Question about mega pixels and printing

I have been doing some thinking today (yes I do have a small brain which works sometimes) and was putting a few things into context.

1. People talk about MP with their cameras and image quality/sharpness (me included) etc etc..between one camera brand and another.

But how many of us here actually print bigger than A3 or A4 or print at all for that matter and have all our 1000's of images plastered around the house or in galleries etc..

Unless you are a serious amatuer or pro selling images or doing wedding shots etc or blowing up imgages larger than A4/A3.. such as Ben, then what is the point in having these Big MP cameras. I think most of us show our images on the internet via a website in which case there is not really much difference between 6MP and 14MP in terms of web page viewing or is there ??.

Do reviewers ie: DPreview and many others base there reviews on printed images or viewing on screen. If printed at what size do they evaluate and base their results. All I can say if it's printing it's a waste of a lot of paper/ink etc.. especially printing larger than A3 as most of are not fortunate to own a printer this size and even those that do I suspect you wont get many on the walls of your home.

I print A4 but would like an A3 printer as I would love to see my images in print of this size, but it begs the question once printed what do I do with them them ?? So surely a website for the world to see your images on their average size LCD or CRT monitor is the only real option most amatuers have to show off their photography.

I am probabley way of track here or completely missing the point so perhaps you would care to comment

Pete

Not quite sure to reply here in the sacred 'Digital' part as I'm really only an 'Old Film Bloke' reluctantly playing with digital, but my thought are that if I take everything at 10.2 MP I have to throw away lots of digital info when downsizing to e-mail my pics to local newspapers when they want about 4MB max (I usually make important landscape shots 1500 pixels wide, portrait format ones 1200 pixels deep, as I know they will only make them 2 columns max anyway). So I set 6MP JPeg 'Best' and still get 17.2 MB files, so if I was to PRINT or have the 'images' printed up to A3 Exhibition size then I would use the 10.2 MP setting.

Pete

In amateur photography, the main reason for A3 prints of high MP rating, is for members of Photographic Societies. At Photographic Societies, there are regular Print Competitions, where good quality A3s, are often used.
After the first Print Competition, a print can be also entered in the Societies Annual Competition. If it is a good print the Society may request its use in a number of Interclub Competitions. Also members can enter their prints in any number of outside Exhibitions.

So a good A3 print can end up having quite a lot of use.

There are many good Photographic Societies all around the UK. I notice that you are from the West Midlands. There are numerous Photographic Societies in the West Midlands. The largest of these is Smethwick, which meets on Thursday evenings.

Regards
Graham

Pete,

Its a fair point to make and not at all off track to raise it as a query.

I still want the option of making use of all that data if the need arises. We had the same option with 35mm film for example in that it could be enlarged to something bigger than A3. Would you have preferred to use 110 film over 35mm if you didn't think you were going to print larger than A4? It isn't just resolution the larger format of film (or additional megapixels) gives, but superior gradation of tone and better grain.

I know some reviewers have dismissed the K10D's 22 bit image processing as a gimmick in that the final image produced is going to be 12 bit at best (RAW) or 8 bit (jpeg). They are missing the point. A bigger sample will still give a more accurate average. If the image is going to be averaged down to 12 or 8 bit I would prefer it to be averaged down from 22 bit. The potential for that data to be useful is worth having because you never know when you are going to need it. If the ability to put photos up on a web page were the main criteria I would have saved myself a lot of money and used a 4MP zoom compact. The K10D will give me web page material, but much more when I need it.

How reviewers such as DP Review arrive at their conclusions is less clear. From what I have been able to gather they are no more free of commercial interest than the magazines Ben has mentioned who demand a manufacturer takes out advertising space before getting a feature. DP Review appears to have based its review of the K10D's image quality on jpegs at default settings without taking the time to learn how to use the camera properly. Curiously, the review commented that the K10D's RAW quality was as good or better than the Nikon D80's, but still chose to rate its image quality below all others in its class (awarding it a grudging "just" highly recommended). A different reviwer caught on to the fact that Pentax have given photgraphers more control over the jpeg quality by not over sharpening it. By the photographer taking the trouble to learn how to use the camera (something technicians like to refer to as an RTFM solution) its jpegs can be brightened and sharpened to taste.

I am uneasy with the notion of basing my opinion of image quality on how it looks on a 72 or 96 ppi monitor which may or may not have been calibrated correctly and may or may not be working properly. Ben has commented that Canon images look better on a monitor, but the K10D's look better in print. Each of us will have their own preferences, but for me the true measure of how good an image is will remain how well it prints. Luckily the world is big enough to accommodate the preferences of people who prefer it the other way around and I am not about to tell them they are wrong. Photography is still an art and any art is going to be subject to personal interpretation and preferences. Suits me.

I've been printing more of my work (again, mostly a film guy here) and have been doing some larger prints, so my 12MP or so scans are handy.

Another use for high pixel count is freedom to crop more aggressively.

For what its worth, my 2 MP Nikon does very nice prints.

All this "who needs A2 printing anyway" stuff is fine if you use the whole frame.

But assuming that a) sharpness of the lens is not limiting, b) you can get the damn thing in focus anyway (not always the case) and c) noise is not an issue, any time you need to crop and enlarge, the more pixels the better, I would have thought.

My recent moon shot




was heavily cropped - I only had a 400mm lens and the moon in the original occupied maybe an eighth of the width of the frame and about a fifth of the height. It's not as sharp as I'd like, but I can't help thinking that even this wouldn't be possible with a sensor with less resolution.