical 5D 12.7 mp resulting in about 26 mp files is giving better colour definition that a single 5Ds file.

When it comes to how much is enough I think there has to be enough resolution to not obviously degrade the image at its required output size, so this is subjective to what the output size is and someone's opinion. 

A good friend who is contracted to a significant international company has recently begun shooting a fair amount of 4K video with the C500. The client is now preferring to take their still images from the 4K video because they have so much flow of images to choose from. I believe that the "Super 35" sensor is about APS-c size and in the region of 9 mp, so in this case 9 is enough to replace the 5Diii's 23.


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## Eldar (Jul 31, 2016)

I am finally home and able to download the file, to have a look. As I said to pbn, I was quite surprised, when I realised this was shot in sRAW. The image I originally posted was 1824x1824 (pure 1:1 crop of the original of 2736x1824), but I thought it looked really good. 

It was interesting to have pbn´s view on how big he thought he could print this butterfly (it is a male silver-studded blue, Plebejus argus, and not a moth  ). And to me, it is clear that you can print this, with good quality, as large as 16x24, which makes the markets cry for ever more resolution look a bit weird. 

Thanks for the effort Scott!


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## brad-man (Jul 31, 2016)

Eldar said:


> It was interesting to have pbn´s view on how big he thought he could print *this butterfly (it is a male silver-studded blue, Plebejus argus, and not a moth * ). And to me, it is clear that you can print this, with good quality, as large as 16x24, which makes the markets cry for ever more resolution look a bit weird.
> 
> Thanks for the effort Scott!



Oops. Sorry Sporgon. Is my face red 8)


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## arthurbikemad (Aug 5, 2016)

GuyF said:


> arthurbikemad said:
> 
> 
> > ...sod the Mk4 and 1DX2 and buy a 500/4Mk2 to use with my teles...
> ...



I did! Get it in a day or two, will go nice with my tele's 1.4 and 2.0 Mk3's. Now to resave and get the 1DX2 later on when I know whats what with the 5D Mk4, however I did think no matter what spec the Mk4 will be it will never be a 1DX2! I think I will keep the 5D3 as a backup/short camera and get a 1DX2 for the long/action stuff, prob end up just using the 1DX2. Can't wait to see how this 500mm 4.0 Mk2 goes!


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## Maximilian (Aug 5, 2016)

Eldar said:


> ...
> And to me, it is clear that you can print this, with good quality, as large as 16x24, *which makes the markets cry for ever more resolution look a bit weird*.
> 
> Thanks for the effort Scott!


Thanks for the effort to all of you and thanks for such clear words.

I can understand what amazing things are possible with modern digital photo technology and even more MP, 
but as I always said: 
"Please give me better over more pixels!" 

And I think it is about time for those wanting more and more to understand, that Canon does not have to release a new body line for those that say 20 -30 MP are enough but that Canon ALREADY did release a new high MP line called 5Ds(R).
And if you don't like the MP number or IQ or FPS of those 50 MP then complain about making this line better but not to convert a 5D IV (or X) into another MP monster.


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## Labdoc (Aug 5, 2016)

I would like 30MP and over some of the time. It's really handy shooting wildlife and landscapes due to the enormous crop capabilities. My understanding is that Canon lets you choose 24MP on the 5Ds but the file is still 50MP but with the edges cropped. If you could really choose the file size it wouldn't be a big deal for storage and manipulation most of the time, except for the files you want at 50MP.

Regardless, the MP race will go on. Just progress and competition. I'm old enough to remember my first 16 bit 286 computer with a 20 MB hard drive and that was state of the art then. No way out of this, just upgrade and move on.


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## Maximilian (Aug 5, 2016)

Labdoc said:


> ...
> My understanding is that Canon lets you choose 24MP on the 5Ds but the file is still 50MP but with the edges cropped. If you could really choose the file size it wouldn't be a big deal for storage and manipulation most of the time, except for the files you want at 50MP.


There are different opportunities, just read the manual:
You can choose between file size, RAW (50MP) mRAW (28MP) and sRAW (12MP), that means using the whole FF sensor surface with all advantages of light gathering and DOF but downsampling the data to the MP size mentioned above. 

And you can also crop to APS-H (1.3x, 30.5 MP) or APS-C (1.6x, 19.6 MP), that means using a smaller area of the sensor but maintaining the 1 to 1 data from each pixel. But here you'll lose the thin DOF and light gathering advantage of tha FF sensor and just crop already on the camera.

You can also change the aspect ratio but that's up to you to read.

All three are modi I don't need and I don't want to use.
If they're fine for you, go get a 5Ds(R).



> Regardless, the MP race will go on. Just progress and competition. I'm old enough to remember my first 16 bit 286 computer with a 20 MB hard drive and that was state of the art then. No way out of this, just upgrade and move on.


And I am old enough to remember that program code was loaded from punch card and Datasette and took ages. Here we have a huge advantage in speed and killed it even faster by making OS (!) that are now needing 1 GB and more on HDD and several hundred MB on RAM. What did we gain here? Not so much over GEM, AmigaOS, Max OS or Linux, IMO. One thing, of course: higher graphic processing power and therefore the ability to process 50MP pictures


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## Labdoc (Aug 5, 2016)

Maximilian said:


> Labdoc said:
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> 
> > ...
> ...



Thanks for the info, might do 5Ds, just waiting to see the specs on the 5D MK4. Didn't want to mention the 8 bit punch card systems I used in the Navy, seems like a million years ago.


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## arthurbikemad (Aug 5, 2016)

It was a million years ago


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## chauncey (Aug 5, 2016)

I posted this query on another forum with , as you could imagine, a variety of responses.

"I've got numerous 22 MP (12.5 x 18.75) images that are stellar @ 200% magnification...
I am also anal retentive about having prints capable of nose-length viewing distance. 

What is the best way to up-size that 22 MP image to something in the area of 24 x 36" and
maintain that same print nose length viewing distance?"

As my only interest is metal prints via a major printing dealer...would I be wise in having them 
up-size or do it myself in PS CC?


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## GuyF (Aug 5, 2016)

arthurbikemad said:


> I did!



Good man! If you're not used to the size of such a big lens it seems absolutely huge when you first take it out of the case but you do get used to it. I'm not a fan of the sort of lens cap you get with it so use Op/Tech hood hats. Cheap enough and you can fold 'em up into a pocket when not in use (or stick it on a small child's head like a beret).

Anyway, enjoy Christmas in August - sharper than a sharp thing and hardly any loss of quality with the 1.4x mk3. The 2x mk3 can still give very sharp results but the lens has to be rock steady and nail the focus.


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## arthurbikemad (Aug 5, 2016)

GuyF said:


> arthurbikemad said:
> 
> 
> > I did!
> ...



Cheers GuyF, will hunt out a hood for the new lens, can't wait to get shooting.


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## Ozarker (Sep 2, 2016)

Labdoc said:


> Maximilian said:
> 
> 
> > Labdoc said:
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The worst part was dropping a stack. :'(


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