The 2010 courses have started here at the Norwich Arts Centre with the Further Adventures in SLR course on Monday morning, and I've just finished teaching the Go Manual course this morning.
On Monday, the subject of megapixels came up. It's a digital photography old chestnut of a topic, if we can have such a thing, that has been raging for at least three years. See
this article from the New York Times, by ace technology writer David Pogue, for evidence of that. It was written in February 2007!
And now we have the full-frame Canon 5D Mark II with 21 megapixels and the crop-frame Canon 7D with 18 MP, while Nikon has the full-frame D3X with 24.5 MP. Interestingly, Nikon's latest offering, the full-frame D3S, has a mere 12.1 MP. So while Canon have gone megapixel mad, Nikon, it seems, are reigning back.
Perhaps it might be more helpful to consider pixel density. Striking a balance between how many pixels (or photosites) a sensor has, against how much space each of them has to itself might give us a better indication of likely image quality. Higher density is likely to mean more noise, but more MPs means better resolution. But there is a limit to the resolving power of the eyeball and brain, beyond which greater resolution from MPs becomes a bit pointless.
And so, those MP density readings are (drum roll):
Canon 5D Mark II - 2.4 MP sq
Canon 7D - 5.4 MP sq
Nikon D3X - 2.8 MP sq
Nikon D3S - 1.4 MP sq
So the Nikon D3S is the winner of the New Megapixel War! Density Wars!
Just for comparison, the Canon 40D comes in at 3.1 MP sq, the 400D is also 3.1 MP sq. The Nikon D40 is 2.7 MP sq, the D90 is 3.3 MP sq. All data comes from the excellent spoddy technohead camera website
www.dpreview.com where you can find out the MP density of your camera in seconds.
Does any of this matter? Well, an image can be as sharp as a razor, but if it's not interesting I won't look at it for long. I'd rather look at the fuzzy, out of focus shots taken on a camera given away for free and is held together with Sellotape and rubber bands two MPs.