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Dorian Gray
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
 
2012-01-31, 10:42

I can certainly accept that with sufficient pixel density the optics won't present enough detail to excite aliasing, but 36 megapixels isn't nearly enough for that. (It's "only" about 70% greater linear density than 12 megapixels.)

I think medium-format cameras lack anti-aliasing filters for cost reasons. Very large, custom anti-aliasing filters in low production runs would be expensive or thick — and if they're thick they would introduce significant astigmatism at the edge of the frame (see the mess Leica got itself into by trying to use a thin infrared filter in the M8 to keep astigmatism low with symmetrical wide-angle lenses).

An appropriate anti-aliasing filter shouldn't reduce resolved detail, but rather, spurious detail. Granted, lots of M9 and medium-format owners seem to like spurious detail in landscapes, etc. — I guess it's similar to the appeal of Genuine Fractals, which was all the rage a few years ago.

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Originally Posted by Matsu View Post
I think a combination of market position, timing, resolution, and video made the 5D2 more popular overall - It was the first time you could get a big motion picture look from a cheap camera, but it involved a lot of compromises.
Yeah, but did the video really account for many sales? My guess is the high pixel count was much more important for the success of the 5D Mark II. The user surveys on photo forums always show near-zero interest in SLR video, but maybe the people who buy SLR cameras for video are somewhere else... like video forums!

If the 5D Mark III has "just" 22 megapixels, I'd be have to wonder if there's something wrong at Canon's sensor-making department. First they lost the high-ISO crown, then the pixel-count crown? Canon famously runs its own image-sesnor fab, which strikes me as anachronistic in 2012: it must be hyper-expensive to run, and next to impossible to keep up to date with the latest developments. How long will Canon keep this up? Will Canon's marketing bods eventually throw up their hands and tell the board that "Canon inside" is no longer selling cameras? Telling the world you make your own sensors is only good marketing if your sensors are the best.

I'm probably getting ahead of myself here!
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