It's Perfect

[Bill Pierce]

How many megapixels do you need? Certainly the camera manufacturers’ answer has been MORE. But, of course, that depends on what you do with your pictures. Probably the highest demand for most folks is making prints. Let’s suppose you take a picture that is perfect in every way that effects sharpness and detail. A top drawer lens at an optimum aperture with perfect focus and no camera shake or blurred subject motion… (I know - but we can dream.)

How many megapixels do you need to preserve your perfection? Take the print size you want in inches and multiply each dimension by the wanted dpi, often 300 for a good print viewed close, even 360 for folks using Epson printers. Let’s take a look at a 2x3 frame enlarged to a 14x21 inch image on USC (17x22) paper with an Epson printer.

14x360=5040 21X360=7560

Then multiply the pixel width and height and slide the decimal point on the result 6 digits to the left (or divide by a million). There it is; you are going to need a little over 38 megapixels to to preserve every detail in your perfectly exposed, perfectly focused, motion free image when someone takes a close squint at your perfect large print.

I guess the manufacturers are right. You do need their high megapixel sensors to achieve perfection. Any thoughts about the price of perfection or perhaps your personal striving to achieve perfection?

 

[Retro-Grouch]

There is no such thing as perfection, and even the perception of perfection is subjective and will change over time with both the technology available and an individual's needs and tastes. I'm not interested in perfection. I want to see and, hopefully, make images that move people. And I'm old enough to have learned to ignore what manufacturers (of anything!) tell me I "need".

 

[Sonnar Brian]

> There it is; you are going to need a little over 38 megapixels


42. The answer to life and everything and a little bit over 38.

But personally- I can live with 18MPixels quite comfortably. Twenty years ago- I was invited in to see images from a 100MPixel monochrome camera. It was amazing.

 

[boojum]

Taking a realistic view of what I do and where it will go, 24 megapixels is plenty. Nothing I will ever shoot will be a billboard, or a large framed indoor print. My old Sony DSC S70 Cybershot gives good prints, on 8.5 x 11, from a 3.3 megapixel sensor, CCD. My little Pentax Q-S1 is a giant slayer with its 12 megapixel sensor, CMOS. I need to concentrate on content.

 

[Axel]

Agree. 3-5MP are comfortable. Some 2MP cams did it very well, too.
Special pictures, high resolution documentation for example, can´t have enough but I don´t do such photography.
For print(ers) that need more data to work a good cubic interpolation (in GIMP for example) does the job.
So I am fine with my all my printed files.
Just yesterday I did a print of 20x30cm this way.

 

[ranger9]

The weekend after my dad died I went for a drive in the country, one of the things we had used to enjoy together. South of town I saw a nice scene of a combine working in a cornfield, the afternoon light slanting across the scene, a power station off in the distance in the background -- the kind of view he would have enjoyed. I pulled over and shot a couple of photos, which turned out nicely. I would have liked to make one into a hang-on-the-wall print as a memento of my dad... but it really needed a bit of crop to make the combine more visible, and my 6-megapixel R-D1 image didn't have quite enough pixels in it to do that and still make a big print with the detail I would have liked. Instead I made a smaller print, which is nice but not quite what I wanted.

I run into this a lot because I prefer to shoot with rangefinder cameras, which means I can't pull out a 400mm lens when I need a significantly tighter image. (And no, I'm not going to put a reflex housing on my Pixii.) So, cropping is an important thing to me, even though I realize Real Photographers Fill the Frame™. I'd guess I fairly often crop down to as little as 2/3 the original frame size, which means that if I had oneathemthere 17x22 Epson printers, I would "need" to shoot 86-megapixel images, which isn't going to happen any time soon. What I wind up doing on my 13x19 printer is printing at about 240 pixels per inch; I've tried printing the same image at 240, 300, and 360, and my eyes aren't good enough to see much difference among them.

That's a compromise I don't necessarily like, but on the other hand, my need for highly detailed 17x22 prints exists mostly in my imagination. I used to do an occasional gallery show, but not recently, and sometimes I used to give people prints as gifts, but nobody seems to care much anymore when they receive them. My ego likes making prints, and I enjoy their tangibility, so mostly now I make prints, look at them, feel good about them, and put them in an archival storage box.

The downside of that is that I'm becoming more and more aware of the fact that I'm not going to live forever, and someday either my relatives or my landlord's handymen are going to have to dispose of my worldly goods, and my archival storage boxes of prints are most likely going to be chucked into a dumpster without even a farewell glance. That's turning my personal striving for print perfection into a more and more depressing exercise, so it takes more and more to motivate me to add another print to the box. It may be that this will be the year I'll abandon my printer at a thrift store and say to hell with it.

 

[Bill Blackwell]

About three years ago when I was still shooting my M-P 240 a friend of mine printed one of my B&W conversions on a 40"x60" sheet (at around 200 dpi). It came out so well I decided to have it dry-mounted and framed. I've been convinced ever since I don't need anything beyond 24 megapixels.

 

[AlwaysOnAuto]

This past summer I took a picture I wanted to print, bigger than what our printer could do. In order to get the perspective I liked, I needed to crop it. This cut down the overall size I could print at 300 dpi. So my 24mp cameras are almost enough but not quite. I either need to get another camera with more or a longer lens to get closer. I'm thinking the lens will offer more in the fun/dollar quotient than another camera, no matter how badly I want one.

 

[JeffS7444]

I dream of creating small prints at absurd levels of resolution, to the extent that you'd need a loupe or microscope to see all of the details, say 5x7" @ 1440 dpi or even higher. Yes, Adobe Lightroom allows me to enter such values when printing, but end result nevertheless has a faint but readily visible dot pattern when viewed up close, so I assume that between paper and printer technology, quantum leaps in resolving power are difficult to achieve. But if I could, 72.6 mp would work nicely for my 5x7 print.

But of course, all of those pixels have other advantages: Higher-resolution sensor = less potential for aliasing artifacts.

 

[boojum]

The weekend after my dad died I went for a drive in the country, one of the things we had used to enjoy together. South of town I saw a nice scene of a combine working in a cornfield, the afternoon light slanting across the scene, a power station off in the distance in the background -- the kind of view he would have enjoyed. I pulled over and shot a couple of photos, which turned out nicely. I would have liked to make one into a hang-on-the-wall print as a memento of my dad... but it really needed a bit of crop to make the combine more visible, and my 6-megapixel R-D1 image didn't have quite enough pixels in it to do that and still make a big print with the detail I would have liked. Instead I made a smaller print, which is nice but not quite what I wanted.

I run into this a lot because I prefer to shoot with rangefinder cameras, which means I can't pull out a 400mm lens when I need a significantly tighter image. (And no, I'm not going to put a reflex housing on my Pixii.) So, cropping is an important thing to me, even though I realize Real Photographers Fill the Frame™. I'd guess I fairly often crop down to as little as 2/3 the original frame size, which means that if I had oneathemthere 17x22 Epson printers, I would "need" to shoot 86-megapixel images, which isn't going to happen any time soon. What I wind up doing on my 13x19 printer is printing at about 240 pixels per inch; I've tried printing the same image at 240, 300, and 360, and my eyes aren't good enough to see much difference among them.

That's a compromise I don't necessarily like, but on the other hand, my need for highly detailed 17x22 prints exists mostly in my imagination. I used to do an occasional gallery show, but not recently, and sometimes I used to give people prints as gifts, but nobody seems to care much anymore when they receive them. My ego likes making prints, and I enjoy their tangibility, so mostly now I make prints, look at them, feel good about them, and put them in an archival storage box.

The downside of that is that I'm becoming more and more aware of the fact that I'm not going to live forever, and someday either my relatives or my landlord's handymen are going to have to dispose of my worldly goods, and my archival storage boxes of prints are most likely going to be chucked into a dumpster without even a farewell glance. That's turning my personal striving for print perfection into a more and more depressing exercise, so it takes more and more to motivate me to add another print to the box. It may be that this will be the year I'll abandon my printer at a thrift store and say to hell with it.

As Bob Dylan said, those of us not busy being born are busy dying. None of us are getting out of here alive. None or almost none will have the Vivian Meir epiphany. So I photograph for myself. I have to fix my Epson Eco-tank as the jets are clogged and then I may print some. But I am well-pleased to just get a good capture. So long as I am pleased I have done what I set out to do. If others are pleased along the way, so much the better. But it is not my purpose. I do it for me. Mortality is reality. Photography is dreams living.

 

[agentlossing]

But why have a perfectly detailed image at high resolution, when what has made photography interesting over the years is texture, the feel imparted by the medium? This theoretically perfect image, think of all the detail that's completely extraneous and how it being represented in flawless print quality will take away from the mood, and feel, which was how you actually responded to the scene at the time. Now, older digital noise is usually pretty bad looking. Sometimes it can look pretty decent. But some grain, some tooth, that's part of what makes an image not merely descriptive, but poetry.

 

[CMur12]

Of course it all depends on the purposes of the individual photographer.

Someone with a history of shooting 135 film will have less interest in high resolution, preferring to show the texture of the film and even liking the grain.

Those who shot large format, or even medium format, will have more interest in high resolution and minimal or no grain. I fall into this camp. I migrated from 135 to medium format and 100 ISO film, hoping for a smooth image with no discernible grain.

I'm not sure where that would put me with digital, as it seems to be a whole new paradigm in many ways. Printing at lower DPI appears to have a very different effect from increased grain with enlargement from film.

- Murray

 

[BernardL]

The premise of the OP seems to be that you need the same dpi (300 or 360, whatever) whether it's for a postcard that you can hold up to your nose, or a larger print that you'll hold at arms length or step back from. I'm not convinced. There are numbers somewhere for the angular resolution of human vision, that can be translated into dpi versus viewing distance. Don't have the time to look for these.

 

[boojum]

Of course it all depends on the purposes of the individual photographer.

Someone with a history of shooting 135 film will have less interest in high resolution, preferring to show the texture of the film and even liking the grain.

Those who shot large format, or even medium format, will have more interest in high resolution and minimal or no grain. I fall into this camp. I migrated from 135 to medium format and 100 ISO film, hoping for a smooth image with no discernible grain.

I'm not sure where that would put me with digital, as it seems to be a whole new paradigm in many ways. Printing at lower DPI appears to have a very different effect from increased grain with enlargement from film.

- Murray

I do not look at it as a binary decision, high pixel or not, it is on a list of priorities. For me it is not number one, but it is on the list.

 

[jsrockit]

But why have a perfectly detailed image at high resolution, when what has made photography interesting over the years is texture, the feel imparted by the medium? This theoretically perfect image, think of all the detail that's completely extraneous and how it being represented in flawless print quality will take away from the mood, and feel, which was how you actually responded to the scene at the time. Now, older digital noise is usually pretty bad looking. Sometimes it can look pretty decent. But some grain, some tooth, that's part of what makes an image not merely descriptive, but poetry.

This is true sometimes, especially with small format cameras, but we have always had large format photography that offered the perfection that digital is just starting to try to offer. Mood is subjective and mood can certainly be done with framing, content, lighting etc. To me those are a lot more interesting than film artifacts. That said, there is no one way to do photography.

As far as me and megapixels, the 50mp GFX50R I am using seems sufficient but I cannot predict the future and how photography will be viewed in the future. That said, I find smaller format cameras and lower resolution also intriguing. There is something cool about limits sometimes. The only issue is when someone wants a big perfect print and I only have a small resolution file. It seems galleries are still enamored with huge prints unless you are successful enough to demand otherwise. Thankfully the photobook world shows small prints still work.

Ok so my answer right now is I use 24-50mp cameras.

 

[Archiver]

Perfection in imaging depends on intended purpose and audience. I'm still largely happy with the output of my 8mp Canon 30D, especially with the Sigma 18-35mm f1.8. The images are more than fine for everyday documentation and even some paid work for online display.

Micro Four Thirds 16mp sensors are pretty decent, especially with the right lenses and processing, and the 20mp sensors are even better.

The Canon 5D Mark II's 23mp sensor is decent, but is awfully noisy and bandy in the shadows when underexposed. It's a real pitfall of that camera. The Sony sensors Nikon used in its DSLRs of that and later vintage have far better noise performance, so is that 'perfection'?

The 18mp sensor of the M9, along with the Leica CPU, can produce incredible colours, albeit at low ISOs and good light. The 24mp sensor in the Panasonic S1/S1H/S5 is bordering on crazy for noise performance, high ISO performance and over colour fidelity.

 

[lynnb]

When I looked at Atget's 8x10" contact prints I saw perfection. As far as prints go - film or digital - large can be impressive (e.g. Andreas Gursky) but perfect is a far more subjective measure. I guess that answers your question?

 

[ptpdprinter]

I have a Fuji XT2. It has a 24MP sensor which measures 6000x4000. My printer is an Epson 3880 which has a native resolution of 360dpi. All that translates into a maximum print size of 11.11"x16.66", which works out pretty well for me because I generally print gelatin silver, platinum palladium, palladium over pigment and occasionally digital at 9.25"x13.875" matted and framed at 16x20. I print full frame, though I sometimes need to level the horizon which shaves a few pixels off here and there. One time I cropped an image, but that was a complete technical disaster, so I learned my lesson the hard way. A couple of years ago I did a project of twenty or so 6"x9" lith prints matted and framed at 11x14. I think printing at the smaller end of the scale encourages the viewer to look more closely at the image. It is a really nice size for sitting around the table and looking at a box of matted prints with friends and fellow photographers.

I have the whole thing rationalized pretty well, but if someone wants to build me a larger darkroom and workroom, give me a larger printer, and underwrite a larger budget, I'd be open-minded about printing larger. Off course, I would probably be paralyzed about whether to go full frame or medium format digital. To mangle a metaphor, going up in size is a slippery slope. Before you know it, you'll be setting up an equity line to buy a Phase One, and getting a contractor on the phone. Let's see, Phase One's 150MP sensor is 14204x10652, so at 360dpi that is slightly under 30x40. You can squeeze those out of a P8000 with a 2" border. I'm not sure you can get mat board large enough for a print that size though, so there's a cost savings. Who knew you could save money by printing larger?

I would like to mention here that the Leica Picture of the Year 2021 by Ralph Gibson, which is being sold in a limited edition of 75 for $2000, is 8.18"x12.28". That makes me feel pretty good about my small print preference. Maybe old Ralph and I are on to something.

 

[ranger9]

The premise of the OP seems to be that you need the same dpi (300 or 360, whatever) whether it's for a postcard that you can hold up to your nose, or a larger print that you'll hold at arms length or step back from. I'm not convinced. There are numbers somewhere for the angular resolution of human vision, that can be translated into dpi versus viewing distance. Don't have the time to look for these.

This kind of number is also the basis for depth-of-field, which is discussed in fatiguing detail in various corners of the internet. I'll pick a number thrown out by Rudolf Kingslake in the “Camera Optics” chapter of the 15th Edition Leica Manual, where he says: “…the average observer can recognize a disc of light if it subtends an angle greater than 1 to 1000 in his eye.” To visualize this, think of viewing the millimeter gradations on a ruler from a distance of 1 meter — that's a 1:000 gradation. Kingslake doesn't mean you can't see something smaller than this — otherwise telephone linemen wouldn't be able to spot a downed line from hundreds of meters away — but it means you can't distinguish one thing from another if they cover an angle much less than 1 in 1000.

Things get a little more complicated when you start talking about inkjet prints, in which image elements are formed of an overlapping pattern of droplets of semi-transparent inks. Printer manufacturers talk about dot placement accuracy in terms of thousands per inch, but since the dots are liquid and overlapping, you don't get nearly that much accuracy in the dots themselves. A simple experiment you can do involves that ruler again; scan or photograph it and then print it out on your printer so it appears at actual size. Then look at the millimeter graduations with a loupe. Depending on your printer, you'll probably find the dots capture gradations a little finer than 1mm, but not much, and even then it becomes a judgment call as to whether a particular group of ink blobs really represents a fine detail or is just a bunch of random blobs.

That means the printer sets an upper limit on image detail no matter how closely you look at the print, which means there's a “don't care” limit above which sending the printer a higher-resolution data stream doesn't make any difference in how the print looks, in which case the only use for a higher-resolution camera is if you want to make larger prints, as our OP is saying.

Yes, as you step back that 1:1000 angular view covers a larger and larger spot size… if you're 2 meters away it's 2mm and so on. So you're right, if you assume longer viewing distances the “don't care” limit becomes more and more forgiving, which is why we don't worry about individual pixels in the 1920x1080 TV picture we're watching from across the room even if we have a 50-inch TV, and why I once made a very acceptable billboard out of an image from a 6-megapixel camera. Using the 1:1000 angular view figure, you can easily figure your own “don't care” limit for any viewing distance you want.

On the other hand, human behavior being what it is, I can tell you from direct observation that if you show people a picture they think is interesting, they will walk right up to it and examine it as closely as they can. That's when it's useful to send the printer enough pixels to reach its dot limit; if people look even more closely and can't see any more detail, it will be the printer's fault, not yours!

 

[willie_901]

How many megapixels do you need? ...

For my work, I'm satisfied with 24 MP.

When a more compact, lighter carry is useful, I also use a 16 MP camera when a more compact, lighter carry is useful.

I never crop except to make minor corrections to horizontal and, or vertical tilt.