Canon5Dtips Photography is more than words.
After reading the article How many megapixels are enough at the digital photography school and reading the comments, I felt compelled to make a post about it. After all, as the owner of both a 5DMrkII and this website, I have to have an opinion on the subject!
Why megapixels are important?
When you talk about megapixel count, most people think about maximum print size. While this is true, there is more to it than that, especially since so few people print anymore.
First, the more pixels you have to play with, the more flexibility you have in your cropping choices. For example, it is almost possible to fit a portrait picture taken from the original 5d in a Canon 5DMrkII landscape picture! This very useful when you are not sure about the perfect crop for a shot or simply when you realize that a shot is more interesting with an alternative crop. Or you can even just point the camera in a general direction, take a picture then crop it afterward, paparazzi style.
The next big advantage might be a bit less obvious to most people: post processing treatment. The premise is simple: the more pixel you have in a picture, the smoother curves and gradations can be. It is the same with sharpening. This is why fashion photographers use medium format camera: they want their negatives to be as big as possible so their retoucher could more easily smooth the skin and sharpen the eyes/hair. If you dont trust me, resize one of your picture to 800×1200 and apply the same post processing tasks as you did on the original and see the difference. See? More megapixel is better for post processing!
Finally, when you down sample a picture, it tends to sharpen it, so the bigger the original picture, the sharper it can get when you output it at a lesser size.
Limitations
Camera manufacturers are facing a problem: the lens they are selling are not able to support the high photo-sites count of the newest breed of sensors. Basically, no matter the megapixel count of the sensor, lenses have reached their maximum performance. While it is possible to create higher quality glass, it would not be very practical since only a subset of the market would buy them which would’nt make the operation cost effective.
That is why I think camera manufacturers are going to stop the megapixel race at about the current level and move toward noise management.
Conclusion
While megapixels are important, ISO is also a key factor in picture quality and the debate regarding the importance of ISO vs megapixel count has more to do with shooting style than general guideline. But even then, the 5DMrkII has some very good low light performance so there is not much to worry about…
