Your Move Nikon..50 MP?

haroldp

Lets not confuse pixel 'sharpness' with image 'sharpness' (whatever that means).

There is no circumstance given identical lens, and 'shake', where the 50 (or 100 or 200) mp image is less 'sharp' than the 36 (or 12 or 3) mp image at the same displayed or printed image size unless noise got in the way.

One might upon pixel peeping (much greater magnification), be more able to discern the 'shake' as the cause.

This is also true with diffraction.

If the cost and noise and frame rate are the same, there is no downside to more pixels except more storage and computing time in PP.

There are situations where more pixels do not give a useful benefit such as documenting the 'welcome to Montana' sign, but that is a personal, not technical discussion.

... H

donaldejose

As to the practical realities of Nikon producing a 56 mp sensor I note that ALL Nikon's current DX sensors are 24mp. The technical aspects of producing a sensor with the pixel size needed for a 24mp DX sensor or a 56mp FX sensor are solved and they must be easily produced. Perhaps increasing the size from DX to FX may create a higher error rate but the production of such a sensor surely must be easily possible.

Ironheart

The pixel sizes we are talking about are like comparing sky scrapers to lawn mowers at the chip level. Current chip feature sizes are measures in nanometers, whereas pixel sizes are measured in micrometers. That's a difference of 1000. You can put hundreds of transistors (which are larger than features) into the space occupied by a single pixel. Nikon (and others doing similar research) are making hundreds of sensors that have, 50, 100, 200 mega pixels in DX, FX, medium format, and larger and smaller, every day for R&D purposes. The cost of these chips is prohibitive to bring them to market. When they figure out how to get the cost (meaning yield) in line, they will ship, simple as that.

PB_PM

Not to mention having processors fast, and efficient, enough to deal with the digital noise at that pixel pitch. Oh and RAM (aka Buffer) big enough to handle the files. We need to keep in mind that a great deal (at least 50%) of the improved "sensor" performance over the last 10 years has actually come from AD conversion improvements.

As for cramming in more pixels just for the sake of it, meh. 24-36MP are fine. Heck so is 12 for most uses. Of course there will always been people who want, and or need more.

haroldp

Nikon (and others doing similar research) are making hundreds of sensors that have, 50, 100, 200 mega pixels in DX, FX, medium format, and larger and smaller, every day for R&D purposes. The cost of these chips is prohibitive to bring them to market. When they figure out how to get the cost (meaning yield) in line, they will ship, simple as that.

These are being produced for military purposes so that a satellite can read Pravda over your shoulder in Gorky Park.

Still much cheaper than parachuting and catching film containers (with jet fighters) and then discarding the satellite when film ran out.

This project was the genesis of digital photography, the US air force funding Eastman Kodak's invention of the digital sensor. Mr. Beyer was an employee of Eastman Kodak.

The military is always looking for more resolution in 'passive' surveillance.

... H

Snowleopard

I don't get the complaining about file sizes and slow to open files on computers with 36mp, 50mp..... When the D800 came out and I saw how big the files were, and I was planning on upgrading a computer anyway, I planned purchase around an I7 with 32gb of ram, 1TB SSD for a boot drive, and 2 1TB hard drives in raid 0 with an 8x 4 layer (128gb) blu ray burner.

Instead of whining, I knew it was going to happen. I am able to edit 36,50,60 and 80mp raw files on the road and files open in 1-2 seconds, edit fast, save fast.

I guess if you buy an i5 Macbook Air or Macbook Pro, or a Cheap abit affordable HP, Dell, Lenovo, for $499 and expect it to blow your mind away with high speed processing, then that is the fault of the person buying the computer. It has nothing to do with the camera, or the camera being 36 or 50mp.

I also thought there was a video posted here about diffraction, where, while a D800 has more diffraction than say a D700, because there is so much resolution, you can apply a minor amount of post sharpening and the diffraction almost goes away completely and you still have a 36mp file.

In that respect, diffraction bothers me about 0.001% right now.

vtc2002

Sorry for the late response but I disagree with the comments about not printing. My mentor and teacher made me print my photos and hang them iin places where I would walk by them each day. It was a great exercise. The light that would hit them in the morning brought out different quslitiess than mid day or evening light. It also helped walking by photos that where I had made mistakes. They were visual reminder of my mistakes, rather than never seeing the image or today deleting them from my memory card and moving on without learning a thing. I cannot remember the exact quote but he said something along the lines that the negative is comparable to the composers score and the print to the performance.
I have not had a client that said I only want images that I can display them on my phone, I do not want a print that I can frame. I also have sent photos to people thst have viewed them and called and said they looked bad after asking a few questions they were viewing them on a cheap monitor, once they saw the printed imagr they were happy. Getting in the habit of cropping images to get the desired results at some point will catch up with you at some point. There will never be enough mega pixels using this technique.
My comments are not to offend anyone as they are the way I was taught and I believe they are as relevant today with digital cameras as they were with film.

safyre

I don't get the complaining about file sizes and slow to open files on computers with 36mp, 50mp..... When the D800 came out and I saw how big the files were, and I was planning on upgrading a computer anyway, I planned purchase around an I7 with 32gb of ram, 1TB SSD for a boot drive, and 2 1TB hard drives in raid 0 with an 8x 4 layer (128gb) blu ray burner.

Instead of whining, I knew it was going to happen. I am able to edit 36,50,60 and 80mp raw files on the road and files open in 1-2 seconds, edit fast, save fast.

I guess if you buy an i5 Macbook Air or Macbook Pro, or a Cheap abit affordable HP, Dell, Lenovo, for $499 and expect it to blow your mind away with high speed processing, then that is the fault of the person buying the computer. It has nothing to do with the camera, or the camera being 36 or 50mp.

I also thought there was a video posted here about diffraction, where, while a D800 has more diffraction than say a D700, because there is so much resolution, you can apply a minor amount of post sharpening and the diffraction almost goes away completely and you still have a 36mp file.

In that respect, diffraction bothers me about 0.001% right now.

And this is exactly why a vast majority don't need more megapixels. If you don't want to deal with the larger file sizes, you do not need 36 or 50mp. I personally am still fine with 12mp because these days a lot of images are taken for social media and even 3 megapixels is more than sufficient for those purposes. If you do any sort of volume shooting, 50mp is gonna be more trouble than its worth.

Lennon

C'mon Nikon, you can do it. At least 50 MPs if not more, if Sony will sell them to you. I've got 2 Nikkor and 5 Zeiss ZF lenses I can't sell so I'd like to put them to use if I could.

paulr

You don't need 50MPs to use Zeiss ZF lenses, Only the Otus range ware specifically designed for high out-put MPs cameras. Zeiss ZF lenses sell very well on Ebay.

haroldp

The primary difference between these lines of lenses is how they perform wide open. At F1.4 an Otus is sharper than a ZF, at F2.8 or 4 or 5.6 the Otus is indistinuishable from a ZF (or Nikkor D), and all can fully utilize a D810.

So can your kit lens at F8.

Almost all recent Nikon lenses can do so, just not wide open.

... H

paulr

For those pondering about Nikon Hight Mps Cameras and the Zeiss Otus Lens this is worth a view