Cropping-in vs. Longer Lens?

[LarryPlane]

Re: Cropping-in vs. Longer Lens?

Interesting! No doubt the differences would be more apparent if printed, but then we all now live online :-)

[the black fox]

Re: Cropping-in vs. Longer Lens?

again its all relative to the sensor size used ,and the actual build of the camera ,the full frame models have higher resolutions anyway ,a interesting experiment really ,went through similar testing when i was using nikon i.e a cropped image from one of the nikon v1 cameras against a similar image from a 1.6 crop d7000 ,although the smaller sensor coupled with a larger lens gave the apparent idea of more magnification when analysed the photos were identical .

makes you wonder if we have reached the limit as far as it can go and we are just now pampering to advertising from the manufactures .

for example a day out to gigrin farm on tues saw 4 of us using different brands /models of lenses but all at 400mm reach ,and all using different cameras ,i.e a 10mp 1D3 ,18mp 60d, 24mp 70d ,and a 24 mp nikon d5200 .viewing the results from 4 cameras and lenses there is no overall gain from any combo of lens or camera all are producing practically the same results .
the lenses used were a sigma 120-400os,canon 400mm f5.6 ,canon 100-400mm i.s and a nikon 200-400vr
the difference in prices range from a £600 lens to a £4000 pound lens .

certainly makes me wonder ?????

[S_J_P]

Re: Cropping-in vs. Longer Lens?

certainly makes me wonder ?????

It does indeed!

As Paul E muses, if printing (300dpi+) then pixels definitely count, and a decent 10x8 would need 8MP and a 16x12 17MP, but for screen-use then anything from 3MP upwards isn't really needed (except for pixel-peeping ) and whether that 3MP comes from cropping or native resolution doesn't matter as much as you might think. In fact there's probably a case for cropping the central portion of a cheaper lens/sensor giving better overall quality than taking full-frame from a more expensive lens/sensor combination!