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Who needs more than 6 MP?

Jorgen Udvang

Subscriber Member
One of my favourite cameras, and my first digital, the 5MP Canon A95. I gave it away to the girl in my first post of this thread :facesmack:

 
My kit ranges from a phone, Ricoh GR, Oly eM5 and the three Sigma DP Merrills.

All of us experienced photographers know that the memorable pictures come from capturing that magic moment in the right light. The likelyhood of that happening more often comes from having a versatile camera that is easy to use.

With due respect I think we all have to admit that those Sigmas come bottom of that wish list. Pigs to use in my view!

However, some colleagues have been putting together a small book illustrating a 42 acre garden. They have had full access to my picture library and no propoganda from me. You would be amazed at the proportion picked that were taken by the Sigmas. There must, to the often untutored eye, be a little extra in the images.

My studio portraits taken with the Sigmas have the slight edge over those from the Olys - as long as the content is as good. Some friends wanted a studio reference to send to an oil painting artist so he could recreate a Gainsborough style portrait. We were working slowly with well planned poses so the Sigma was not a hindrance. The oil artist was staggered at the quality of the files I sent him.

To answer the OP who needs more than 6 mp? Maybe the answer is nobody - but if you can increase it tenfold with a Sigma it ain't half nice to have!

Tony
 

JoelM

Well-known member
Epson R-D1 with 6.1mp. I think I shot this with a Noctilux 1.0 or 75mm Summilux. It prints nicely at 8x10.


_EPS1139.jpg
 

Shashin

Well-known member
Just found your arm and hamer demonstrating the "Rear flash sync" in the manual. How many lightbulbs did you smash in the process? :ROTFL:
Or were the demos done without the bulb and then later photoshopped in the image?
Not sure I can reveal a trade secret...but the rear-sync example is actually the first curtain sync and vice versa--the hammer is moving up. ;) After all, I did not want to break the bulb and no one can tell the difference. :toocool:
 
M

mjr

Guest
I really like this shot from sailing in to the Antarctic in 2005 with a little pocket Sony DSC-W1, 5mp of goodness.

 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
I miss those days when upgrades to sensors were literally 100%+ increases in resolution. The joys (ok, not joys at $7-8k per camera) of going from a D1 to a D1x to a D2x to a D3/D3x and so on.
 

pegelli

Well-known member
I miss those days when upgrades to sensors were literally 100%+ increases in resolution. The joys (ok, not joys at $7-8k per camera) of going from a D1 to a D1x to a D2x to a D3/D3x and so on.
On A-mount I went from 6 ==> 12 ==> 24 (KM5D ==> A700 ==> A850) 2 steps for just over 1 k$ per step

On E-mount my steps were less spectacular 14 ==> 16 ==> 24 (NEX5 ==> NEX6 ==> A6000/A7/A7ii) but these steps were all far below 1 k$ per step/camera
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Well that just shows the cost of being early adopters, in my case with Nikon. That said, I don’t regret any of it.
 

pegelli

Well-known member
My only regrets are from not buying equipment when there was a good opportunity :banghead:

:ROTFL:
 

Shashin

Well-known member
Fortunately, storage prices dropped with the increase in pixels or we would be paying double for those advances. Remember when manufacturers would include 8MB or 16MB cards with their cameras? I don't have a single camera now that could write one image to one of those cards!
 

biglouis

Well-known member
For me it was the Epson R-D1, which I bought on a whim second hand from R G Lewis, and which introduced me to the massively expensive world of Leica lenses, and eventually Leica Cameras.

One of my favourite photos of all time, I think with the 28mm Elmarit, 'Wheat Before The Storm' (2006).


This is a photo of Bignor Hill, used by the South Downs National Park for one of their information leaflets (2006). I called this 'Late afternoon, time for tea.'


My homage to the greatest rock band in the world, when they reformed for one concert in 2007, I called this 'Red Box, Red Pub, Led Zep' (Commercial Road, Whitechapel).
 

biglouis

Well-known member
If we really want to delve into history here are some shots I still have from my first digital camera, the Panasonic KXL-600A which I purchased in a Singapore duty free shop on my way to Australia in 1997. I believe I created the first ever blog using this camera, a series of pages for my web site which documented my visit with words and photographs, taken with the KXL-600A. One day when I can be bothered I'll put the pages up again and claim to be first with the Guiness Book of Records (haha, btw the word 'blog' had not been invented at the time iirc).

I can't even recall the SD card size (1MB??? 2MB???) and the resolution I think was 640x480. You could get about 10-12 shots per 4x AAA batteries. I loved it!







My career until I became a secondary school teacher was in IT as a software developer and then all the way up to IT Director, so having access to digital imagery for someone like me was a fantastic improvement over film technology. Oddly enough, I kept using film until I purchased my second digital camera, a Canon p&s - purely to create eBay listings! - in around 2001. I used the Canon to help me sell pretty much everything I owned through eBay at a time in my life (after my business went into a tailspin) when I needed to create some cash flow. That will be my second book 'How eBay Saved My Life' (hehe).

LouisB
 

xpatUSA

Member
Not me. My two Sigmas are each 4.7MP (2640x1760px) - more than enough for my 1920x1200px monitor and I don't print.

I've been up to the heady heights of 15MP with a few Sigma "Merrill" models but found myself shooting in sensor-binned low res, so I sold them all off ...
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
I have an irrational love for my Sigma Merrils. In almost every way they are horrible to use yet the results under the right circumstances can be outstanding. I have the DP1M, DP2M & DP3M. All slow, cumbersome, but hit way above their weight - most of the time. Sometimes they fail spectacularly but the highs beat the lows by a significant margin.

Just make sure that you have a tripod and don't bother shooting sports or street :p



Folks my find this photographers love affair with the Nikon D1 interesting: https://petapixel.com/2019/05/14/using-the-d1-nikons-first-homegrown-dslr/
I can relate. He overlooks the IR bleed but I can totally relate to everything else in this article.

And then there's the Nikon Df ... still one my favourites that I still own. Ok, not < 6MP but I think that it still relates to the OP's original thread intention.

I saw the earlier post about the Epson RD-1 - I've owned 3 of them over the ears and should have kept one as a collectable (for me, not $$). Also flawed by IR cut and also lens casts on sensor from Leica film lenses but a joy to use with the pseudo analog dials.

The biggest issue I've run into with these older cameras though is batteries ... definitely the long term Achilles heal. (And why I wouldn't want a current Tesla in 15-20+ years time vs my gas guzzlers). I still have a wonderful Rollei 6006/6008 system and the batteries last what feels like 30 minutes.
 
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Shashin

Well-known member
I am definitely in the use-a-camera-because-I-enjoy-it camp. Not that I would buy a 6 MP camera now, but likewise, I can't think of a single camera today I would class as not having enough pixels. The image that I find so satisfying, not only to look at, but also in making, are not clearly defined by resolution. Photography is ultimately a cognitive problem between the object and observer.

I think we had a similar thread going in the Nikon forum. It raises a really interesting question about digital cameras. Top of the line digital camera can be had at great prices and still produce great images, perhaps not a high ISO, but then I don't really shoot at high ISOs with camera that are good at it.

The 30-minute battery life is not an issue. Buy 48 of them and your can shoot all day! And carrying them will remind you of the good old days when you had to pack two bricks of film--all the benefits of digital with the cache of having to change something in your camera like film!
 
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