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5D goes 50MP next week

Its like some kind of arms race!!! Will it make me take a better picture...probably not...some of the best pictures on this forum have been taken with cameraphones, low res digital and film.
 
Mmmmmm..... I wonder how long it'll take my wife's work to buy a few (they currently use Hasselblad MF digital for the very high quality stuff, plus Canon 1Dx for the rest). Me, I'd love 50Mp but my 5Dmk2 is plenty for the stuff I do :)
 
Wonder what price this would hit the market at. A spec like that seems firmly into the pro range and well out of the reach of enthusiastic ameteurs.
 
I'll stick with my 5D Mk2 - plenty good enough for me. By now, the sensor resolution must have exceeded to resolving power of the lenses: especially the zooms.
 
This sounds to me like the 7D II sensor scaled up to full frame (20mp cropped). It will be interesting if they manage to give the high shutter rate from the cropped cameras when running cropped. If they do, they could be onto a winner with this.

The downside of the canon system is that the EFS lenses won't be mountable as they will clip the bigger mirror in the full frame cameras (the lens elements extend out the back of the mount). I believe nikon avoided this by keeping the elements clear of the full frame mirrors?

It's also good to see that the spec doesn't make totally unrealistic claims for high ISO, topping out at 6400.

I'll stick with my 5DII, 1DsII, and 1DII as three canon DSLRs is probably enough for me ;-)
 
Mark Pope said:
I'll stick with my 5D Mk2 - plenty good enough for me. By now, the sensor resolution must have exceeded to resolving power of the lenses: especially the zooms.
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This is very true!!! A really good quality lens (non-zoom) would usually resolve to about 3.5 um (or about 285 lp/mm) in the real world

Very roughly this Canon camera will have nearly 9000 pixels across (9000x6000 would give a 3:2 senor of 54MP, this canon is 53MP native), so on a 36mm wide sensor, the pixel resolution on the sensor is 36mm/9000 = 4um 250lp/mm (I have kept to 9000x6000 as it keeps the maths simple!!)

Therefore it is mighty close (if it were monochrome), but you have to take into account that the camera has a Bayer filter on it, which muddies the water a bit as effectively its a 2x2 array placed continuously across the sensor, so the true spacial resolution is reduced, so really if you were taking an image to measure from your sensor would actually be only 8um (125lp/mm), as you would only work from one colour plane (usually the green one). In effect the Bayer translation process 'makes up' - interpolates - individual pixel values based on the pixel intensity of any individual pixel and neighboring pixels, it produces a nice colour image but wouldn't be used in say Industrial Vision for pixel accuracy measurement. When working in colour the Bayer filter really muddies the issue, and depending on the implementation of the Bayer algorithm and anything else Canon may do, the real world resolution sensor is likely to be around 150-200lpmm, as far as optics goes.

So you will probably need L Glass or equivalent to see the sharpest images from this camera, and probably some of the more recent L glass, some of the older zooms may not cut the mustard.

I work in Industrial Machine Vision, and we are forever getting clients who want to measure very small objects, but sometimes there just isn't the optics available to do it (Although there companies that will make custom glass, but the lens are very expensive, and not suitable for a 24/7 industrial environment). We always work in Monochrome for accurate measurement projects, and make use of sub-pixel interpolation where we can on regular objects (circles, straight lines, etc) to improve the repeatability/robustness measurements.

If I wanted to measure accurately in colour, I would use a 3 chip (CCD) colour camera, which has a prism to split the light, and the RGB colour planes are each put onto a single CCD. These cameras are not cheap (not so popular these days), and are more delicate, as the prism location is critical to their working, I have dropped one in the past and had to pay for the prism to be reset!!!

I've hope I've said all that correctly, I've had a very busy week and am very tired, so anything may blurt out.
 
I would rather see the manufacturers focus their efforts on increasing dynamic range than sensor resolution. 36MP sensors already generate some large files, 50MP will need some people to upgrade PC significantly. Multi row pano anyone?

Where will the pixel war end?
 
Tony Lockhart said:
12,800 max ISO?
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Milan said:
I would rather see the manufacturers focus their efforts on increasing dynamic range than sensor resolution. 36MP sensors already generate some large files, 50MP will need some people to upgrade PC significantly.
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Increasing the number of megapixels results in higher resolution but if the sensor size remains the same, it results in smaller photosites (pixels). Photosite size is referred to as the pixel pitch. Smaller photosites gather less light, so they have less signal strength. Less signal strength, all other things being equal, results in a less efficient signal to noise ratio, therefore more noise. This effect is much more pronounced at higher ISO settings, because increasing the ISO setting requires cranking up the amplification of the signal, which, in turn, increases the noise level.

Another consideration are the micro lenses on the front of the sensor, if there is a fixed gap between these and the next pixel, then a high resolution camera actually has more gap in it's sensor than a lower resolution camera, and therefore overall the sensor will capture less light.
 
Interesting responses, especially that from Mr Perceptive, fascinating.

I have no intention of buying one so just passing on the info.

The forthcoming 1DX Mk 2 is a different matter....

It's been well publicised that Canon were upgrading as many L lenses as possible before these high MP bodies came out and they have done just that, more to follow.
 
Mr Perceptive said:
Increasing the number of megapixels results in higher resolution but if the sensor size remains the same, it results in smaller photosites (pixels). Photosite size is referred to as the pixel pitch. Smaller photosites gather less light, so they have less signal strength. Less signal strength, all other things being equal, results in a less efficient signal to noise ratio, therefore more noise. This effect is much more pronounced at higher ISO settings, because increasing the ISO setting requires cranking up the amplification of the signal, which, in turn, increases the noise level.

Another consideration are the micro lenses on the front of the sensor, if there is a fixed gap between these and the next pixel, then a high resolution camera actually has more gap in it's sensor than a lower resolution camera, and therefore overall the sensor will capture less light.
Click to expand...

I'm quite aware of all that, but it hasn't stopped the manufacturers steamrollering ahead with the push. I just don't see those specs being realistic.
 
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