Megapixel Madness Disorder

It seems the world is going crazy with MMD (Megapixel Madness Disorder). How relevant is higher megapixel when it comes to general photography? What are the advantages and disadvantages of higher megapixel cameras, especially for wildlife? This short essa

With most of us reading this article, photography is a passion. Call it madness if you like. Wildlife photographers are even a further different breed, often putting in their life’s savings in their equipment. Higher megapixel cameras seem to the ‘in-thing’ today. Just mention a Canon 5D Mark II, 5D Mark III, Nikon D3x, D800, even the low-cost D3200, and it seems to re-invent life for wildlife enthusiasts. So, is this investment justified? Or is it an overkill? What does one have to do to get the most out of these megapixel monsters? If you have ever used one of these cameras, by now you may already have the answer. For one thing, as good

Note: What holds true here also holds true with most other genres of photography.

Rohinton Mehta

as they are, these monsters are ‘nonforgiving’. Any defect in your lens, any focussing error howsoever small, any movement of the camera (the subject too), usage of wrong apertures and poor shooting technique, will all stand out like a sore thumb. You may have noticed that some of your lenses, that delivered excellent sharpness with your 6, 12, or 16 megapixel cameras, no longer gives you the same/similar results with your new megapixel monsters. Why is that, you may ask? The imaging sensors of these cameras are capable of recording extremely fine detail. Along with that, lens flaws are also brought out (all lenses have some flaws). This simply implies that, for the ultimate image quality that these cameras are capable of providing, you need to use the best (read, most expensive) lenses available. It is not that your older lenses won’t work, its just that they may not be able to provide the highest image quality that you may expect. However, if you never enlarge your pictures to poster size or more, you may not notice the difference. I did mention ‘usage of wrong apertures’. What the heck is that? We all know that using very narrow apertures ( like f/16, f/22) to increase depth of field, does have an adverse effect on image quality. When light passes through very narrow openings, a phenomenon called ‘diffraction’ causes the images to go ‘soft’. This is more noticeable at the edges of the frame. Hence you need to find the

diffraction limit of your own lenses/ camera body combination and try not to go beyond that particular aperture. For example, on the D800/D800E, the effects of diffraction generally become noticeable at around f/11. Please note too, that the size of your film/digital sensor and the size of the pixels play a part here. Cameras with smaller sensors reach the limit of diffraction faster than, say, a full-frame sensor camera. ( That’s why most compact cameras are limited to f/8). Okay. What about the widest available aperture? Lenses do not give their best performance when used wide open. If possible, stop down by at least one f/stop. Modern ‘big-gun’ lenses like the 500mm f/4s and 600mm f/4s do provide good resolution when used wide open, but they too will perform better when stopped down a bit. What’s all the fuss about ‘shooting technique’? Applicable all the more to high megapixel models, shooting without a proper support can cause a loss of critical sharpness that your camera/lens combo is capable of achieving. Again, this might have gone unnoticed with your 6/12/16-megapixel cameras but with higher megapixel models, chances are, that you’ll notice the loss of critical sharpness. If your camera offers a Mirror Lock Up facility, make sure you use it, especially when using long telephoto lenses and high MP models. Have you read Nikon’s Technical Guide on the D800/D800E? In case you haven’t, here’s a part of it: On page2,ShootingTechniques: “At the high resolutions offered by the D800/800E, even the slightest camera motion can result in blur”. Further on page2:Lesson1: Use a tripod. “Use a tripod to reduce blur when photographing static subjects. It should be as sturdy as possible; avoid extending the legs or centre column further than necessary. A large head helps keep the camera steady”.

Page3,WhyuseLiveView: “At the high resolutions offered by the D800/ D800E, even the slap of the mirror can sometimes be enough to blur photographs”.

Page 9 gives an idea of what happens if the focussing is not 100% accurate. It says, “The superior resolution of D800/ D800E makes small amounts of focus blur more obvious”. A note to our readers: Similar problems can occur with high megapixel models from other manufacturers. Nikon D800/D800E is quoted simply because the details mentioned above are easily and readily available. Ever wondered why Nikon have mentioned this? Have you read of such caveats before in user manual/ technical guides for other low/medium megapixel cameras? This simply confirms that to produce the best results from high megapixel cameras, you need a firm support.

The lessons we learn here are:

1. We must go a couple of notches up in our shooting discipline if we want to successfully use our megapixel monsters to their full advantage. 2. Use the best quality lenses. Keep in mind that high megapixel cameras often have low frames per second firing rate because there’s just too much of data to be worked upon and transferred to the memory card. In wildlife photography, especially with shots of flying birds, and for sports and photojournalism, this can be a limitation that you may have to put up with. High megapixel cameras offer a big advantage when we need to crop our images This is a big plus point in favour of wildlife photographers. Even with long telephoto lenses, it may not always be possible to get that close-up look. Cropping away the unwanted areas may re-frame our shot as desired. The penalty is a loss of pixel data that results in loss of image quality. But when we crop away pixels from high megapixel cameras, we often still leave enough pixels to make decent size prints. So, if you can use the best quality lenses with your high megapixel cameras, have a high shooting discipline, a good idea of image editing, and do not mind lugging around a heavy tripod, you could possibly end up with image quality that equals that of medium format! If you do get into this megapixel rat-race, consider faster memory cards, faster computers, more RAM, faster card reader, larger storage ( both internal as well as external), more time at the computer to attend to the larger files, and more money to spend on buying high-grade lenses. Those who do not ‘need’ (as opposed to ‘ want’) such high resolutions may be better off with D-SLRs of modest resolutions.