The art of God is in an artist's soul, a drive to passionately pursue the lowest paid yet most beautiful occupation of all.

The Picture School for Photography

6 June 2019 When a photographer does editing, is that cheating?

From a question-and-answer photograph session on Instagram...

(Hosted by athletic.photos.)

Q. When a photographer does editing, is that cheating?

A. By editing, I assume you're referring to using advanced programs like Lightroom to develop then work with RAW files, or other editors like Perfectly Clear that use advanced algorithms to perform eye and skin retouching, scene enhancement, etc. If you're referring to the buttons and effects in Instagram, that's simply altering the picture rather than subtly editing it, and I wouldn't consider that to be on the level of true editing.

The negative of editing is that photographers can become so conditioned to depend on it that they fail to grow as a photographer. Every legitimate and worthwhile editing effect is based on a real-life photography technique you can actually learn and apply--sparkles in the eyes, soft lighting, skin etc., smoothing--all of these are able to be implemented as actual photographic techniques. With digital photography some of these techniques are better performed on the computer (rather than smearing vaseline onto your lens to soften a photo, for example), but they still represent photographic skills to learn.

The positive of editing is that in this digital era it is also a photographic skill that you need to know. I recommend either one of the two programs that I mentioned above, and I also use my own custom Real RAW processing software written in C to do more advanced raw processing as a baseline for other editing.

These are four important observations and stages for implementing editing as you master photography!

  1. Learn to see light on location, not just the results of light after it's too late. Even though everything our eyes ever see is from light, by default we are blind to the light itself in real life, and can only see it when it's recorded for us in a static photograph! Our eyes have an amazing ability to compensate for all the lighting problems we encounter, and by default we can only see them when they show up in a photograph. Often just by changing our position relative to the lighting, we accomplish the exact same thing even better than we could ever do with so much troublesome editing later. Now, I do understand on photoshoots, especially with little kids, that it's hard to adjust everyone to the nuances of the light. A customer is often not very sympathetic to understanding that they need to slightly rotate, shift, etc. to catch the most beautiful light or avoid something ugly. I remember a family reunion nine years ago when babies were crying, and an hour-long extended family picture session had to be reduced to less than 15 minutes. It took hours of editing later to try to eliminate sunspots that could have been fixed on-site in 10 seconds, but there wasn't time to adjust with babies crying and everyone ready to give up. This an example of is what I mean by seeing the light--when you are in a situation like that, with sunspots on people's heads, do your eyes ignore them because we can still see everything fine, or are your eyes trained to see problems in real life that other photographers might only notice in horror on their computer later on when it's too late?
  2. Remember that cropping is the most important of all editing tasks. Yes, you heard correctly. Eliminating content from a picture is the most effective technique to strengthen the picture. 99 out of 100 edits that I do are literally cropping and nothing else.
  3. Make sure you learn the photography fundamentals before you do any other editing. Learn to set the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture manually. This is a must. Then learn to change the digital picture settings. Sharpness is typically too high and contrast is typically much too high, for example, in default camera settings. When you're looking at a tiny image on Instagram, for example, boosted contrast makes it stand out more, but it will often do the opposite to the actual full size high quality image and make it look terrible. And then learn to master the most magical setting of all, called "white balance." White balance actually changes the three pillars of additive light themselves which make up every single pixel of every picture you'll ever take. By measuring and setting white balance properly on location, you can achieve beautiful color in your photos that can never, ever be achieved later on by any amount of editing, perfect pictures that look exactly like you are really there once again experiencing the memory all over again. When you learn to use the camera settings like a virtuoso violinist you will rarely have to do any editing later on. As you get better, you will need to edit your photos, with the exception of cropping them, less and less and less and less. As an example, my Lightroom subscription expired sometime around late January and I never needed to do any editing on my photos between February until the end of May, at which point I renewed the subscription! Whenever you're not getting paid, do your best not to rely on RAW images or editing at all. Challenge yourself to get a good picture by getting the picture itself exactly perfect without needing any editing. That is the only way to grow! (Tip! Exposure bracketing is an excellent feature of your camera that can help you!) Now, don't get too excited--for paying customers, of course, it is only the ethical and right thing to do to take pictures in RAW format as well in JPEG so they can be edited just in case later on. I have occasionally been overconfident in my skills and shot a professional job in JPEG only and then regretted it very much later on. Sports within a controlled environment is the only area where I feel completely comfortable shooting in JPEG only for professional work. Also note that in recent years major press organizations have begun to implement policies designed to prevent unethical photographers from misrepresenting images. These policies prevent me and other photojournalists from providing images that originated from RAW format. This is why it is especially important that you do not rely on editing!
  4. After you have achieved steps 1, 2, and 3, then you will have learned to create a picture that is ready for editing, a picture which has the highest possible quality and the highest possible potential for editing. That's right. And what you often hear about "RAW" being a "cheat code" for getting good pictures is totally wrong. The best foundation that makes the best editing happen is having the best quality picture to begin with. When you start with this, you can literally do almost ANYTHING with your picture through editing, while if you start with a poor foundation and a badly-taken image, the most you can do is to barely make it look OK on Instagram.

So in summary, I do not think it is cheating to perform appropriate editing, but I do think it is cheating yourself out of being a good photographer if you do not learn the science of photography and how to achieve the goals of editing by learning to see the light, and learning to change the camera's own natural settings.

16 November 2018 Finding a Great Camera (and Don't Forget the Great Lenses)

You can't take photos without a camera and lenses for the camera, so if you're thinking about photography, few questions are more fundamental than "What camera and lenses should I buy?"

This is a really, really hard question to answer, especially right now. Some of the most important developments in cameras are brand-new and too expensive to recommend, or they are brand-new and still too new to recommend. The perfect example is the Canon EOS R camera system. I truly think that is going to be the greatest of all the mirrorless camera systems. But it's too expensive to recommend (over $3000 just to start with the camera and lens) and it's also too new to recommend. In fact, it's so new that they released it (in my opinion) before it was ready and so they had to use an old sensor; it uses essentially the same sensor as the 5D Mark IV, good but aging, and for this price point really not good at all anymore, given the tremendous advantages of antialiasing filter-free camera models and BSI image sensors.

The same thing is true about the Nikon D750, if not even more so. The Nikon D750 is cheaper, and with the current deal of the free battery grip with the camera, I would almost recommend it... until my brain kicks in and reminds me that this is the exact same 24 MP camera sensor at the core that was featured by the Nikon D600 on September 13, 2012. A great sensor back then, but a child born then would be more than six years old today... and camera sensors have moved on to vastly better things. Just check out this comparison showing the D750 vs. the current Sony A7 III.

Source: Dpreview

And no matter what you do, do NOT get any of the Canon Rebel series cameras. All of them right now are years, if not decades behind the times with technology. The T6 variations, for example, use the same 18 MP sensor that was released in October, 2009, between nine to ten years ago. And yet I see people paying good prices for these terrible cameras. So never, ever do that. Below is a comparison of the absolute latest Canon Rebel series "flagship" camera to the same comparison camera as before. And in caes you don't believe me about the T6 variations and the earlier cameras too, suffice to say that the T6 variations and the others are about four times worse than the lastest Rebel series flagship (which is still terrible, as you can see for yourself).

Source: Dpreview

Do you see how bad and how awful that is? Compared to the T7i the D750 is like a dream. But the D750 compared to the current level of technology falls just as far behind as the T7i falls behind the D750. So now hopefully you have a sense of what I mean by advising against purchasing cameras that are out-of-date. If you buy a brand new camera that's already out of date, it will only get worse and worse during the years that you are using it, putting you at an ever-greater competitive and artistic disadvantage. So take the time to save a few hundred dollars more, because the difference is absolutely worth it!

With that in mind, these are the only cameras I would currently recommend, and how much of a sale price they would need to be before being worth it:

What about the Canon 7D Mark II? That used to be a camera that I highly recommended, and it's great for good shooting conditions, fast-focusing, etc. But honestly it's not much better quality than the terrible T7i as shown above.

And speaking of focusing, if you plan to take any sports photos, nothing matters more than the focusing capabilities of the camera. That's why the Canon 7D Mark II is still worthwhile in some way because it does have great autofocus tracking capability, better than the A7R III for example. Image quality is nothing if the picture is not even in focus.

To me the most interesting camera on this list if you are on a budget is definitely the Fujifilm X-T3. I have loved the Fujifilm system and taken some AWESOME photos with it, such as this one of a volcano erupting. The only noticeable downside to me is that the autofocus capabilities for tracking fast action have not been up to par compared to the very best professional Canon and Nikon cameras. Don't get me wrong. It's focusing is good enough--until you try a better camera and realize that it can't quite keep up sometimes. And thankfully, even that minor disadvantage is supposedly not the case anymore with the very new X-T3. I almost purchased the X-T3 two weeks ago to see for myself, but honestly I still have the X-T2 and I have other cameras for fast action so I don't need it yet. But anyway, enjoy the volcano photo to show how great the Fujifilm system is. (Actually taken with the X-E2s and 90mm f/2 lens.)

Taken with Fujifilm system, X-E2s:

And finally, what about the Sony cheaper line of cameras like the A6300 and A6500? My thoughts on those is that they continually get further and further behind when compared to the more expensive line of Sony cameras. Sony is obviously not trying to give customers their best quality focusing or image quality in any of the lower-priced cameras. I purchased the A6300 with very high hopes and was basically unable to use it for any effective action photography, and the image quality was too low to use it for any work except video. I've heard the A6500 is more of the same with a barely improved focusing system, still not good enough to compete with awesome camera systems like Fujifilm which are available for similar prices, or the 7D II from Canon or the D500 from Nikon that are available for a little bit more. Perhaps Sony will release a new version of their lower-cost lineup that actually competes with the competition. That would be so awesome.

28 April 2018 Firmware Updates Canon 1D X II and 5D IV, Sony A7R III and A7 III

It's extremely important, yet time-consuming, to keep firmware updated to the latest and greatest, so these are the quick links to do it!

9 January 2018: Photo Resolution, Megapixels, and How Big of an Enlargement Can I Make?

First of all, it depends if your enlargement is for viewing in hand, viewing on the wall, viewing on the side of a truck, viewing on a billboard, or something even farther away!

Secondly, it depends on the megapixels that are being used within the enlargement. This is not necessarily the same as the megapixels of the origial file! If you crop the original file in order to produce the enlargement, then only the megapixels within that selected portion of the image will matter!

Step #1: Choose your viewing type: , ,

Step #2: Choose your image resolution (round down, and only include the portion of the image that will be enlarged):

Step #3: Magic math--the geometric mean of your maximum possible enlargement dimensions is:

What does this mean? The "geometric mean" is like the "average" but closer to the smallest of the two dimensions of an enlargement. So if your geometric mean turns out to be 17, then you could probably safely create an enlargement of 16x20, but definitely not an enlargement of 20x30.

10 August 2017: Wedding Photography Checklist

What equipment do you bring to photograph a wedding?

  1. Canon 1D X Mark II
  2. Canon 5D Mark IV
  3. Sony A7R Mark II
  4. Sigma 85mm art
  5. Sigma 135mm art
  6. Sigma 20mm art
  7. Sigma 35mm art
  8. Sony Zeiss 55mm 1.8
  9. Sony G Master 85mm
  10. Canon 8-15mm fisheye
  11. Canon 400mm f/2.8L II
  12. 2x Lexar Professional CFast 128/64 GB memory cards
  13. 4x Lexar Professional SDXC 128 GB memory cards
  14. 4x Lexar Professional or SanDisk CF 128/64 memory cards
  15. Gitzo carbon fiber tripod w/ Wimberly gimbal head
  16. Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod w/ ball head
  17. 2x high intensity LED lights
  18. 2x Einstein E640 flashes
  19. 4x light stands
  20. Cyber Commander flash trigger and 2x receivers
  21. Beauty dish with diffuser
  22. High intensity reflector
  23. Canon EX 600 II-RT flash
  24. Canon EX 430 flash
  25. Velcro flash reflector and diffuser
  26. 24x AA rechargable batteries
  27. 8x AAA rechargable batteries
  28. 3x LP-E6N lithium batteries for 5D Mark IV
  29. 3x LP-E4N lithium batteries for 1D X Mark II
  30. 3x NP-FW50 lithium batteries for A7R Mark II
  31. 4x battery chargers for cameras and AA/AAA batteries
  32. 2x extension cords
  33. Sigma MC-11 lens adapter for mounting Canon EF lenses on Sony E mount
  34. Set dates on all cameras via time.gov (1D X Mark II with GPS)
  35. Update firmware on all cameras and lenses and adapter
  36. Laptop with latest system updates
  37. CFast card reader
  38. Alien Bees ring flash
  39. Long and short flash sync cords
  40. Mini Vagabond lithium battery pack

6 August 2017: Determining the Proper Value of a Camera

The depreciation in the value of a camera (used or not) from its original retail price when first released depends on the time since it was technologically brand-new as well as how much use it has seen (both physical hours as well as shutter actuations).

Of course, the most a camera can be worth is its original retail price when first released. For example, the Canon 7D Mark II was originally offered in the USA for $1,799 plus tax. Tax is a separate issue, so we define the base price P as a flat $1800.

Next, decrease the camera's value based on how many hours it has been used. Zero hours of use means a decrease of none. 1,000 hours of use means a decrease in value of 100%. Hours are defined not as billable hours nor as hours holding the camera, but the amount of time when the camera was actually taking pictures, with at most a one-minute pause between pictures. Any pause greater than a minute between taking pictures does not count. If any pictures were taken during a given minute, then that minute counts as a full minute; otherwise, the minute is not counted at all. If you are unable to calculate this figure exactly, then the number of hours used divided by two should be sufficient. For our example, we will say that we used the camera for 66.5 hours, taken out of 1000 maximum hours of use, so 933.5 hours of value remain in the camera, and so we define R = 933.5/1000 = .934.

Pro tip! How do you find this out? If you use my software for tracking EXIF information, then this will work (058... is the serial number of my 7D Mark II):

grep 058021000950 uniqueimagedatabase.0  | cut -f 6 | rev | cut -b 3- | rev | sort | uniq -c | wc -l
3990
[j@t20 ~/newphoto/All-All]$ bc -l
3990/ 60
66.50000000000000000000

You might ask yourself, "But what if someone takes 500 pictures at high speed in one minute, versus if someone takes only one shot in a minute? How is that taken into account?" Don't worry! The above wear and tear that remains in the camera is a separate issue from shutter count, which is considered next. Note that many news agencies have terrific wear and tear on their cameras even though the shutter count may seem low, and for other segments, the reverse may be true. This is why it is urgent to consider both factors and to define and calculate them separately. A rule of thumb is that sports cameras will have very high shutter counts and very low hours used, while most other areas of photography will have a more balanced combination of time used and exposures used.

Next, we calculate the actual shutter count of the camera, and divide this by the useful lifetime of the camera, including feasible shutter replacements. Consumer cameras often don't offer shutter replacements (at least not according to Best Buy when my D7000 shutter failed), but every professional camera I have used has offered fairly inexpensive shutter replacements, between $200-$300. I would be very hesitant to rate the maximum lifetime of a professional camera, despite shutter replacements, beyond one million exposures. I have known of 1D Xes failing near this shutter count, and its lifetime is probably the longest. I define the useful lifetime as the rated shutter count plus the rated shutter count again, accounting for one shutter replacement. (I always replace my professional shutters at the rated shutter count, and have never had a professional camera fail me yet.) For this example, the shutter count is 85555. The rated shutter count is 200K, plus one more, makes 400K. Therefore, we have 400000 - 85555 = 314,445 exposures remaining out of 400000 assumed as the useful life., and so we define S = 314445/400000 = .7861125

Lastly, we take into account the age of the camera's technology (not the camera's own age, but the age of its technology! this is a critical difference!), where we assume that in ten years, the camera's value is zero. Note that there are MANY people trying to sell their old, worthless equipment for high prices because it is "nearly new." However, ten years of technology progress is vast, and any camera that is ten years old is truly almost worthless except as an antique! In fact, I would almost rather go with seven years, except for the fact that there are some truly useful cameras which are now seven years old (like the original Canon 7D). It would be correct to say that they are worth only 30% of their original value, but wrong to say they are worth nothing. In ten years, however, the value would dwindle to nothing in comparison to the future cameras that would be available, as technology makes three more years of advancements. For our example, the 7D Mark II was released in fall 2014, so its technology is three years old (based on release date). Three years gone out of 10, leaves us with 7/10 years of value left in the technology, so we define T = 0.7.

Mathematically, we say that the value of the camera V is jointly proportional to these three variables (R, S, and T), with a variation constant of P. This means that the proper value of the camera is V = PRST.

The last step is simply to multiply these values together and obtain V = 1800 * .934 * .7861125 * .7 = $925.12.

Note that all three of these variables cause a camera's value to go down. A lot of disreputable individuals and businesses will quote the value of a camera based on only one or two of these factors, and thereby grossly inflate their asking price above the proper value.

For example, if I ignored the age of the technology (which almost everyone else does), then the calculated value of my camera above would be $1,321.61, which is vastly wrong! Even if a camera is not used at all, or even if a camera were just manufactured today, the age of the technology that it uses is extremely important in assessing its value.

28 July 2017: What Lenses Are Most Important? The Content and Perspective of Photography

Looking back at over two million images I've created for personal pleasure and in professional practice, I find many trends, but one or two lenses that truly stand out—a wide-angle class lens and a medium-telephoto class lens—dominating everything else in how useful they are and even more so in the awesome images that they continuously produce in a wide variety of situations.

First, let's look at the trends in my personal photography development.

Pre-professional stage: rely on zooms, move to f/2.8 zooms when budget allows, experiment with primes, change lenses often, miss many moments.

Mid-professional stage: still keep zooms around out of a misplaced belief that they were more "versatile" and the marketing lie that "professionals" use f/2.8 zooms, and the insecurity that I might suddenly "need" them at some point during a photoshoot.

Professional stage: rely on one 135mm or 85mm prime for action and people, plus choose one wide angle lens for everything else. Depending on the job, I add a third camera to the mix, for example a 1D X Mark II with a 400mm f/2.8 II on a gimbal head and tripod for track and field. However, always the two cameras with a wide prime and medium telephoto are my baseline, and I take most of my shots with them.

Women's High Jump with Sigma 85mm f/1.4 ART
Women's High Jumper with Sigma 85mm f/1.4 ART, with no flash, full AF tracking, in the worst indoor lightning imaginable—Sigma's incredible 85mm and 135mm ART lenses can easily keep up with sports and action.

Supposedly, zoom lenses are there for you to keep you from needing to change your lenses, but oddly enough, I changed lenses much more and missed many more shots when I used zoom lenses than when I stopped and used only prime lenses!

I realize that many photographers cannot believe this. A lot of professionals still lug around massive f/2.8 zooms, even though a comparable 85mm f/1.4 or 135mm f/1.8 would be much more light-weight, much, much sharper, and at least three-four times brighter for dark and difficult photo conditions. For example, the 70-200mm f/2.8 is low quality (people who believe it is so "sharp" don't know what real quality is), four times darker than primes, much heavier, less cordinated, and I could go on and on forever.

When I am shooting a typical fast-moving job, I never use zooms anymore.

Instead, I choose and use just one wideangle lens from either a 20mm, 24mm, 28mm, or 35mm; and one medium telephoto lens from either an 85mm or 135mm.

How do I make my choice? I simply decide based on whether the shooting environment is constrained--in other words, if other photographers are vying for a shot in a tight space, then the 20mm is essential and, on the opposite end, when there is time and I'm in charge, then the 35mm would be preferable for better perspective and maximum detail.

Finally, I use use primes not merely because they ensure higher image quality, but also because they ensure that I photograph in a way which is artistically superior, thinking about contents and perspective, rather than only contents and cropping.

What do I mean?

The content of a picture is what you see!

The perspective of a picture is where you see it from! (The composition, or artistic arrangement, of a picture, an essential aspect of its content, is saved for a separate discussion!)

These are the two most important artistic aspects of every picture!

Artistically, photographs are created by the contents of the picture as well as by the perspective the picture is taken from. This perspective is not how far zoomed in you are but physically where you are zoomed in from, i.e., where you are!!!!! Zooming in is merely cropping--yes, it's an important artistic editing job, but cropping has zero to do with changing your perspective, because your perspective didn't change at all!! Yes, cropping is very important, in fact, but it is NOT at all what is even more important, which is perspective!!! In order to understand and use perspective, you have to move yourself: high, low, up close, all around, near and far. When you circumnavigate your subject from all angles and distances, changing not the zoom but the real point of view, you uplift your creativity to the highest heights.

If you could buy only two lenses, then I would recommend a 28mm (Nikon f/1.8) or 24mm (Canon f/1.4) and an 85mm (Sigma ART).

If you could buy only three lenses, then I would recommend a 28mm or 24mm as above and both an 85mm (Sigma ART) and a 135mm (Sigma ART).

If you can afford four lenses, then I absolutely recommend a 20mm (Sigma ART f/1.4) and 35mm (Sigma ART f/1.4) and an 85mm (Sigma ART) and 135mm (Sigma ART). These lenses represent virtually all of my photography except for the pictures that I take with fisheye/ultrawide and/or macro/supertelephoto lenses.

What if you are on an ultra budget? Then I recommend this setup:

If you are curious, I have kept accurate statistics for many years, and these are my most used lenses, representing close to 90% of my photos

  1. 135mm f/2 or f/1.8
  2. 200mm supertelephoto (doesn't count)
  3. 85mm f/1.4
  4. 400mm supertelephoto (doesn't count)
  5. 35mm f/1.4
  6. 300mm supertelephoto (doesn't count)
  7. 24mm f/1.4

The supertelephotos listed above don't count. They're only on the list because of sporting events and the numer of photos typically taken at those events. Without them, my most used lenses would be the exact lenses that I recommend above: a 20mm-35mm wide angle prime, and a medium telephoto 85mm/135mm prime!

My zoom lenses were used for many years, but not a single one of them showed up in this top list of lenses, even though I used them heavily for more than half of my overall career, and even though these data don't even include my most recent two years when I used zooms even less! (If I add the data for the last two years, the 200mm supertelephoto would be much lower on the list, and other lenses would be in the same positions. The new Sigma ART 20mm f/1.4 might also have taken the place of the Canon 24mm f/1.4L II at the bottom of the list.)

26 July 2017: Camera Comparison Database

In the above camera comparison database, cameras are sorted by their three most important characteristics: the Physics of the image sensor format, which defines the maximum potential image quality based on physics; the image sensor Technology level, which defines how well the image sensor attains that maximum potential image quality; and Autofocus, which is equally if not more important, because image quality is worthless if the subject is not in focus.

If focusing is NOT important to you, then click on the Format or Sensor headings to re-sort the camera list by image quality (which depends on both the format and the sensor technology). Be careful what you wish for, because in the real world you may end up choosing a camera with great image quality that is never in focus! I suggest that if your work includes any kind of action that you choose only cameras with an autofocus capability of at minimum three.

24 July 2017: How to Choose a New Camera, Image Sensor Technology

As technology advances, the resolution of digital cameras will become closer and closer to these theoretical maximum values. This is called the "signal to noise" ratio. Even though 308.7 megapixels of data from light waves / photons may enter a camera, our best technology can only accurately convert a much smaller amount of this data into a digital photograph. This effect is most easily seen when the amount of photons being recorded is reduced. No matter what level of technology the camera has, it will still produce the same number of pixels, but only some of that data is really the real image, and all of the rest of the data is merely noise.

Better technology can produce a better image by converting more of the signal (photons) into an image rather than noise.

Figure 2. RAW image data from a Nikon D7500 processed with RealRaw software for signal to noise ratio image sensor technology comparison.

The above figure shows the image quality resulting from lower light levels corresponding to an exposure at ISO 100, 800, 6400, 51200, and 819200. Later, an app is planned that will allow you to transition between digital cameras to see even the smallest differences between image sensor technology and each ISO level.

23 July 2017: How to Choose a New Camera, Image Sensor Physics / Sizes / Photon Reception Area

A photograph is created by a light-sensitive sensor from light focused through a lens. These are the technical factors you need to consider when selecting your digital camera(s) and lenses.

The image sensor is the first and most important criteron to consider when selecting a new camera, and in doing so all the marketing buzzwords can be safely ignored because only three things truly matter for image sensor quality:

  1. Image sensor surface area (the limiting factor)
  2. Image sensor technology (signal to noise ratio)
  3. Image sensor antialiasing filter (a compromise between moire and quality)
Image sensor surface area
Figure 1: The relative image sensor surface areas of iPhones (set at one unit), point-and-shoot cameras, elite point-and-shoot cameras, APS-format digital SLRs and mirrorless cameras, and full-frame digital cameras.

The theoretical image quality of an image sensor is based on how many photons it receives (photon flux), which in turn is simply based on how large it is. In other words, the image sensor surface area is directly proportional to the physical number of photons received by the image sensor. Assuming that the other two factors are the same (technology level and antialiasing filters), the figure above shows that a full-frame image sensor will have 50 times the image quality of an iPhone image sensor, based on the image sensor surface area alone.

In order to quantify this most-important first component of image sensor quality, we must determine the maximum possible limiting image quality (limiting means that it is the highest possible image quality within the constraints of the image sensor's surface area and the photon flux).

                     /* Daylight power density of 1281.7 watts per
                      * square meter = 4e21 photons per square meter per
                      * second. */
p  = 4e21;           /* illuminated daylight per square meter per second */
p /= 1000*1000/17.3; /* image sensor size of iPhone */
p /= 500;            /* image exposure time of 1/500th of a second */
p /= 1e6;            /* convert to photon-megapixels */
                     /* 138400000 photon-megapizels */
p /= 4;              /* eliminate two stops of light for RGB color filters */
p *= 3;              /* three bits per photon */
                     /* note higher resolution could be obtained
                      * by recording the actual wavelength, not just RGB */
p /= 256*256*256;    /* convert to 24-bit color */
                     /* 6.19 actual theoretical maximum megapixels of pure
                      * 24-bit RGB color signal image resolution in bright
                      * daylight */

As we can see the maximum theoretical resolution of pure 24-bit RGB color signal image resolution is only six megapixels for an iPhone's image sensor (17.3 square millimeters). A full-frame digital camera has a maximum theoretical resolution of 308.7 megapixels, since its image sensor is physically 49.9 times larger than that of the baseline iPhone, while an APS digital camera has a maximum theoretical resolution of 131.8 megapixels, since it is 21.3 times larger than the baseline iPhone.

What have we learned?

We have learned that there is not merely a psychological difference but in fact an actual scientific difference between the image quality of small digital camera sensors like the image sensor of an iPhone, versus larger image sensors like those in digital SLRs.

For the best image quality, it is by far recommended to select a full-frame camera (but only if your budget can afford one that is good enough to also meet your other needs). The second-best choice for image quality is an APS camera. If you shoot sports and action, please note that it would be better to buy an APS camera with a good focusing system like the Canon 7D Mark II than a full-frame camera with an awful focusing system like the Canon 6D.

The next episode will discuss image sensor technology.

For now, however, we will only say be very careful! There are many generations of cameras with very old sensor technology. For example, the same 18 megapixel sensor, released first in the Canon 7D almost a decade ago in 2009, was re-released over and over again in many, many cameras including the T5i several years later!

About Joseph Myers

Dr. Joseph Myers, Ph.D., is a nationally first-place prize-winning photographer, published worldwide for over two decades, with vast experience and deep skills in both the science and the art of photography, one who now is blessed to be able to create pictures of the highest quality exclusively with the latest technological pinnacle of professional prime lenses and full-frame cameras.

Since Dr. Myers took his first photo with his big brother's camera at age 4, he has taken millions upon millions more. With God's enablement and provision, Dr. Myers has taught photography for multiple years at the university level and written peer-reviewed journal articles on mathematical imaging; his images have won local, state, and national prizes and honors; and his pictures have been published by Rand McNally, Kansas Athletes, Walmart, Historic Images, The Chicago Tribune, CBS, the NCAA, and over a thousand other businesses, national magazines, websites, newspapers, media organizations, and more.

Yet more importantly to Dr. Myers, he considers himself an ordinary person created by God, no different from you. One of Dr. Myers's favorite phrases to frame photography is, "A work of art should be a work of heart." Dr. Myers cares about his neighbors more than making himself a famous name. Dr. Myers wants to use his God-given talents not to be a slave serving mainstream media or existing as a pawn of the world's top celebrities, but to be a blessing to precious people like you. With this in mind, Dr. Myers's photography accomplishments that are his greatest treasure are capturing over 7,000 once-in-a-lifetime occasions and priceless photoshoots for family, friends, and precious people like you.

© 2017-2018 Joseph Myers

An artist whose passion is not strong enough to drive them beyond their boundaries to a lifelong quest for greater knowledge of the scientific fundamentals of their art is not worthy to be called an artist at all.