Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

"Artistic advantages" to higher Megapixels? Please explain. I will consider upgrading myself.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

It's really a question of viewing distance. I had a show recently with 50x75cm prints (about 18x27inches). Some were shot with a Canon Powershot G11 (12MP) and some with a Nikon D800E (36MP). At first glance you couldn't tell them apart in terms of sharpness. On close inspection, at about a one foot viewing distance--if compared directly--you could see a level of finer detail in the 36MP images, but it was not obvious. At a normal viewing distance of about 3 feet the difference was not visible.

radiojohn

One can now see why the average snapshooter is buying instant cameras again or smartphones. As soon as the computer industry hijacked photography from the film industry, consumers thought it would all be a free ride. Now it is a double learning curve: camera and computer. There ain't no free lunch!

Tomcat5133 Loc: Gladwyne PA

Thank you Kymarto as usual your answer is very helpful. I have been working on a online selling
business of images mine and some I would like to license from talented people. I had large table model Epson
which I have retired. Was at NAB last year and saw a terrific large output printers for less then 2K.
I am concerned that my images that have potential may not stand the blowup from 5 to 10 megs.
I think it would be better to have a supplier quality printer make my products.
Thanks again.

radiojohn

As a friend once said, the only difference between art and excercise is often the frame. One can produce an artistically interesting shot with a 5MP camera or a boring image with the 30 MP camera. Now, if your goal is to produce a shot with the express purpose of fitting over your couch, the higher resolution may be needed!

sodapop Loc: Bel Air, MD

Simply that you can do more in PP when you have more MPs to work with.

radiojohn

I used to ask the students in my "how to use" camera class how many did darkroom work. None. Then I asked why are they struggling and wasting money with their $89 inkjet when there is a $200,000 printer at the store nearby. Again, these folks new nothing about monitor calibration, paper choices, etc. They again expected a free ride.

I worked briefly with a guy who has an award from the Smithsonian for his pioneering work with fine art inkjet printing. But he was backed by HP and had all the free printers ink and paper he wanted.

Idaho

Buy a new computer. Trying to make an aging one work is not worth it. If you're serious about photography and spend a lot of your time with it, get good equipment and replace it as may be required.

The Villages Loc: The Villages, Florida

I really appreciated the response I have had to my posting, however, responses seem to have gone off in all directions.

My computer is a 4GB Ram/64 bit operating system. It has supported me just fine. Have only used 15% of storage space after many years.

What I'm simply trying to determine is if I go from a 12MP camera to (say) 20-30MP camera, will it cause a noticeable different in the computer's operation. Not concerned about download time. I assume it will take up more storage space....but would it be significant?

Thanks again in advance for your responses.

dandev Loc: Enumclaw, WA

I've stated using Photo Mechanic to alleviate my high file size issue. I can get rid of the bad photos before loading into Lightroom - which saves a bunch of time.
I will typically throw out 70% of what I shot anyway due to duplicates (worse looking shot of the same thing), out of focus, etc.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Yes, it will. The computer will take more time to do certain tasks when editing your images. Things like HDR and Pano stitching, applying a blur filter, sharpening, focus stacking, content aware fill, resizing, etc. In fact, one of the reasons I went to a 32 gb system was that I was hitting a wall with only 8 gb when editing 12 mp images and using content aware fill and perspective correction. It would either take forever, or I would end up getting an insufficient resources message and the operation would fail. The system I was using was a dual core Intel, running at 2.8 ghz, with 8 gb memory and Intel graphics (sharing the 8 gb memory). The replacement system started out with 16 gb of discrete memory, with a 1 gb graphics card, both of which have been upgraded. I have edited images that are up to 300 mp, and requiring that I save them as psb files because the files were in excess of 2 gb in size.

So there is no question that your modest system may end up hitting a similar wall. In any case it will be measurably slower to accomplish the same things you are doing now with smaller files.

If you shoot raw files, a 12 mp image will have a 14 mb file, a 36 mp image will be 45 mb, roughly 3x the size. I suspect a 24 mp file would be around 30 mb.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

[quote=tcthome]

Thanks! It was my third attempt in three days. This one was the keeper, though the other 2 were pretty good.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Actually, all three are great reasons. Besides, if you understand how to resize your images to control noise (downsampling), there is considerable benefit to more mp. I was able to duplicate the noise performance of my D3S with a D800 up to 6400 ISO, by simply downsampling the image from 36 mp to 12. The newer camera had considerably better dynamic range as well. What it did not do very will was produce a clean image at ISO 25,600, which the D3S could do with ease.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

As with most things, you can consider the slowest part of your system to be the speed limit. That is usually I/O.

If you have a 5400 RPM conventional hard drive, you can upgrade rather inexpensively to a larger 7200 RPM drive. That will make your I/O about 1/3 faster. OR, you can replace your startup drive with a Solid State Drive and make it MUCH, MUCH faster. With no spinning platters, SSDs use a form of static RAM to manage data. They are lightning fast. But they are relatively expensive, compared to spinning drives.

If you can upgrade your RAM, that will improve processing speed of large files by keeping more information in memory. It will also allow you to load more application programs in memory, for fast switching back and forth. 16GB is about the standard for RAM these days. In my experience, the law of diminishing marginal returns sets in around 24GB for most systems in most situations.

If you have at least a dual core CPU, that computer should be fine for 16 to 24 MegaPixel camera images. I sometimes use Photoshop and Lightroom on a Mid-2010, 2.4 GHz, Core-2 Duo Mac Mini. It has a 7200 RPM, 1 TB conventional hard drive, and 8 GB RAM. For all my audio and MOST still imaging work, it's still perfectly fine. For editing lots of large files and video, I use my newer iMac.

*For now,* most manufacturers have settled on 16 to 20 MP for Micro 4/3 sensors, 20 to 24 MP for APS-C sensors, and 20 to 43 MP for full frame sensors.

Just for reference and giggles, I have to recall running an entire photo lab on dual processor, 1.2 GHz Dell PCs back in the early 2000s. Of course, our images averaged 2000x3000 pixels, but the scanners and printers were slower than the computers, so THEY were the bottlenecks.

If you decide to buy a new Windows computer, you can get an average gaming computer to work quite well as an imaging computer. Any modern MacBook Pro or iMac will work quite well, too.

tcthome Loc: NJ

Villages said : My computer is a 4GB Ram/64 bit operating system. It has supported me just fine. Have only used 15% of storage space after many years.

I have a labtop with 4g ram . Purchased lightroom 6 on the disk after seeing the sytem reauirements of 4g ram. I was reading a book on Lightroom & , it went over the specs saying that the more mp the more ram you will need. Before even trying to install lightroom I purchased a dell allienware with 16 g ram & a 8 g graphics card. After using LR ( I own the Nikon D810 , 36 mp.) I am positive it would have locked up my labtop.
If you can afford it Purchase a new computer with at least 8 g fam & 2 g graphics card for lightroom alone. If you think you might expand your pp to photo shop & some plug- ins go with 16 g ram at a minimum. Have fun !

PS. I have no regrets with the purchase of either the camera or the the computer.