Thanks Mark.
I'm still shooting with a K20D and recently did a 24" X 36'' print (biggest
I've ever done) from a slightly cropped file that just blew me and others
away with it's detail. Its hard for me to justify a new body just for a ff
sensor or 24MP.
Kenneth Waller
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/kennethwaller
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Roberts" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: K5 RAW file size - yow!
Kenneth Waller wrote:
So from your experience Mark, what has 24MP done for your photography?
Several things.
First of all, the 24MP has given me more options, like making a
panoramic shot by cropping from a single frame rather than stitching
multiple frames together (I usually don't shoot that way deliberately
but sometimes, like one shot from GFM last year, I "see" the pano
composition later when I get home -- I'm still pissed off that I
brought the K-5 on that hike rather than the A850). I can also shoot
stitched panos with three or even two shots, which makes stitching
much faster and easier.
The full-frame part lets me get better prints at a given size - often
even when using non-megadollar glass. That goes contrary to popular
wisdom, number crunching and pixel peeping: You'll read that
high-megapixel full-frame cameras are much more demanding of glass and
show the weaknesses of less-than-stellar lenses. Which is true. But
it's usually seen making measurements or peeping at 100% magnification
in Photoshop. But when making a print of any given size (let's say 12
x 18) the image from a full-frame camera requires significantly less
magnification. An APS-C image gets magnified about 19:1 to make that
size print. Full-frame gets magnified 12.7:1 so using the same lens on
both, even if it's not a top-dollar lens, I can get a better print
from full-frame. Sure, when your print size gets *really* big, and
what you see on the print gets closer to what you see on your monitor
at 1:1 you'll need megabuck glass on your full-frame. But apparently
that is much bigger than the 13 x 19 that's my usual max. (Never say
never, though: I have access to some big wide-format printers at
school...)
Making prints is a whole different game than pixel peeping.
I expect Pentax will use a variant of the Sony 24MP sensor that's in
the D600, which is fine by me. But a 36MP sensor intrigues me not for
the additional (potential) resolution; I've been reading about its
superior tonality in B&W (which I'm leaning toward more these days). A
side effect of the Bayer pattern sensor, I expect - when you throw out
your color information you probably need a little extra spatial data
to make up for what you threw away in color data (similar to the way
large-scale contrast can make lenses appear sharper in color than they
"really" are in B&W tests).
--
Mark Roberts - Photography & Multimedia
www.robertstech.com
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