Who Needs 120 MP?

[Mike Farley]

Not only has Canon announced that it has developed a 250 MP sensor, it has also stated that a 120 MP camera is in the works. Amazingly those 250 million pixels are crammed onto a sub full frame APS-H sensor and it seems likely that the technology developed for that sensor is making its way into the new camera. No doubt there will be some who will claim that they need every single one of those 120,000,000 pixels and more, but outside of bragging rights* it looks like an increasingly niche market to me. If Canon has managed to address issues such as high ISO noise and dynamic range, these latest moves could herald improvements at more sensible resolutions which is where the real interest lies for me.

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/925549 ... s-h-sensor

Such a high resolutions is not necessarily a panacea as it places huge demands on lenses and it seems that diffraction could reduce performance. Here's our very own David Candlish with more - http://davidcandlish.photography/news/2 ... el-too-far

* Not just consumer, also manufacturer.

[davidc]

Petapixel ran it too -

http://petapixel.com/2015/09/11/thought ... ore-180867

Although reading the comments for any online piece is usually not worth the time, it did make me chuckle how the anti-Canon brigade are out in force. If any other maker was doing it I wonder how different the response would be. Mildly entertaining!

[Mike Farley]

Petapixel ran it too ........

Congratulations are in order again. Are you now a PetaPixel contributor?

Although reading the comments for any online piece is usually not worth the time, it did make me chuckle how the anti-Canon brigade are out in force. If any other maker was doing it I wonder how different the response would be. Mildly entertaining!

Probably inevitable these days. Some people drop the facade online. Have you seen this at Ming Thein? http://blog.mingthein.com/2015/09/06/ot ... ice-to-mt/

[Mike Farley]

Just seen this at "What The Duck", which has sprung back into life over the last few days after being dormant for several months.

[Peter Boughton]

Post-capture sharpening makes diffraction blur WORSE, so it’s not much of a solution.

This seems to disagree with the video embedded in the petapixel article?

Also, you're talking about there being an "aperture limit" when diffraction becomes noticeable, but - as the video points out - diffraction is effected by the lens; a higher resolution sensor makes diffraction more visible at wider apertures because it can resolve greater detail - it does not increase the distortion, and thus cannot result in lower quality in the overall image.

If the DLA for this new camera is in the ballpark of f/4, from f/8 onwards you are going to struggle to get clean images

If you want "clean" images, leave them to soak overnight in white spirit.

The biggest concern for more megapixels should be the processing/etc concerns you leave to your penultimate paragraph.

With the rate camera technology is advancing, it makes me wonder if anyone will create a specialised photography-specific processing unit. Sure, Adobe is (attempting to) use the power of graphics cards to run their algorithms, but having camera manufacturers implement them directly in dedicated hardware allows even better performance that might be necessary if/when this number of pixels becomes more common.

[davidc]

Diffraction occurs at the point the light enters the lens. How that wavefront of light is detected and interpreted then depends on the sensor. So from a physical perspective, the simple statement that the lens does all the diffracting is correct. If we don't factor in a sensor, be it film, eyeball or our camera then it's kind of a pointless exercise

The problem occurs when the level of diffracted light after it has passed the aperture results in a loss of quality at the sensor, and that is in no small part determined by the size of photosites. You can have a tiny sensor with relatively few pixels and get technically the same level of diffraction rendering issues as a full frame sensor with orders of magnitude more. Saying "diffraction occurs in the lens" is not incorrect, it's just ignoring the other aspects of the system.

Google "airy disk" if you want to see why diffraction effects and photosite sizes combine to reduce the overall resolving power of your camera.

The effects are very visible if you choose to try it yourself.

The videos/photos embedded in the article weren't mine, I didn't have any control over that.

As for the processing, the RAW files for this have been announced as being 210mb, actually smaller than I expected but still whoppers

[davidc]

Congratulations are in order again. Are you now a PetaPixel contributor?

Yeah, though currently in an unpaid/independent capacity. Still looking at options for paid articles. I suspect they have a large pool of regular contributors so I'm not holding my breath for any paid work.

Probably inevitable these days. Some people drop the facade online. Have you seen this at Ming Thein? http://blog.mingthein.com/2015/09/06/ot ... ice-to-mt/

I hadn't but will check it out.
I understand the internet facade and have long had the mentality that I try to type only what I'd say to the person face to face. Also, never to reply when pissed off

Of course sometimes there are blips in judgement, so being able to backpedal and admit you were wrong is also something I try to do