Fair enough, but ...
I think the fly in the ointment of digital viewing at it relates to MP count is the ability to zoom into 100% { or more
} with no effort .
I consider this mostly a trick to make it easy to evaluate technical aspects of a shot. Detecting pixel-level sharpness, for example (e.g., misfocus, motion blur). You can enlarge an image to whatever zoom you want, but if the effects you see are irrelevant to real-world viewing, you're puttering beyond the useful. I'm happy to make my image pixels 2x2 or 3x3 DISPLAY pixels to get down to this without squinting, but then I know that, for my presentations, this is just a convenience for me. It's not like sub-pixel phenomena are at all relevant to viewers. So, in a nutshell, these zooms are a convenience for the photographer/image processor. Just to make SURE the image won't contain any detectable artifacts.
I think you have nailed it to a "T" here. The only time I need to go to greater detail than the base image is in botanical identification of tiny features. But that is not art. Otherwise, I look at like images sometimes to try to evaluate which is truly the best image. But to view an image I look at it from a distance that allows me to see the entire image from the same perspective. On my computer screen that is about 10-12" on a 5K 27" monitor. At that viewing distance, as long as my eyes are not drawn to some part of the image that is either OOF or obviously not sharp, I am happy with the image (composition and exposure notwithstanding) as those are also macro-evaluation factors.
I also find that people invariably move in closer to look at the finer details of even very large prints , I have 72" wide prints on my wall and after the initial look at the whole scene most folk move within touching distance to see the minutiae . I might just have nosey friends
You have a good point, here, and I can imagine that. I would almost certainly do that (and I have) on some occasions. But my own curiosity is mostly technical. Like, I want to know what kind of a camera was used to take room-sized images. In admiring these room-sized images I always step back to take the image in within my range of vision in order to appreciate it. Clearly it's take a superhuman imagination to make something interesting happen in every part of a large image.
The only time I would look super closely at an image is, as I said botanical, or I might look at feather detail on a bird or scale detail on a butterfly....perhaps also rock crystals in a matrix.
It just occurred to me that, in a decade or more, I've never walked up close to the big art pieces on our wall. I just did, and you can see some of the technique and care used in creating them. So, an artist might get something out of this, but, I've never felt the art work itself benefitted from such inspection. My lack of imagination? Or, maybe contemporary artists haven't caught on to multi-scaled art. I'll have to talk to my son the artist about this.
I can't remember a time where I found artistic value in some tiny, tiny part of a much larger work. Maybe, but I cannot actually recall any instance. I admit that this might be a lack of artistic imagination, but, still, I'm waiting until I can conceive of such a work and then worry about how to create it.
I look at the big picture and evaluate especially a landscape image on that basis. Is there anything that is distracting as I view the image - from a distance where I can see the whole scene.
Ah, I DO remember some art where some macro scene is made out of zillions of little, bitty images you can's see from a distance. Kind of a one-trick pony, however, I think. The kind of thing a clever artist might do, and take all necessary pains to accomplish. But, hardly the kind of thing I think about doing on a regular basis.
Macro, yes. Landscape, no.
