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Rather bizarrely, I'm going to start this article about pixel obsession with an analogy from the days of film, but hopefully you'll quickly see my point. The incident I recall happened way back in the late 'Eighties when I was a member of the youth section of a certain political party and, for our weekly meetings, we had a variety of speakers on a whole range of topics and interests. One week we had a member of the local camera club who was as dry as tinder and more boring than most politicians, which is saying something! Throughout his talk he described many of the great photographs he had taken but, curiously, didn't have one to show us!
Eventually, he droned on to the subject of did any of us own cameras and what type of pictures did we take. At last, the opportunity for a little audience participation, but he soon slapped me down when I announced I had an OM1 and used it mainly for landscapes. Landscapes? he uttered incredulously, on 35mm? You should be using Medium Format for the superior quality young man! I wasn't going to take that lying down so I asked him since when had Kodachrome 25 (this was pre Velvia days) been available in 120 format. Colour landscapes? he gasped, before rambling off on a tangent about the virtues of monochrome.
He obviously subscribed to the theory that a good big 'un always beats a good little 'un whereas I shared the opinion of many at the time that a good Kodachrome tranny was at least the equal of medium format (Kodachrome wasn't available in 120 at the time). The mentality of the More is Better brigade is resurrected today in the form of More Pixels are Better without any regard for other issues of image quality.
As a case in point, Canon are about to release the G10 compact with 14.7 million pixels. Canon engineers, no doubt, are fully aware that they could have made a far superior camera with only six or maybe eight mega pixels, but the marketing guys know that this wouldn't be enough to sell. Meanwhile, DSLR pixel counts are going through the ceiling of practical significance, to the point where the numbers are meaningless. Sadly, it's the perfect lever for persuading photographers to continually upgrade, leaving a trail of perfectly good but apparently obsolete cameras (some only months old) in their wake.
All this leaves me wondering, if a six million pixel camera is now considered virtually unusable for it's lack of quality due to a shortage of pixels, doesn't that now make all the pictures taken with that camera worthless as well? When we upgrade to get more pixels, shouldn't we delete all previous images from our hard drive on the grounds that they are no longer of sufficient quality? Of course not! A good quality 6MP image is still suitable for printing well beyond A4. Which raises the question, how big are we all printing now? And where are the enthusiasts who are all jumping on the 24MP bandwagon storing their 30 x 20 inch prints? Their walls are only so big, after all.
And regarding quality, I bet a 6MP G10, if there was such a thing, would comfortably out-perform the 14.7MP version, as would an Olympus E1 or Nikon D70! It's time to deal with our pixel addiction, before we all become as boring as the old man with his invisible medium format monochrome landscape prints!
Eventually, he droned on to the subject of did any of us own cameras and what type of pictures did we take. At last, the opportunity for a little audience participation, but he soon slapped me down when I announced I had an OM1 and used it mainly for landscapes. Landscapes? he uttered incredulously, on 35mm? You should be using Medium Format for the superior quality young man! I wasn't going to take that lying down so I asked him since when had Kodachrome 25 (this was pre Velvia days) been available in 120 format. Colour landscapes? he gasped, before rambling off on a tangent about the virtues of monochrome.
He obviously subscribed to the theory that a good big 'un always beats a good little 'un whereas I shared the opinion of many at the time that a good Kodachrome tranny was at least the equal of medium format (Kodachrome wasn't available in 120 at the time). The mentality of the More is Better brigade is resurrected today in the form of More Pixels are Better without any regard for other issues of image quality.
As a case in point, Canon are about to release the G10 compact with 14.7 million pixels. Canon engineers, no doubt, are fully aware that they could have made a far superior camera with only six or maybe eight mega pixels, but the marketing guys know that this wouldn't be enough to sell. Meanwhile, DSLR pixel counts are going through the ceiling of practical significance, to the point where the numbers are meaningless. Sadly, it's the perfect lever for persuading photographers to continually upgrade, leaving a trail of perfectly good but apparently obsolete cameras (some only months old) in their wake.
All this leaves me wondering, if a six million pixel camera is now considered virtually unusable for it's lack of quality due to a shortage of pixels, doesn't that now make all the pictures taken with that camera worthless as well? When we upgrade to get more pixels, shouldn't we delete all previous images from our hard drive on the grounds that they are no longer of sufficient quality? Of course not! A good quality 6MP image is still suitable for printing well beyond A4. Which raises the question, how big are we all printing now? And where are the enthusiasts who are all jumping on the 24MP bandwagon storing their 30 x 20 inch prints? Their walls are only so big, after all.
And regarding quality, I bet a 6MP G10, if there was such a thing, would comfortably out-perform the 14.7MP version, as would an Olympus E1 or Nikon D70! It's time to deal with our pixel addiction, before we all become as boring as the old man with his invisible medium format monochrome landscape prints!
