I've just been reading Dave Stevenson's latest piece on MacUser, A great image is about much more than just megapixels, in which he gives his take on the apparently relentless march of the camera manufacturers to put more and more pixels onto their sensors.
Without getting too technical, because I can't, more pixels means smaller pixels which means, in most cases, more noise. However despite this the camera makers do seem to have done a good job of convincing consumers that more pixels mean better images.
We recently bought a Samsung WB650 compact because it offered a 15x zoom lens on a camera that fits in your jeans' pocket. My only concern about the camera before receiving it was the 12MP pixel count on that little sensor and as we'll never use it to print images larger than 6x4, I'd have been happier with a lower resolution. If you look at the image above, even at this size you can see that noise has become apparent in the sign where it's been lightened in processing. I will be able to hide that before printing and need to tidy up some other aspects of the image also, but it might not have been an issue on a lower resolution sensor.
I don't expect great quality from it because it's a compact, but the convenience of it means that we can get shots that we might not otherwise, such as the Black Vulture shot from the other week. This image also leads quite neatly onto the other point that Dave Stevenson discusses, namely that lens quality also has a large effect on the final resolution of an image.
It's no use having all these pixels if the lens isn't able to resolve a sharp image sufficiently for the pixel count. On that little 15x zoom, you can see that the subject has become soft and the lens also vignettes markedly at its maximum zoom setting. I think that's acceptable in a mid range compact as the trade off for convenience, but if we're taking photos that we're planning to print at a large size, we need to be thinking in the round about the equipment that we're using and not get caught up focusing on one single number.
You can read Dave Stevenson's article at MacUser here.
Ian Pullen - 7 October, 2010
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I was just reading a blog entry on MacUser titled The tragic demise of the professional photographer by Dave Stevenson which got me thinking a bit about a couple of things.
Firstly the main thrust of the article is the belief that the livelihoods of professional photographers is under threat with every man and their dog (and female dog owners also) being able to purchase reasonable quality and low cost DSLRs.
Dave does seem to believe that this is a bad thing and that quality standards overall will suffer as a result. That may ultimately be the case, but the market place will make the decision. If there are sufficient numbers of consumers prepared to pay for work by these 'less qualified' photographers, then why shouldn't that demand be satisfied?
Many years ago I trained in Graphic Design, just before desktop publishing opened up opportunities for anyone with a computer to produce all sorts of print materials. At the time, like some photographers now, many Graphic Designers moaned about being undermined by this DTP explosion and, more latterly, I regularly hear Web Designers complaining about the unskilled making it harder for them to make a living. With the growth of the internet I have no doubt that there are many other professionals who find they are working in a much more competitive sector than in years before.
Personally in all these cases I consider the changes are merely a democratisation of each sector with new opportunities being made available to many more people. Why shouldn't everyone have the opportunity to make money in any legal way that they wish? It's a free market and it is the responsibility of the 'professionals' to ensure that they are competitive and if they're not, they need to change, not complain!
Completely changing tack, Dave Stevenson referred to an interview with the wildlife photographer Michael Poliza, who said that he regularly shoots in Program mode. I was interested by that because probably more than 80% of the time when I'm shooting hand held, I shoot in Program mode as the camera is a much faster thinker than I am, however there does often seem to be a snobbery among photographers that real photography only happens when the camera is in Manual. Whenever my camera is on a tripod, I switch to manual, but I don't feel that these shots are in any way more valid than those shot in a more automated way. Perhaps I'm missing something.
Ian Pullen - 24 September, 2010
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