Camera Labs

So, I had a big discussion with my sister about megapixels on a camera. She has a Canon IXUS 80 IS from like 2008, 8 MP and she wants a new camera because she says her cam doesn't make sharp pictures because of the 8 MP. She took a look on the internet and saw all them compact camera's with 16 and 14 MP and thingy's, and I told her the image quality doesn't lay on megapixels but she didn't believe me. She also doesn't know anything about her old Canon, her pictures where once very lowlight and blurry because she had chosen the worst settings te cam could have, saying it was *her cam's fold* that the pictures were bad. I showed her the difference between 16 MP and her 8 MP on a shot with exactly the same ISO, Apperture and shutter speed, and it turned out she thought I messed up my own settings -_-. I rely on the image uqality is about the size of the sensor but she didn't even know what a sensor was. MP was how good the picture was/ the higher the digital zoom the better etc. How can I prove her its not about the MP?

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Casio EX-FH100 Compact Camera, 24-240mm

Hi Raven,

Find a stunning picture on Flickr which has about the same number of pixels as your computer monitor. Show it to your sister at 100% and after she's gone "Wow" explain to her how many megapixels it is! Probably about 2 unless you have a very swish monitor.

Unfortunately that won't work so well if she wants to print her photos and you'd also want to multiply that monitor megapixel count by about 4 to achieve good oversampling. All bets are off if she wants to crop digitally.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

There's two things going on here. One is the eternal question of what is better at <i>a given technology level</i>, a lower or higher MP count. That's not so important here as the second fact. As a general trend, newer cameras have more MP. Everything gets improved over time, so in this sense, a new higher MP camera will tend to do much better than an old lower MP camera. This is not just sensor improvements, but also in processing and perhaps even lens design too. It all adds up.

At the end of the day, for this sort of application it doesn't matter if you have too many MP, as it is easy to resize down as needed afterwards.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Explain to her that it's not the size but the girth that counts more.

I'd rather have a 12MP full frame sensor than a 12MP 'ickle' one in a P&S

There are many ways to look at the pixel density discussion but if you do a quick internet search on "pixel density vs sensor size" you should find a few discussions on some areas of the topic.

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Nikon D90
Nikkor AF-S DX; 18-105 f/3.5-5.6G VR, 55-300 f/4.5-5.6G VR, 35mm f/1.8G
Speedlight SB-700

http://keystrokesukimages.com

Makes me thinking about the Canon G5 review I read yesterday. People were all angry because of the 5MP sensor instead of the 4 on the G3. Who needs 5MP? On such a tiny sensor? (1/1,8'', even bigger than most of the compact camera sensors)
You really need a perfect lens to exploit those 5 MP... And what about the increase of noise and the decrease of DR?

Compare the G5's lens to the standard P&S lenses, and the size of the sensor (1/2,5'' vs 1/1,8'') and the increase of the MP count from 5 to 15. Okay, it's a bit offtopic, but the G5 cantake excelent photos. If you know how to use it. Let her see some photos taken by the G3 (4MP) and dont tell her how many pixels the picture has. After that... You get the point.

I know how youre feeling. I often have discussions with everybody. ''Ive got an iPhone, why should I ever buy a DSLR? My iPhone even has more MPs than your DSLR. So it's better. Before I forget to say: It has five lenses in it, you only have one.''

Lovely.

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Ruben

Panasonic DMC-FZ18, Panasonic DMC-FZ28, Canon G5, Canon 350D, Canon 50D + BG-E2N
Tamron 17-50 2.8, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM,
Canon 18-55 II plus lots of Minolta MD/M42 lenses and bodies

what you CAN do is take her camera out, take some amazing pictures and say, hmmm, nothing seems to be wrong with this camera, I take excellent pictures with this. I just have to adjust the settings, which YOU dont do...

Or, buy her a new samsung 16MP camera and let her take horrible photos with it and say, "so when will you start listening to someone who knows how to take photos?"

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1) Olympus OM1 [Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8]
2) Pentax MZ-60 [Sigma 28-90 & 100-300]
3) Canon 7D [EF-S 15-85 & 70-200mm f/4 IS]

Leo's Flickr Page

Well - this shot was taken with an Olympus E100RS with 1.3MP (on a 1/2" chip) that was released in 2000:
http://simon.deobald.org/bilder/p5063220.jpg (Original shot, no PP)

Well - the picture is small but the quality isn't bad.


I can't say anything against a new camera but it's definitely not about the MP. Why the would someone buy the Canon EOS 1DX for 6000+$ if the image quality of a 150$ compact camera with 16MP should be close to that? Show her that forum and our answers

It's about the sensor (size) and the quality of the glass in front of it. The MP are only a way to count the pixels (=size of the images).

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Canon EOS 500D + Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Canon EF 24-105mm 4L IS USM + EF 100-400mm 4.5-5.6L IS USM + EF 100mm 2.8L Macro IS USM + Sigma 12-24mm 4.5-5.6 EX DG HSM + Canon Speedlite 580 EX II + Nissin Speedlite Di 466

It's not a bad picture considering it's age and for example it took phones 6 years to yield similar results at a higher resolution. And then with varying results on focus and exposure.

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Canon 5D MkII -|- Sigma 24mm f/1.8 | Carl Zeiss 35mm f/2.0 | Canon 50mm f/1.4 | Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro | Lensbaby Composer
Canon A-1 -|- Canon 28mm f/2 | Canon 35mm f/2.8 | Canon 50mm f/3.5 Macro

Easy solution. Take her camera out and take some great photos in daylight and then under low light and show how the same camera can capture really fine photos at low ISO, and then rather unspectacular ones at high ISO when there's not enough light. You could do a side by side test with two cameras to prove that both cameras suffer the same at low light.

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D: iPhone 4S, Canon 5DmII, Panasonic DMC-LX3, Fujifilm F30, Canon 30D, Nikon CoolPix 8700 | A: Leica M3, Holga 120N, Contax Tvs, Polaroid Spectra, Canon 50E, Rolleicord, Canon AE-1P
Canon lenses: 16-35L II, 24-70L, 50 1.4, 70-200 2.8L IS, 10-22

That sounds like a good solution

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Canon EOS 500D + Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Canon EF 24-105mm 4L IS USM + EF 100-400mm 4.5-5.6L IS USM + EF 100mm 2.8L Macro IS USM + Sigma 12-24mm 4.5-5.6 EX DG HSM + Canon Speedlite 580 EX II + Nissin Speedlite Di 466

Your sister is female, don't you know you can never win.


Cheers

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Nikon D7000, D40X, Nikkor 18- 200 VR II, f3.5-5.6, 70-300 AF non VR, Kit Lenses.

If you don't mind the shameless self-promotion, I took all these concert pics with my 4-megapixel Nikon D2H, except for the last one: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peppel/set ... 476886977/

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".