The Point of Sufficiency Revisited

Ed. note: This is a repost of an article I wrote 14 years ago, at this time of year in 2009. I've edited it anew, and added a comment at the end.

The Point of Sufficiency

Our late friend Eolake Stobblehouse once said that when it comes to ISO speed, we always want a little more, and then a little more.

That's true...until it's not.

In the history of photographic equipment and materials there have been various "competitions" or "races" to see who can provide the most/fastest/best. But if you read back into the history of these competitions in the still-surviving literature, you find that in most cases, a point of sufficiency is reached, and customers decline to pay for further improvements. The race or competition then "backgrounds." That is, it still sort of exists, and a few people think it still matters, but mostly it doesn't any more.

This happened with film formats: film basically got down to 35mm size, which was small and convenient enough—further efforts to popularize still smaller formats all failed. It happened with lens speed: ƒ/1.4 was deemed sufficient by the market, with further increases in maximum aperture being rare and not especially popular*. It happened with telephoto reach: the "Olympia Sonnar" for the 1936 Olympics was a widely admired and popular achievement, but now, 1000mm and 1200mm lenses are mere curiosities. It happened with shutter speed: consider that the Nikon N8008's 1/8000th shutter speed was a big selling point, but the Minolta 9xi's 1/12000th was met with a yawn. It happened with fine grain in B&W films: Panatomic-X was enough; only a few fanatics followed the Tech Pan craze. Reducing the size of SLRs was a brief race in the '70s: the Pentax ME was small enough. Even build quality in cameras and lenses: the current market supports—barely—one carriage-trade brand. And beyond that, deluxe build quality has not been consistently rewarded with sales. 

And so on.

Note that this is not a technical matter—it's a marketing matter. It has to do with meeting the need for what people want for as long as enough of us are willing to pay for it. The trend is for the race to continue among the manufacturers for as long as the buying public is rewarding the improvements. But sooner or later the buying public has what it needs, and has had enough, and stops wanting to pay for further improvements, and the manufacturers (save perhaps for one or two niche products in each case) basically give up the chase, and go try to find some other idea that will sell.

My prediction, which I've mentioned many times, is that this will happen with ISO speed in DSLRs, too, and with megapixels in Bayer-array sensors of the current type**. I don't know where the end point of either will turn out to be, and I don't know whether we have arrived at those points yet (is 24 MP enough? Is ISO 12,800 enough?), but history predicts that sooner or later, you will have enough and won't want to pay more for more.

Here are the original footnotes from 2009, which are interesting to revisit:

*People will trot out the example of the Noctilux or the Noct-Nikkor to refute me, but those never sold in significant numbers. One could even argue that with rangefinders, ƒ/2 was the point of sufficiency: the Leica 50mm Summicron always outsold the 50mm Summilux greatly, at least until Leica became primarily a status symbol. Before the introduction of the current Summilux-M, Leica decided that a new 50mm Summicron would have to be priced beyond even their market, but that a new 50mm Summilux could be supported. That's why the 50mm Summilux got a remake but the old Mandler Summicron soldiers on.

**The size of sensors is just a matter of marketing, because there's a formidable technical stopping-point at 24x36mm that has to do with 35mm-legacy camera and lens design. So far, customers—core customers, at least, meaning enthusiasts—seem to find great appeal in larger sensors, up to at least 24x36mm. The next couple of years should indicate whether sensors larger than that are going to be rewarded with sales sufficient to support their continued development.

Obviously, 24 MP turned out to be both enough and not enough: it's now very common in high-quality cameras of several sensor sizes, but ~50-MP cameras are still desirable to many consumers and ~100-MP cameras exist to push that envelope. The  situation now might well be the point of sufficiency, however. I hear zero people wishing for more than ~100 megapixels. The same comment applies to 24x36mm sensors: they're obviously the standard and common size used for premium MILCs, and have been since the great FF-M evolution of 2018, but larger ones do exist and still have cachet in the market. But how many people do you come across who wish for sensors that are larger still? About the only ones I encounter are people who want larger camera types, not necessarily just larger sensors. For instance, they want a digital 6x7 or a digital 4x5.

Here's my new comment re sufficiency c. 2023: It's occurred to me in recent times that lens quality might have reached a point of sufficiency. Lens "fanaticism" used to be my "parallel hobby"—let's put it that way. I loved to pursue and test new-to-me lenses of all sorts. I probably tried more than 30 50mm lenses and at least 50 lenses in the 35—45mm range. But it's been a fairly long while since I cared very much. Even ordinary lenses are very good these days. I no longer hear a lot of aspirational talk from enthusiasts about how greatly they're pining to own, say, the latest Leica 50mm APO Summicron or a Zeiss Otus 85mm—are a regular 50mm Summicron or a Canon RF 85mm just so deficient that you can't be happy with them? It's much more common to hear people say that they really love the lens they have, even if it's a mid-line or even a lower-level lens. I love my Sigma 45mm, which impresses me all the time, but I can't say it claims much mindshare out on the internet. I still love lenses, and you can still say meaningful things about the best ones, especially in terms of build quality, but these days they're mostly all bunched up at the top.

Just a thought.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Comments

[Albert Smith]

Once we differentiate the words "sufficiency" from "best", then your 2009 essay could be considered the end item on this subject.

In 2009, I owned a 12mp Nikon D700 (and still do) and it was equal to anything that I had shot on film in the preceding 30 years. It was sufficient. It still is in 2023.

If we stop chasing the "best", most of us if honest had sufficiency years ago. Maybe even in 2009.

[Chris Kern]

What’s the relationship between the point of sufficiency and the point of diminishing returns?

[J Coleman]

I still lust after a Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 for my F2... But not enough (yet) to pull the trigger.

[Bill Tyler]

Your comments about high ISO reminded me of the shallow-depth-of-field fanatics, who can certainly benefit from low ISO that then requires large apertures. Of course, that's relatively easy to achieve digitally.

[almostinfamous]

My current employment has me sharing an office with a few colleagues who process images for a high volume wedding photography firm and the 85mm RF that you linked to above is one of the standouts of the RF range. even as a nikon user, the images from that lens catch my eye every time.

[Richard Parkin]

One difference between digital and film is that 35mm was simpler to enlarge and print than the larger sizes which is not so much a limitation to digital files. The limitation is more to do with camera size.
The ISO speed is also different as there are other ways to take instant photos using multiple exposures and other computational tricks as seen in phone cameras.

[Alan]

My best camera goes to ISO 25,600 but I find that it's often the quality of light which is the problem with some artificial lighting leading to horrible results at ISO 1,600.

Sometimes f1.x or slow shutter speeds just aren't suitable as we may be stuck with motion blur at 1/30 or next to nothing being sharp at f1.x.

So, I'm all for pushing the ISO boundaries and performance up for the times when flash or slow shutter speeds or f1.x are just not suitable.

[Daniel]

Ever higher ISO ratings on digital are fine. Much prefer lower settings as an option. Nikon has ISO 64. Wish we had 25(like Kodachrome - which I shot by the case decades ago) and TechPan to ISO 3. With the attendant higher/finer quality a big part of it as well as being able to shoot lower shutter speeds without having to resort to Neutral Density filtration.

I actually use ISO 25,000 at times for effect. "Unusable" by reviewers is "creative license" by actual photographers.

Nothing wrong with options.

[Luke]

IBIS keeps improving. I can't imagine what "sufficient" might mean for IBIS.
But, I'm older and shakier every day.

[Gaspar Heurtley]

If you repost an article, then I’ll repost a comment. ;)

In a post called Blur Never Sleeps (back in 2021) you mentioned a picture where “it was clear that the plane of focus had been placed about two feet beyond the woman, and, then, such a large aperture had been used that the woman's face and body were not within the depth-of-field”.

My (now edited) answer was: “I suspect many pro photographers share their work exclusively online and have learned that they can widen the margin of error, based on where their target audience is going to see the pictures (mostly cell phone screens and poorly calibrated monitors)”.

The point is, I’m not entirely sure cameras have reached a point of sufficiency. More likely, I think we are now seeing a sort of end of the race for cameras and lenses, and it’s the screen resolution of mobile devices that’s holding the checkered flag.

[Hmm, I haven't really investigated this, but my sense is that pictures look BETTER printed than on screen. Screen resolution is if anything misleading us into thinking tiny differences in resolution and sharpness matter more than they do; because we in effect "enlarge" details of images to the equivalent of originals of one meter or several in size. In prints, even with less distinguished cameras, the differences matter less, and the image in ink looks good. Just talking off the top of my head here. --Mike]

[Stan]

I am reminded of the tale of the film company representative who was giving a presentation to a group of professional photographers. His company had just released a new film stock that was bound to change the world. He proclaimed, “This film has a base ISO of 25,000,000!” A gasp went up from the crowd. Then one man in the back raised his hand and asked, “Yeah, but can you push it?”

[Dave]

As high as it seems compared to the film days, ISO 12,800 probably isn't high enough.

As Alan commented, a higher shutter speed to freeze motion and a decent "middle of the road" aperture is desired.

So, imagine a scene where you have to shoot at 1/30 sec. @ f/1.4 (at ISO 6,400). Increasing the ISO five stops would give you a shutter speed of 1/125 sec. @ f/4 (at ISO 204,800). That's still two stops away from "f/8 and be there". What about sports photographers who need higher shutter speeds to freeze the action?

We've seen what poor color results from those high ISO speeds. I would imagine better color at those high ISO speeds would be helpful to many photographers.

(Now, imagine some young sports photographer having to work with a maximum ISO of 1,600!)

[Thomas Rink]

Recently I bought an old Nikkor N.C 28mm f/2 pre-Ai (with the dale-and-valley focussing ring). It must have been made around 1974. To my surprise, from f/5.6 on it is pixel-sharp on a 45MP sensor right into the corners. It shows a bit of glow when the aperture is fully open, but this can be fixed by adjusting exposure and contrast accrodingly. While I understand that it has been a state-of-the-art lens in its day, I think that lens sharpness has been a solved problem for the last 50 years or so - at least as far as common focal lengths from 24mm to 200mm are concerned. On the other hand, these old lenses are much more susceptible to flare than contemporary lenses. Apparently, coatings have improved a lot over the years.

[Gaspar Heurtley]

You are right about pictures looking better printed than on screens, but people that actually print are the exception, not the rule.
While I have absolutely no data to back this up, I’d venture that a lot of players in the camera industry realized the vast majority of pictures are displayed on small screens, so why waste lots of money and resources designing state of the art sensors and lenses whose amazing quality no one is ever going to see?

[Les Myers]

"accrodingly"

I have an old Honda Accrod- still runs well.

[Speed]

My objective has always been to use a camera/lens pair that is a little better than I am. My failures should be mine.

Related ... I was looking at my annual attempt to capture the look and feel of our local July 4 celebration which takes place just before, during and after dusk and fireworks. ISO 12,500!

Technology advances and makes us, perhaps, a little better.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

IBIS has killed the tripod (for me), but it has not killed my interest in fast lenses or sensor. Turns out my primary subject, people, move, especially if they aren't aware of me. Or if they are playing music at the time.

IBIS also doesn't help all that much for roller derby :-) .