Windows series 4: My favourite photograph of windows and pixel count

Photographed near McCall, Idaho, in 2008, with my Nikon D70 camera.

This easily could have been the photo that started my obsession with windows.  It turns out I also have an obsession with benches, if you caught my earlier blogs on the subject.  But, I have to admit, I love this shot.  Not only that, but it was taken with a 6 mp camera - My first DSLR made by Nikon - and I have made numerous prints of it.

This brings up a good question about pixel count.  How many pixels are enough?  With cellphone and some digital cameras, pixel count has gone through the roof.  You can now take 200 mp photos with some Galaxy cell phones, and medium format cameras often provide 100 mp capability.  Full-frame mirrorless cameras are often around 50 mp, with some of Sony's cameras boasting 61 mp.  The truth is, do you really need that many megapixels?

My Z7ii has a 45 mp sensor while my D500 is limited to 20 mp.  Yet the truth is that this is often enough.  The advantage of the high pixel count is that you can crop more, which may come in handy in circumstances where you just aren't getting close enough to your subject.  The truth is that such high pixel counts are rarely necessary.  A 10 mp image will produce a very nice 8x10 with limited cropping or an excellent high-def image for LCD screens with significant cropping.  

The important question is, "What are you going to do with the images?"  Massive enlargements and cropping, especially with both, do benefit from high pixel counts.  However, the memory space these behemoth files take up is overwhelming - a 100 mp TIFF takes up about 300 mb of space; you could only fit 2 of them on a CD.  I find my 20 mp and 24 mp cameras plenty large enough for my purposes.  The truth is that I don't need more than that.  If I do, I can always pull out my full-frame 45 mp beast.

You want proof?  The above photo was taken at 6 mp.  S-I-X.  And I have 16x20s of it that are beautiful.  A better question is, "What ISO and file type are you using?"  This can make more of a difference than just a larger sensor.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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