Should camera companies be pixel cramming so much? - 1

Sensor technology is always improving, but what about quality? I think it's a shame that the new d3200 and upcoming d5200 from Nikon are going up to 24 megapixels. Perhaps this would be helpful for very large prints, but 16mp is pretty decent and I don't think the jump had to be so high. But if we put so mant pixels into a sensor, surely this will reduce the quality of the sensor overall. DXOmark puts the D3200 and D5100 pretty close in sensor quality, lower in ISO performance, but given that one was made later, there should be an improvement. Do you think cameras have enough pixels now? I sincerely hope we don't see crop sensors having their MP count unnecessarily upped to 30, 36, or maybe even more in the future at the cost of image quality. What about you?

It the arena of P&S cameras, their tiny sensors can really only hold about 12 mp well. After that, the images can become less sharp due to light bouncing off one pixel to another, causing what is called diffraction.

Spatial resolution is typically limited by diffraction, so the more pixels jammed on to a tiny sensor like a cell phone or P&S camera the more likely the image is to suffer.

It has been shown that larger sensors like those found on dSLR, more pixels can be inserted on a sensor without suffering from diffraction.

Lucky for us, those engineers and marketing people in the P&S divisions of camera companies are NOT designing the sensors used in dSLR cameras.

As the technology advances, you will see better and better performance with dSLR sensors, but eventually you will see a new type sensor strata being introduced, one that can produce the ultra high resolution like that found on the new Nikon D800E, but without some of the drawbacks of CMOS sensors.

What will show up first will be the flaws in cheaper glass and poor technique. Why? Because the sensor will record everything faithfully and poor technique and lens quality will start to show.

Here are two samples of digital images shot by a $2000 Nikon D100 with a 6 mp sensor (ISO 200) and a $5, 300 Nikon D3 with a 12 mp sensor (ISO 25, 600). What is most apparent in shooting these two cameras is how well the D3 performs in low light, but on a computer monitor, both images do what they need to do. Show crisp, well exposed images at the monitor resolution of 72 PPI.

I agree. When I went from 10MP to 12MP, I really appreciated the "breathing room" it gave me for minor tweaks in composition or tighter crops, so I appreciate more pixels. Even that small a jump made the average file about 1 MB larger, though. I can see where I might like maybe 18MP as a maximum size, but beyond that, I would need a new computer. If I had a D800, I would probably use it in DX mode (18MP) most of the time, reserving the 36MP for very carefully planned shots where I know I will want a 24x36 print or a canvas wrap that big which requires a 28x40 image size.

That's really competing with a medium format studio camera, so maybe you could consider it to be a $35, 000 savings.

Enough is enough.

Thje marketing of the latest Super-Size sensors actually refutes part of your final statement by claimimg that crops from the larger sensor generated images can still give good image quality - even if only a small portion of the whole is being used.

As a serious photographer in the transport field there are occasions when i'm caught unawares and take a "grab" shot or where the light is so poor that I'm forced to "point and shoot". On such occasions I accept the need to crop images in order to get the presentable one albeit with the risk of poor quality results.

Fortunately my work is not financially crucial BUT I'm sure there are many photographers who will appreciate the option that larger sensors give in reducing the number of "unusable" images even further.