Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: 24x36 on February 15, 2011, 07:22:16 pm
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Hi, Michael, I've been a "lurker"/reader for quite some time. In the essay entitled "Pixel Count and Future Imaging Chips" (going back a while), you made some interesting statements regarding the limitations of lens resolution, including the following:
"the Canon 1Ds, for example, with its 8.8 micron pixels, is already capable of greater resolution that almost any 35mm format lens."
"The Canon 1Ds can actually out-resolve the best lenses that Canon makes — and some of these are among the best there are."
"With the Canon 1Ds (and likely the Kodak DCS 14n, and others that will come along in the next year or so) we have imaging chips that are limited by the lenses available, not by a lack of pixels."
and, in the Q&A:
"as pointed out in the article, top cameras like the Canon 1Ds are already capable of higher resolution than our best lenses. If we add more pixels to get higher resolution it will be wasted, as the lenses can't use it. Adding more pixels to simply end up with bigger file sizes is no different than simply up-ressing a smaller file in Photoshop, and a lot more expensive."
Obviously, the theoretical resolution limits are higher (per your "Do Sensors Outresolve Lenses" essay), but practical limits of mass-produced lenses may limit this further. Given 20-20 hindsight (i.e., yes they did come out with higher pixel density cameras in the 24x36 format, without using "pixel binning"), and your ability to use some of the subsequent EOS 1DS series cameras, would you still say the statements quoted above are true? If not, what changed your mind?
[Edit/Note: the EOS 1DS has 11.4 megapixels]
Thanks!
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Bump...