12MP for Samsung and Apple

There was an interview with Olympus which states that 10MP was all what most people need. Have we reached a point where aren't many people who need more?

I'm sure there's a "most people" demographic that Olympus was referencing.

The question to ask, then, is what demographic one considers themselves to be part of. There's those that just want quick decent photos and memories, those who want something a little finer but not necessarily requiring the finest resolution, and those that seek the finest resolution possible.

The last company I'd believe telling me what people need is Olympus, LOL.

It is a delicate business of knowing what people want before they know themselves. And it is very easy for the old guard to be fooled into believing what people want say in surveys is what they want. For example:

Give a survey and ask someone if they want 8, 10, 12, 14 Meg and I think you'll be fooled ;-)

The enthusiast and professional camera market is rather small, and even then, there are many in that group who don't need extreme resolution.

I am increasingly being asked for images to be e-mailed rather than for a physical print. 12MP is already HUGE for e-mail and veiwing on a phone/tablet. I'm confident Samsung and Apple's marketing teams put a lot of thought into this... people just want good pictures for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

wklee said:

There was an interview with Olympus which states that 10MP was all what most people need. Have we reached a point where aren't many people who need more?

Click to expand...

Thank God the stupid Mega-Pixel race in Smartphone is a thing of the past. Samsung actually went from 16mp → 12mp to improve its Low-Light High ISO. Most people use their phone to take photo of their friends in Night Clubs or dark restaurants, where noisy high iso produce horrible images. Its only natural that people progress from the techno bragging right of High mega-pixel race toward cleaner & brighter lowlight photos.

Olympussy's highest resolution camera is a middling 16MP, which they've desperately tried to augment to a pseudo 40MP using sensor shift, at a time when the competition offers cameras that actually reach and eclipse that mark (e.g., Sony A7II R, Canon 5DSR...)

Given their lackluster efforts on this front, I'm not surprised they're peddling a "10MP is more than enough" mantra.

wklee said:

There was an interview with Olympus which states that 10MP was all what most people need. Have we reached a point where aren't many people who need more?

--
Never buy version 1.0 of anything.

Click to expand...

As a pro photog, I still use a 12mp D700 as my main workhorse and I have never had any complaints from any of the clients I deal with.

Almost all my clients need pictures for social media, most of which requires less than 2 megapixels of actual size. 12Mp is more than enough, I've had huge 30 feet x 30 feet banners printed from 12 megapixels that were used by companies for trade shows. I do own a 24mp D750 however the only time I ever use it is because I know the client wants to do extreme cropping in order to save time during the workflow.

I know that there a few niche categories where high megapixels are absolutely required however I've found most of the people I've encountered in the high MP camp to be either amateurs, gearheads or simply out of touch with reality.

So yes to answer your question, we don't NEED more megapixels, but there's always going to be people that are obsessed over technical specifications. Just like how we don't need cars that go 500 horsepower, there are communities that obsess about it. And that's all fine by me, because the more gearheads that exist, the more work there is for actual photographers like myself.

It's not uncommon for me to print 30-42 inches on the long edge.

It's incredibly common for me to view images on a 4k monitor from two feet away.

If you start at 3:2 and crop to 16:9 at 3840x2160, you don't have a lot of cropping room even from 20+MP. And it's not uncommon for me to crop heavily since a lot of what I shoot is small and far away, and that's starting with 960mm equivalent.