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.
