Olympus exec declares "twelve megapixels is enough"
By Donald Melanson 
posted March 9th 2009 6:01PM
posted March 9th 2009 6:01PM
The megapixel race has been declared over plenty of times before, but we're guessing that there will be more folks than ever in agreement with Olympus exec Akira Watanabe's recent statement that twelve megapixels is "enough for covering most applications most customers need." In addition to that blanket declaration, Watanabe said that Olympus has "no intention to compete in the megapixel wars for E-System" (its line of DSLRs), adding that it would instead focus on other features like dynamic range, color reproduction, and a better ISO range for low-light shooting. On that latter front, Watanabe predicts that autofocus could be one of the big areas of innovation in DSLRs, with current "phase detect" systems giving way to new and improved image sensor-based autofocus systems. So, what do you think? Is twelve enough, or is the more megapixels the merrier? Sound off in comments.[Via Ars Technica]
We Olympus users are always crapped on. Nice how the article quotes an Olympus exec, then shows a photo of a Canon camera!
Ok ok ok........work on focus, ZOOM(optical), features, better GUI systems, Basic functions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No, it's never enough, as long as we have people who think they know printing and believe that PPI = DPI on anything but high end dye diffusion or dye sublimation printers.
It's never enough, as long as we have people who don' t realize that increasing the pixel density makes low light performance go right out the window when the sensor size and other factors remain the same.
It's never enough, as long as we have people who really need a point and shoot but buy prosumer DSLRs and have no idea what any of the settings mean and conclude that what they really needed was more megapixels.
Where's my Gigapixel camera anyway? They said there would be Gigapixel cameras!
While unsubstantiated, wickedphoenix above claimed that 35mm is equivalent to 80MP, with high tonal range ringing in the equivalent of 160MP. Okay then, that is the number that should be considered the starting point for "enough". For all the computer analogies, I think everyone has missed the mark; Mega pixels are like torque and if you want to win the race, all other things being equal then torque is where you put your money. Yes, lenses are the horsepower that everyone talks about: I got this one with this f#, I got that one with that Image Stabilization, but they don't mean squat if you can't record the image accurately, and that is done with MPs.
I for one completely disagree that 12 is enough. 120 may not be enough; 1200 may not be enough. Bring on the Hasselblads, more really is merrier.
Yes, 12MP is enough. Actually 10 is enough too, or even 8. Picture quality and MP density aren't necessarily correlated. Out of focus photos will still look out of focus at 20MP. And until storage solutions ramp up to hundreds of Tera Bytes, there's not much point in cranking up the size of image files anyway.
12 MPX is enough... for Olympus. They are committed to 4/3 sensors which are much smaller then full frame sensors (half as big to be more precise), and a technical limitation of this design is a reduced dynamic range. For the average person, this means how fast the highlight tones become unrecoverable white and how much shadow detail there is. Another issue (but not fully tied to megapixels, more with 4/3 sized sensors) is the greater depth of field over full frame sensors. Essentially, you get less blurry background at same aperture settings then APC-C and FX sensors.
So while I agree in some respects, you have to take his statement in its full context. Yes, better AF is better and so are other advancements beside the megapixels but there are just times when you need more mpx - Olympus just isn't committed to larger sensor design and therefore won't be making cameras with more then 12 megapixels.
To clarify four thirds is about half the diagonal length. Making it just over a quarter the size of 135 film. Or to put another way, just slightly bigger than 110.
Seriously you can almost make a passable billboard at 12 megapixels.
The only thing they need now is to get more light into the camera, or at least get a massive increase in light-sensitivity. Then a two megapixel camera could take jaw-dropping images. More color depth, in my opinion, is a better way to record more data about a photograph than more sample density.
Moreover, megapixel wars cause expensive storage upgrades. Nobody actually wants to spend extra money except kids who don't value the stuff they get for free from their parents anyway.
Finally !
6 MP is enough. Kind of funny though that it is Olympus that says this, since they, due to their Fourthirds sensor, are of all DSLR manufacturers most inclined to keep the resolution low, since their sensor is smallest.
As was shown by stunning image quality of Panny's G1, 3/4 sensor size isn't really a problem.
What many people don't see is that with megapixels there will be no need for optical zoom. If you take a 4000x3000px picture and only crop it to a 2000x1500 rectangle in the middle, you've just done the digital equivalent of a 2x zoom. You get what I'm saying?
For megapixels to replace optics you would need some insanely sharp optics. That also means using an ultrawide aperture, since diffraction limitation already hits current models between f8 to f11.
I wholeheartedly agree that lens quality is very important, but since you can't really put an optical zoom in a cameraphone, cropping and downsampling is the next best thing IMO.
It's not too bad for the general consumer. 12 MP will print a high res (300 dpi) photo close to 14.25 x 9.5 inches... pretty close to the 10 x 15 standard picture size. We don't have too many photo's that size hanging in the house. You still need some pretty hefty MP for commercial work though... posters, signs, billboards, etc.
Unless you're a pro, and a pro who needs to blow images up really big, 12 megapixels is enough. I'm not saying that someday we won't have 1,200 megapixel cameras, but the human eye can't detect the increase in megapixels beyond about 3-5, again unless you blow the image up huge. For most people, 12 is probably already more than they need. I've had the same 8.3MP camera for a while now, and it still takes great pictures when I want 8x10s, or even up to 16x20.
For my money, I look at the hardware. I want a better optical zoom...there are lots of digital cameras out there that try to placate you with huge digital zoom and a cheapo lens, but digital zoom looks awful. Best to make sure you've got a good camera before worrying about whether or not you can accurately display the image on the side of your house...
I think that the extra cropping a larger MP files offers could benefit anyone. I get my 5D today which should be a nice step up from my 20D.
Yes, 12 is enough! More than enough... Stop the Madness!
Give us LOWER NOISE, HIGHER ISO, MORE ACCURATE COLOR.
If you make a camera with 8MP, super high ISO, super low noise, fantastic high speed lens..
for natural light, low light photography..
I will buy it!
I have to agree with this guy. My old Oly C2100Z at 2mp has better photos than my newly purchased canon at 8mp. Sadly, the Oly is starting to show it's age in it's mechanical IS and ability to lock focus. But considering how old it is... It's like manfs decided to heck with picture quality, we'll just through more pixels at the stupid masses and they'll never know. Sadly, for the most part, they were correct.
I hardly ever even shoot 12MP on my D3 or D2x. If I want high pixels, I use my kodak SLR/n or contax MF.
though I really want a P21/P25/P45 for my contax MF.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Phase-One-P45-39mp-digital-back-for-Mamiya-w-WARRANTY_W0QQitemZ150330325162QQcmdZViewItemQQptZDigital_Cameras?hash=item150330325162&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1234%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50
18K! whoah..
I'd like to raise the bar to 12.1 mega pixels, the .1 gives a nice dolby-like twist to it all.
Oh and while thinking up silly things like in-camera panoramic stiching how about some PNG support? That would fit with the extended dynamics and colorrange since PNG is one of the few formats that can go over 24bit, but the other contender is MS's hdphoto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Photo) and why go for open source when you can tie yourself down eh? Not that HDphoto doesn't have nice features and MS supplies free photoshop loaders and savers (win&mac) as well as a SDK and is suppose to be part of MS's 'open initiative' but you know how MS is at heart, can a company trust such initiatives in troubled economic times?
But we'll see what happens, plain jpg won't do though.
As for arguments of printing large.... A lot of times you dont need high MP even when your printing large 10 meter images. You also have to factor in viewing distance. In large billing boards advertisements, you can print at under 50 dpi and it looks great from a few meters away, but look like crap from close up.
My TL34HD has 14.7 megapixels, so suck it.
So what? Your TL34HD has a sensor that's small enough to fit on the very tip of ones finger. I guarantee you that a 6MP dSLR , in no small part because of the physically much larger sensor, would blow your camera out of the water.
Mr. Watanabe is correct when he says that the megapixel race isn't everything. However, it is some kind of a joke to imply that Olympus cameras will be better with low megapixel counts. I made the mistake of buying an Olympus E-510, with 10 megapixels. It is unbelieveably noisy. The noise just screams out of the pictures whenever the lighting is less than ideal. A friend who has a 6 megapixel Nikon D-40 gets much better pictures, with cleaner colors and far less noise. Olympus just doesn't have the image quality in the small Four-Thirds sensor.
On top of that, Olympus is still withholding the Focus Confirmation with legacy lenses feature, even after they finally turned on the image stabilization with legacy lenses, which they also withheld, in an apparent attempt to pressure people to buy new Four-Thirds lenses rather than reuse classic legacy lenses. It took us Olympus owners more than 6 months of screaming and complaining and posting on the Internet for Olympus to finally live up to their advertisements and make the image stabilization work with "with any lens". But they will apparently never turn on the Focus Confirmation for legacy lenses. That makes manual focus very difficult, because the viewfinder is very small and dark.
Then there is the problem with the very limited dynamic range of the Four-Thirds sensor. I get blown highlights all of the time.
Then there is the flimsy body. My hotshoe broke just from mounting a flash unit in the hotshoe and doing walk-around city street shooting. Just the camera banging against my chest pulled the hotshoe apart.
So yes, megapixels aren't everything.
i'm not sure why so many people think that it is fine "for a while". i can only imagine most people are not photographers. i can see over 12mp being usable for landscape, architecture or product photography (instances where you would logically use a medium or large format camera), but for *any kind* of portraiture even 12mp is a lot. the issue is that you have to then de-res your images. they capture so much detail that skin looks bad even when it doesn't look bad to the naked eye of a person standing in front of you.
comparing 12mp to computing power is not remotely apples to apples. i agree, computing power can continuously increase, largely because of everything else it has to manage- larger, more complex apps, more apps running, more background services, etc, etc, etc. image resolution has a limit. it's not like have a million megapixels is better than 25mp. it begins to destroy the aesthetic of a natural image at some point.