I’ve got 2,149 clicks on our new 50 megapixel Canon 5DS-R. So, what’s life like with a 50 megapixel camera?
50 Megapixels Rules!
- I always know that I’m getting the sharpest image possible out of my lens and technique. I get more sharpness out of my existing lenses, even when they’re not optically perfect.
- My primes become zooms, and my zooms become deeper. I get the pixel density of an APS-C camera with all the benefits of full-frame. If my 400mm lens is a 400mm lens is a 640mm lens on my APS-C Canon 7D Mark II (with a 1.6x crop factor), it’s a 400-600mm lens on my 5DS-R, because I can choose to crop in post.
- I can zoom a 1080p timelapse 550% (see the video at the top of this page).
- I can increase the noise reduction in Lightroom and trade some of that detail for a cleaner image (and still be sharper than other cameras).
- Even 11×14″ images are sharper. Technically the 22 megapixel 5D Mark III is 350 DPI at 11×14, but in practice, all lenses & techniques are imperfect, printed images are always cropped, anti-aliasing filters reduce sharpness. The visible DPI of an 11×14 from a 5D Mark III is closer to 250 DPI… and I like to make 20×30″ prints, and larger. At that size, the 5D Mark III is at about 140 visible DPI, while the 5DS-R is above 200 visible DPI.
50 Megapixels Sucks!
- The CR2 raw files are 55-75 MB each. Converted to DNGs, they’re 45-60 MB each.
- Flaws in my technique become obvious. The reciprocal rule works OK for a 24 megapixel camera, but at 50 megapixels, I need a faster shutter.
- Even on a tripod, I benefit from mirror lockup and a heavy tripod. As a result, I’m now more often using (and carrying) a tripod.
- Lightroom will take 2-3 hours to import and render previews for the raw shots from a typical wedding.
- Switching between pictures in Lightroom takes 2-5 seconds, even with 1:1 previews rendered.
- Working with multiple images is exponentionally more painful. I wrote this entire article while waiting for Photoshop to blend about 25 images (median averaging to remove people from a scene), and my PC is the fastest you can get.
- Basically, all intense processing requires planning. You’ll be saying things like, “I’ll start processing this panorama before I leave for lunch.” and “I’ll be in bed in a minute, I just have to start rendering these 1:1 previews.”
To be clear: 50 megapixel images always look better than the lower resolution images, even when technique isn’t perfect. But it does make your technique flaws more obvious, and no matter your budget, you simply cannot buy a computer that can process the images at a reasonable pace.
Thanks Tony. You’ve confirmed everything I suspected. I know you’ve got a good bit of storage, but do you find you’re tossing away even more images than before to preserve local disk space? Looks like a big VM cluster is in your future.
I’ve been trying to delete missed shots in-camera more often, since importing takes so long… but compared to the 4k videos we record, the still images don’t take up much space.
Hey Tony,
I would be curious to know if you had a better Graphics Card if your performance would be better. Since, in LR CC it now uses GPU. I’m not sure to what extent exactly, could be interesting if you could get your hands on something for testing though.
Keep up the great work!
Cheer,
Shawn
We did a very detailed analysis of Lightroom CC performance and even with a top-end graphics card, overall performance is better with GPU acceleration turned off. The programmer at Adobe in charge of the GPU acceleration wrote a blog post about it that confirmed it actually slows down many common tasks for every user, while accelerating very few tasks in very specific circumstances that apply to very few users.
But I do have a monster video card for video editing and gaming 🙂
What the hell! After all the talk about the performance with CC and it doesn’t help? Hmm I’m going to have to look into this now. Thanks for the heads up.
“We did a very detailed analysis of Lightroom CC performance and even with a top-end graphics card, overall performance is better with GPU acceleration turned off. The programmer at Adobe in charge of the GPU acceleration wrote a blog post about it that confirmed it actually slows down many common tasks for every user, while accelerating very few tasks in very specific circumstances that apply to very few users.”
Since Adobe used this as a selling point to encourage people to upgrade from LR5 to LR 6, and in fact it is more of a hindrance, do they ever plan on fixing it so it does increase performance, or is it just going to stand as is?
My other half reinstalled Windows 10 this morning and found Lightroom was importing and switching between images faster…we’re only at 24MP RAW and convert to DNG though.
Have you tried the camera on the 28 MB setting and how does the image quality differ,
that way in theory you could use the 50 MB just for special shots.
I use the 7DMII and still find LR slow and have a very simular spec pc, I can understand your frustration with the waiting times and it will only get worse as file sizes grow. The SDD’s have helped a lot and hopefully they will only get faster over the next few years. It would be nice to be able to edit on one pc and render on another so that you can keep doing things instead of waiting for the rendering to finish.
I got my hands on ,y 5ds r about two weeks ago and can see the increased resolution in my shots, the are more three dimensional. I like to to shoot night and Milky Way images at 6400 and am wondering if I need to keep my 5d MIII for that higher ISO.
II don’t hear much about the high ISO sacrifice that we have to make for the high resolution.
Tony,
I am torn between the 5DSR, and the soon to released Sony A7R ii. Reviews of the 5DSR have been conflicting. Most love the resolution, but complain about its lower dynamic range. Everyday I flip flop from wanting to wait for the Sony, and convert from Canon, and adapt my lenses, and keeping things easy and going for the 5DSR.
Question about the 5DSR, that I can’t find in any of the reviews. Does it have the option to shoot live view with the live histogram up on the screen? My 70D has this, and I absolutely love this feature, and always shoot in live view with the histogram live, I never fear missing the exposure using this technique, and never chimp.
Second question, about the Sony. Will the A7R ii have a live view histogram? And the biggest question, the one I heard rumored, and will make me buy it now (take my money), is, will it have the histogram live, in the view finder?
Jeff
Buying a used Canon 2X extender iii today, for use with my 70-200 2.8 IS ii, as per your video review last week.
Hi Tony,
It sounds like you’re describing a camera that’s actually too detailed for real world professional use in most types of photography since it slows down the work flow so much, Perhaps it can be the perfect camera for portrait photographers? Or maybe landscape? I don’t do portrait photos, but I assume the cull ratio is a lot less than, say, wildlife photos (especially birds!)
Hopefully, Adobe will eventually get it’s act together and make better use of monster graphics cards to support the technology.
In the mean time, is there any hope for an alternative workflow? Either having a computer dedicated to LR import or splitting a session onto multiple chips to allow you to split the work onto multiple processors (perhaps with a KVM switch?)
Good luck! If anyone can come up with a good solution to the problem, I’m sure it’s you.
John
Thank you Tony and Chelsea for all you do! It’s a huge help to the quiet ones out here that look and learn some thing every time we check in.
Happy to report that I opted for the 5Ds because I was having a long wait at B and H.
I’ll not bore you but this camera rocks. I love it paired with the 24-70mmf2.8L II. I use faster shutter speeds to control shakiness and find it works well. Tripod mlu live view focus remote release are the best…. I lean on anything close at age 72 to steady the shots.
FYI, I’ll be in Paris France for two weeks of walking and talking and taking pictures. I’ll probably use a tripod for the lonely early morning and evening shots and walk about handholding the rest of the day. September 24 to October 8 if you’re going to be in town let me know. I have a wonderful souffle’ place in mind. Crown Royal is the main flavor!!
Best to you,
Don Finch
Hi Tony,
you’ve confirmed everything a lot of us suspected. It´s horrible or to say it in a “heros” way – with great Megapixels comes great patience. Sure i do like clean and sharp pictures but not at the cost of all the things you have to care before during and after the shooting – especially if you do the post-processing. Hopefully adobe will get an update on Lightroom CC to increas the performance by using high-end-graphics card. Otherwise my coffee breaks will be still to long 😀
Lewis
Tony, I have this idea that importing into Lr as DNG puts the RAW file into an Adobe space where it works better that the Cr2 file matched with DPP4. But I really don’t know what I am talking about except a hunch! If you don’t know, could you please ask Chelsea for the real skinny????
WAS THE VIDEO SHOT ON 5DS OR 5DSR?
THANKS FOR POSTING!
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