It doesn’t seem like five minutes since I bought my first-ever DSLR, the Canon 350D. In 2005, this bundle of plastic and electronics made digital photography accessible to the masses and the 350D travelled the world with me, never missing a beat and taking some great photos along the way.
It’s hard to believe that the 350D boasted just 8-megapixels and, at the time, I thought that was a lot.
Fast forward to today and multiple camera brands are working on sensors that make the tiny chip in the 350D looks like something from a museum. Make no mistake, the megapixel war never stopped, there was just a short ceasefire to give each side a chance to regroup and rearm in the shape of research and development. In terms of medium format, the Phase One XF already offers a 100-megapixel sensor, but it won’t be long until camera manufacturers manage to squeeze 100MP out of a 35mm sensor. In truth, the starting gun was fired a while back - Canon announced development of a 120MP DSLR back in 2015 and showed off a prototype camera at the 2016 Canon expo in Shanghai. Technology is moving fast and this new benchmark of high-resolution cameras will soon arrive.
DSLRs have seen megapixel counts grow quickly thanks to advances in technology
But here’s the thing; will 100MP supercharge your photography, or actually slow it down? Take the file sizes for a starting point. I recently upgraded my computer because it was really struggling to manage 36-megapixel files in Lightroom. Triple that resolution and you can image the potential issues with workflow and the opportunity for hard drives to melt from the demands. Let’s move on to memory; I still have a clutch of 1GB CF cards from that Canon 350D relic stashed in a draw. With the 120-megapixel sensor Canon are working on, that ancient 1GB card would hold just eight images. Yes, we of course use high-capacity cards these days, but it's likely you’ll still be swapping media mid-shoots.
Perhaps the biggest question mark over DSLR packing 100 plus megapixel sensors is lenses. There’s no point pairing such a high-performance camera with sub standard optics so will this mean you’ll have to upgrade all the glass in your kit bag? I remember being on the launch event of the Canon 5Ds and 5DSR cameras and asking a press team member about how their lenses would cope with the 50-megapixel sensor. In fact, Canon then released a list of their lenses they recommended for use with the 5DS and there were only a handful of optics that didn’t make the cut. Whether the same lenses would be able to handle double the resolution is another question.
Will lenses be able to keep up with 100-megapixel sensors?
But while there are obvious challenges to be overcome, just think for a moment what 100-megapixels could do for your photography. Insane levels of resolution revealing detail and dynamic range that you could only dream of just a few short years ago. The ability to crop extensively into a scene without compromising image quality. It’s difficult for any photographer not to be excited by the prospect of these advances in technology. Digital photography has certainly come a long way, in a relatively short space of time and the next few years may be the most exciting yet.
. digitalrev.com2017-6-23 03:00