Z8 on the way with 60 MP

Pistnbroke

Well I hope this is true (multiple sources) as the chip has all the autofocus sensors built in in a way I hope will work.
The poor reports of autofocus accuracy on the Z6/7 is what puts me off. If it works well I will sell my D850 and use Z8 for the birds,
Do you want one at 60MP ? I bet it wont be cheap.

http://thenewcamera.com/nikon-d860-and-nikon-z8-to-carry-60mp-sensor-rumor/

BVS

Considering that it'll probably also come with a larger body with dual card slots and grip and such, and nobody else has a 60MP camera yet, I'd expect it to be at least $4,000+.

rmp

I'm so old, it is hard for me to imagine a camera/lens better than the z7/24-70 f4. But when new toys arrive, boys will play.

retread

D850, Z7 = 47 MP; D860, Z8 = 60 MP. Interesting thought. Do you think there will be a D850 replacement? Maybe a crown jewel for the last Nikon DSLR.

At an older age I still want to upgrade but not to a whole new system. Just don't see spending that much.

Symphotic

rmp said:

I'm so old, it is hard for me to imagine a camera/lens better than the z7/24-70 f4. But when new toys arrive, boys will play.

As one old guy to another, you might find an even better combination with the Z7/24-70 2.8. I am very keen on the 24-70 4 as weight and size are important to me. But I carried the Z7 and 24-70 2.8 S on a 7 mile hike around the upper end of Portsmouth Harbor in Hampshire on Saturday and the weight didn't bother me at all. I would not have felt that way if I had the D850 and the 24-70 2.8 G or E. It also seems to focus faster and snap right into place compared to the f/4.

Mrs. Roberts was not too happy when she saw the credit card bill, though. (I used the wrong card: I have a photography expense account I should have used, but it was late at night when I placed the order for the lens and I grabbed the wrong card.)

At this point, no: I can't see going to 60 MP. Let me have the 14-24 2.8 S instead.

donaldejose

Seems like a Z8 with 60 mp and good AF will be near the ultimate FX camera. At some point more mp may degrade image quality and be beyond the ability of FX lenses to resolve detail. Just be sure the body has two card slots!

WestEndFoto

That is probably a 100mp sensor Donaldjose for a lens that is diffraction limited at f/2.8 or so. Here is cheering for 2 card slots, something that feels like a D5 in my hand and my nutty square sensor idea.

Symphotic

WestEndFoto said:

That is probably a 100mp sensor Donaldjose for a lens that is diffraction limited at f/2.8 or so. Here is cheering for 2 card slots, something that feels like a D5 in my hand and my nutty square sensor idea.

Of course, the ideal sensor would be a circle. Then let us crop to what we want. It would take full advantage of the light transmitted through the lens. The only reason we are using rectangular shapes is because of the legacy of film. 60 MP in a circular imager makes sense.

mhedges

A square sensor would be cool, but I don't think it is possible with the Z mount due to the position of the contacts. They should have put the contacts on the sides, not the top. With the contacts on the top like they are they would block some of the light from reaching that portion of the sensor.

WestEndFoto

I am only asking for the ability to do a 30mm by 30mm square of flip between 24mm by 36mm landscape/portrait with a switch, rather than rotating the camera. This eliminates the need for a battery grip with buttons.

But a circle would also be nice.

retread

If memory serves me correctly I read somewhere that 29mm x 36mm was the largest sensor that would work with the contacts where they are. That should work good for a standard 8x10.

WestEndFoto

I will take what I can get. If true Nikon should have made their mount 57mm in diameter.

mhedges

The mount is plenty big enough as is, I think. Again, it's just where they put the contacts. If they were on the side (or better yet embedded into the flange itself) then there would be nothing precluding a taller sensor. But they chose to put them on the top.

PB_PM

Just 60MP, meh not enough, when it gets to 120MP, let's talk.

donaldejose

"That is probably a 100mp sensor Donaldjose for a lens that is diffraction limited at f/2.8 or so." F2.8 lens diffraction limitation is too narrow a definition. Not everyone wants to shoot everything at f2.8. You need to be able to use f4 with no loss of image quality and at least f5.6 or f8 before the image is degraded too much by diffraction. If you start to have image degradation at f5.6 and significant diffraction issue at f8 you began to have a limited use camera.

Pistnbroke

If I got it right a 60mp sensor would give me a 26MP DX crop. Not much improvement in POI over my D7200 for the birds.....

snakebunk

Nothing wrong with added megapixels. Resolution will be improved even if the improvement is less for each added pixel. And, for Bayer sensors, when there is no visible improvement in resolution there will still be improvements to the color rendition for many more megapixels.

I think we need something like 200-300 mps before a further increase makes no visible difference (given there is no revolutionary change in technology).

WestEndFoto

Donaldjose, without having a computer at my fingertips or the time to figure out, that is what we will run into with more resolution. 46mp already limits us to f/8.0. Maybe the real value at 100mp is between f/5.6 and f/4.0. There comes a time, however, that if you want more resolution, we need medium format. This has always been true. The only thing that sharper lenses and sensors are doing is increasing the resolution where the transition to medium format must occur.

WestEndFoto

Pistnbroke, you will have double the area with that POI, so less chance of accidentally cropping a wing. And a longer lens will get you more POI.

WestEndFoto

Snakebunk, there is no revolutionary change in technology that is going to help us with diffraction, just like no revolutionary change in technology is going to help us with the speed of light. It is a limit in physics, not engineering.

snakebunk

WestEndFoto: I just wanted to add that my reasoning is based on current technology (including diffraction). I think you can still see a small increase in resolution with added pixels even beyond diffraction, but at some point added pixels will not add to the resolution in any practical sense.

donaldejose

Agreed WestEndPhoto. I have read a couple of places that about 100 mp is the "end" of FX sensor usability and beyond that we need to move to medium format (by the time FX reaches 100 mp "small" medium format bodies costing about the same as a D single digit series body will be at 200 mp and very large prints from that 200 mp sensor will really "knock your socks off" creating a strong incentive to make that leap to medium format.

However, the "counter" trend is the increased use of "publishing" photos electronically instead of printing them poster size and for that use 12 megapixels will be enough for a long time to come. Most digital displays we use are only showing about 2 megapixels and I don't think there is any current display even capable of showing all 12 megapixels. We shoot and when we look at the resultant image on our digital display we see an image that has already been downsized to fewer megapixels than the original image. Maybe it has been downsized from 12 megapixels to two megapixels and then we go out and buy a D850 so our images can now be downsized from 45 megapixels to 2 megapixels!

I understand all the exceptions such as cropping, printing large and future proofing our work but if we are honest we have to admit that for so many uses the final image will never be seen other than on a digital display at 2 megapixels or printed at 8x10 (or sometimes up to 16 x 20 and hardly ever poster size). All that being said when Nikon produces a 60 megapixel sensor I will certainly buy one! Foolish me, cannot resist the temptation of more megapixels.

I just bought a used D700 for less than $400 because I want to see if all the comments of "special" color pop and great skin tone and "they will never build them this robust again" are true. If so, a D700 will be a great portrait camera when I know I will be shooting jpeg and the image will never be printed larger than 8x10. People just don't want 16x20 portraits. They have other stuff on the wall and even 8x10 is often too large to have in a frame on a table. I find the most requested and actually "used" print size today is 5x7. Increasingly, photos are only shared digitally either on cell phones or on social media. When people request portraits I am going to ask them what the end use will be and if it is not a huge poster size enlargement I am going to start shooting them with a 12 megapixel camera instead of with a 45 megapixel D850; just no need to spend extra post-processing time having my computer work with larger than needed files.

After having taken many thousands of portraits and post-processed them. I find that 16 to 24 megapixels and even DX sensor size (like the D500's 20 mp) are fully adequate for portrait use. F4 gives a clean image of the face and provides sufficient background blur if the background is far enough away from the model. Shooting portraits at f1.4 is problematic and a focus on achieving "great bokeh" is lost on almost all viewers of the final image because they are looking at the face, not the background. As long as some sufficient isolation of the face from the background is achieved, that is enough. F1.4 is actually best used when a 35 to 105 mm lens is shooting the subject full body. For waist up or headshots an 85 to 135 mm lens shot at f2.8 to f4 is best unless you have a moving subject and want to ensure the entire body is sharp, then f5.6 to f8 is best to cover any slightly missed focus as long as you chose a background which gives sufficient isolation.

The exception to these "rules" is the "environmental portrait" in which a sharp subject and a sharp background are equally important. This was a niche style which is becoming more "normal" simply because people are now so used to seeing most images shot with wide angle lenses at small aperture on cell phones. "Junk photography" body distortion is even more "normal" these days because of cell phone selfies and the huge body distortion seen on popular music videos shot with wide angle lenses and subjects deliberately close to the lens. In my opinion this is a bad thing and I refuse to do it. Traditional portraiture for me; no "junk photography!"

Symphotic

If you take a nice 36 MP pixel density on an FX sensor, but build it so the sensor is circular, you get a 113 MP sensor that you can crop to a rectangle, square, triangle or anything you like.

donaldejose

Wouldn't producing circular sensors "waste" a lot of space on the round silicone wafer compared to rectangular or square sensors? Thus, circular sensors would be more expensive per sensor because fewer could be produced on a wafer. Also, if you are going to use it in different orientations you have to have electronics which can "read" it in different ways. With current FX sensors does a DX crop mode setting just read out the DX part of the sensor or does it read the entire sensor output and then electronically crop the whole image to DX size after read out? It seems to me the larger the mp of the sensor the more computer processing power you will need to read or crop only the part you intend to use.

moreorless

BVS said:

Considering that it'll probably also come with a larger body with dual card slots and grip and such, and nobody else has a 60MP camera yet, I'd expect it to be at least $4,000+.

Yeah that would be my guess, a mirrorless camera with this sensor aiming more for the pro market sometime next year.

I mean in a way if your happy with a D850 you might be better off waiting, early use of this sensor will probably come at a premium where as if you get a D860/D900 come out a year or more down the line it might well be cheaper.

Indeed I think you could argue such a camera wouldn't be that expense a job for Nikon, basically port across the higher res sensor and in body VR from the mirrorless line.

mhedges

donaldejose said:

Agreed WestEndPhoto. I have read a couple of places that about 100 mp is the "end" of FX sensor usability and beyond that we need to move to medium format (by the time FX reaches 100 mp "small" medium format bodies costing about the same as a D single digit series body will be at 200 mp and very large prints from that 200 mp sensor will really "knock your socks off" creating a strong incentive to make that leap to medium format.

However, the "counter" trend is the increased use of "publishing" photos electronically instead of printing them poster size and for that use 12 megapixels will be enough for a long time to come. Most digital displays we use are only showing about 2 megapixels and I don't think there is any current display even capable of showing all 12 megapixels. We shoot and when we look at the resultant image on our digital display we see an image that has already been downsized to fewer megapixels than the original image. Maybe it has been downsized from 12 megapixels to two megapixels and then we go out and buy a D850 so our images can now be downsized from 45 megapixels to 2 megapixels!

How big of a print are they talking about? I've done 24x36" metal prints off 24 MP and it looks great. 200mp would give (about) a 72" x 108" print at the same pixel density. There's just not a need for something that big outside of certain commercial work.