Nex 7 at 6 MP?

I care a lot about high ISO noise, but I don't really need more than 6 MP. Anyone know if I can have the Nex7 combine four pixels to one and shoot at 6 MP?

Anyone care to guess how much noise would be improved by dropping down to 6 MP?

Woland65 said:

Anyone care to guess how much noise would be improved by dropping down to 6 MP?

Click to expand...

You can do it yourself on the computer. Shoot at 24 MP and downsize it to 6 MP on the computer.

Noise would be much lower obviously.

For convenience I want to avoid that.

...or you could just avoid zooming to 100%.

Erik

This actually brings up an interesting topic that I recently discussed with a local commercial photographer in my area. He uses an older model Hasselblad H1D 22 megapixel medium format camera.

It has a maximum ISO of only 400, but he said that sometimes when shooting on location he will underexpose the IS0 400 shots and push process the images in CS5 to ISO 800 or 1600 equivalent. When you look at those push-processed shots at 100 percent they have TERRIBLE noise, but when they are printed to viewed at web resolution they are as good or BETTER than equivalent ISO images taken from a 12-megapixel Nikon D700 full frame DSLR.

The point is that visible noise is reduced in prints and when you resize for web viewing.

When my NEX-7 eventually shows up one of the first things I'll do is make some 16x20 test prints at ISO 800 and above. If I can print ISO 1600 images at 16x20 without obvious noise or detail smudging then I don't really care about visible noise when viewing at 100 percent magnification on my PC.

Woland65 said:

I care a lot about high ISO noise, but I don't really need more than 6 MP. Anyone know if I can have the Nex7 combine four pixels to one and shoot at 6 MP?

Anyone care to guess how much noise would be improved by dropping down to 6 MP?

Click to expand...

Nobody will know until samples with the Firmware 1.0 start to show up. In any case, if noise is that critical for you, why don't you just get the NEX-5N, that apparently have the best noise control around (not only on the NEX system)?

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Pako Dominguez
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http://www.phototeka.net

Even if there is some noise, our vision copes with it pretty well. I like to leave a bit of it in to retain detail. This obsession with NR just leads to loss of detail and the watercolor look we get for JPEGs (including somewhat with the Nex). Given the extra resolution, it's probably worth it for the low ISO advantage, and you can always run an external NR program if you must for higher ISO.
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Gary W.

I may get the 5N instead, but that too has more pixels than I need, thus the same question pops up.

Does anyone have a comment on how good downsampling algorithms in cameras tend to be? Are they typically reasonable close to downsizing using computer software?

Cheers!