12 Megapixel Limit for Olympus

Mark Goldstein | Digital SLR Cameras | March 6, 2009 | 6 Comments |

Olympus E-30 Olympus have publically stated that 12 megapixels is enough for a DSLR camera. In an interview with CNET, Akira Watanabe, manager of Olympus Imaging’s SLR planning department, commented that “Twelve megapixels is, I think, enough for covering most applications most customers need,”. Watanabe went on to claim that contrast-detection autofocusing in DSLRs will soon out-perform the traditional phase-detection system. Of course, both of these claims are directly in line with Olympus’s current approach to its DSLR camera development…

Website: CNET - Olympus declares 12 megapixels is enough

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#1 antonio

That reminds me of a certain Mr. B. Gates, who once stated that "640 kB of RAM should be enough for anybody"... Sometimes you cannot see what the future has in store for us.

1:27 pm - Friday, March 6, 2009

#2 Antony Shepherd

The Bill Gates quote above is apocryphal and didn't really happen.
What I think this is that they've reached the limit of what can be done with the current technology on a 4/3 sensor - adding more pixels would just increase noise, so they won't, but instead will try to increase the dynamic range and reduce the noise.
It's also pretty much an announcement they're sticking to the consumer range and not even attempting to play along with the big boys at the top end of the market. Which is probably for the best as now isn't the time to spend $loads on R&D trying to compete in a market pretty much sewn up by the twin behemoths of Canon and Nikon.

4:55 pm - Friday, March 6, 2009

#3 joanindo

the 4/3 systems are notorious for their noise. more pixel means more noise. since they can't figure out how to get rid of noise, that's the reason why mr. watanabe saying 12 megapixel is more than enough.

9:37 am - Sunday, March 8, 2009

#4 Efendi

I use Nikon D1 (2,7 megapixels) and the picks 14x17 are very nice, as nice as from D2x, D3 - realy!!! So, a photographer is much important than a camera-megapixels.
Best.

1:44 pm - Tuesday, March 10, 2009

#5 Jan Morgils

The news should rather say:

Olympus will focus on other characteristics such as dynamic range, color reproduction, and a better ISO range for low-light shooting.

A more important point, all the time everyone wants to stop the mega-pixel race and rather join the quality race...

2:41 pm - Tuesday, March 10, 2009

#6 Itai

Indeed, if we look at how people share and display their images, the vast majority of consumers (no, not professionals rarely use a medium that requires even more than 12 megapixels (actually much less in most cases).

As Jan pointed out, this is good news since improvement in technology can be channeled into other aspects of image quality
such as dynamic range and low-noise. Of equal importance is that given a fixed sensor size, the diffraction limit is very real and this puts a limit of how much details can be resolved.

- Itai