Who only 16k for a camera sensor

Barry Twycross wrote:

Guy Parsons wrote:

"Why" means that we need to listen to what Olympus used to stress that "12MP is all that is needed to replace 35mm film".

In my own practical experiments and lots of printing from digitised film and from low MP cameras in early days of digital for camera club competitions, then I would have to say that "8MP looks better than 35mm film" as long as it is not printed too big.

I used to reckon that one of my negs had about 6Mpixels in it. So I was waiting for 6Mpixel cameras to come along. I was really surprised that when I gave in and jumped in at 4Mpixel, the image quality blew away the negs, there was a total lack of noise in the image.

Subsequent I went up to 7 or 8 Mpixel, and that's still all I care about. I don't often print, but all I want is the ability to print at 20x30 (inches).

My story is that I battled for a while with a 3MP camera and learned the limits of what could be done.

All the while I was heavily into camera clubs and on a State committee so ended up handling thousands of prints (usually up to A3 size) in local, State, nationwide and international competitions.

I despaired of the horrible work I was seeing in the days of 6MP DSLRs with too much cropping or sharpening or noise reduction etc, a lot were truly awful.

Then one happy day I was at a State competition and noticed an A3 print that really stood out for its clarity and resolution. Luckily the author was present so I asked the obvious question "which camera?" and it turned out to be some Minolta 8MP all-in-one design.

The other bothersome issue was the dust problems that all the early DSLRs exhibited, so the combination of auto dust removal and 8MP caused me to get the Only E-300  and was a happy bunny. Now of course happier with my E-P5. Never ever need to get a sensor cleaned ever with the 4/3 or any of a big bunch of M4/3 bodies.

Though with modern noise reduction, I think I can get 9-10Mpixels out of some of my better film frames (the Kodachrome slides in particular). I hate grain (and digital noise).

All I can say that with digitising slides with a 16MP camera then that gets all there is worthwhile to get off the film.

But in doing that I do get to see the shake and shock, misfocus and lack of depth of field issues of 35mm photography that is hidden by the usual screen projection.

Regards......... Guy