Thanks for the perspectives guys. I'm looking at Digital Transition's 100MP shifted samples now - surprising how much is cleaned up with the LCC files. 50-60MP seems to be a sweet spot for my work though - I don't really see a benefit to 100MP for the cost.
The obvious benefit of 100mp is to make
really big prints.
But there are also less obvious adjunct benefits of 100mp, when you feel you only need 50mp:
- Electronic sensor shutter. Makes the use of a tech camera tons faster and easier. You can shoot from live view, change shutter speed by 1/3 increments, shoot from an iPhone, get aperture and GPS in the metadata, and skip the cocking of the leaf shutter.
- Wider maximum wide in a lens line up. Since the 50mp is a crop sensor your widest lens is a bit less wide than with the 100mp.
- More dynamic range; the 100mp has more than the 50mp, although they both have lots
- 16 bit sensor. The 50mp sensor is "only" a 14 bit sensor. I put "only" in quotes because the results from the 50mp are still exceptionally smooth and dynamic range is still very high.
- Every lens becomes a "zoom"; you can crop heavily and still end up with 50mp.
- Lower chance of moire. Already very low at 50mp, the smaller pixel size on the 100mp.
- Stitching-free panoramics. Crop a 100mp raw to a 6:17 image and you still have a 27 megapixels that will print 48” across at 240ppi.
- Squares or Verticals-from-horizontal without compromise. A 4:3 vertical crop from a 100mp horizontal image is still 57mp.
- Future proofing; if you're already happy with 50mp, it's unlikely you'll need more than 100mp in the foreseeable future.
Of course there are also downsides, which you know well: cost, storage (though not as much as you'd think since shooting at 100mp doesn't require processing every TIFF out at 100mp and layered TIFFs are usually what suck up much of a catalog's total size). There is also, maybe a 1-2mm reduction in usable image circle on some lenses, between the increased demand for sharpness and the slightly smaller pixels.
Whether the above benefits outweigh the downsides is up to you. But if you're even a bit on the fence I'd definitely suggest playing with both before you decide on either.
It looks like you're in Oregon; I'll be in Portland there this summer, and of course we're glad to send gear for evaluation via UPS or FedEx. We have plentiful 50mp and 100mp in our rental/demo inventory including an IR version, Achromatic version, Hasselblad and Phase mounts of the 100mp, and every mount of the 50mp (Contax, Hassy V, Hassy H, and P1).
