by Michael Reichmann
John Strohbeen, who owns Ohm Speakers, which still has exclusive rights to the wonderful Walsh loudspeaker driver, wrote in a recent blog post: "One of the marks of the serious 'phile'—be it audiophile, bibliophile or other committed enthusiast—is that we squabble about things most outside the community have rarely heard about, let alone care about."
On February 6th, Canon Inc. announced the new Canon 5DS and 5DS R, which feature 51-megapixel full-frame sensors, for 5792 x 8688 pixel resolution, the biggest images yet from a traditional full-frame or less DSLR. (Dpreview already has its First Look posted. Like the Sony A900, however, which was the first camera to achieve 24 MP, it appears the new Canons are optimized for high-res shooting and not great at high ISOs.) With these cameras, Canon has reclaimed the lead from Nikon in the megapixel race.
...Or has an upstart interloper done an unexpected end-around on the twin giants of the camera biz? Olympus's modest E-M5 Mark II has a multi-shot high-resolution photo mode for unmoving subjects. The camera takes eight separate exposures, shifting the sensor a minute amount between exposures, then merges the data for a moiré-free image claimed to have resolution equivalent to a 40-megapixel capture.
That's more than the Nikon D810, and Imaging-Resource has already done a direct comparison between the two—in which the Olympus comes out looking, if anything, slightly the better of the two.
Then again, we've had superlarge high res multi-shot options available before now, in the form of merged panos. You might remember this 64-megapixel shot of mine, made from five Pentax K-20 exposures:
I'm looking forward to the first E-M5 Mk. II vs. Canon 5DS R shootout, coming soon to many geek—er, gear—sites near you.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, is it really true that cameraphiles squabble about megapickles? That's starting to seem a whiff '00s to me. It was indeed something we cared a whole lot about for a while, but (while acknowledging that some people really do need bigger pictures), seems like the race has gotten a bit less important for a lot of us lately. Remember a post I wrote five years ago about The Point of Sufficiency?
The lesson of the point of sufficiency is that more is always better—until it isn't any more.
Mike
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