I love this feature of our local landscape—the high meadows on the steep hillsides above the lakes.
Another feature of this area is that there are too many trees, which get in the way of seeing much, so these fields above the shorelines are not always easy to picture. It's more usual just to get glimpses of them. A century ago most of the land around the lakes was cleared, but now even the occasional "scenic overlooks" (no longer functioning as such) are completely blocked with trees. Truckers use the turnouts to take a break, but they're not much use to anyone else.
It's sad...and bad for business. Tourism and Summer people are a big part of the local economy. Views of the lake show off the area's main attraction. Yet you can drive the two-lane road the whole length of the East side of the lake and not see very many unimpeded views of the lake. Most of the way you're within a few football fields of the lake, or less, but you see nothing but trees. The Chamber of Commerce ought to start a campaign.
Anyway. Lacking a long lens, I took this at the 35mm (70mm-e) setting of the Panasonic 12–35mm lens, my current favorite lens. (I loved this lens from the very first time I tried it.) I then cropped it considerably to further narrow the FOV (field of view):
And this was after I straightened the horizon, which threw away a few more pixels.
100%
The detail from the 20-MP Micro 4/3 file still seems plenty good to me even after cropping like this. What I end up with is a 3443 × 2527 or 8.7-MP image. I don't know, do you need more detail than that to get the general impression that this is a house, in blue late-afternoon shadow along the shoreline? Do you need to see what kind of shades or curtains the people have? It's certainly more detail than I would have gotten in Ye Olden Days with 35mm film, especially a film matching the ISO 800 I shot this with. I do acknowledge that if you wanted a very large print (bigger than 15"/38cm wide, roughly), then you might want more resolution. I didn't experiment with print sizes. But I don't print big. I think this might be nice printed about eight or nine inches wide, which is "big" in terms of the miniatures I make.
I quite love that 20-MP Micro 4/3 sensor, as I've written before. It might not be "the best," but I like it. It's available in the Panasonic G9, GX9, and GH5, and the Olympus E-M1 Mark II and Pen-F. I think the same sensor is used in the new fixed-lens LX100 II, but I'm not 100% certain. The 20-MP sensor was introduced in the sadly orphaned Panasonic GX8, which I used here.
Mike
(Big thanks to Paul Macdonald)
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Richard Tugwell: "Curiously—well maybe not very—what you describe is what might in German be called an Alp—a high mountain pasture. Although generally a lot higher than this one. The curious fact is how in general people know the 'Alps' as the mountains themselves. Like all twists of language this one is a bit complicated—collectively Alps, or Alpen in the German, does mean mountains although the origination is from long ago, pre-Roman probably. In the Alpine countries there is an annual ritual, or practicality really, when the livestock are driven up to these high pastures to pass the summer."
"Apologies for the digression...."
Mike replies: Wait—you're apologizing to ME for a digression?!? :-)
David Bateman: "There are at least three 20-MP Micro 4/3 sensors. The Sony IMX272 is in the Panasonic GH5 and G9; the Sony IMX270 is in Olympus E-M1 Mark II; and the Sony IMX269 is in the Panasonic GX8 and GX9, the Olympus Pen-F, and the Yi M1. The G9 is said to be excellent. I would like to see a BSI sensor as all those are front side. The GH5s has a BSI sensor at 11 MP, but a 20-MP one would be great."
HR: "Have you ever been to a National Geographic photo gallery? They are very similar to the Peter Lik galleries with dim lighting, black walls, and big, beautiful, glossy, very well lit photos. Of course, they are trying to sell them so the presentation is very nice. The info for each photo was a short caption, location, year, name of photographer, and the size in meters (longest dimension) of the print. The smallest prints were one meter and the largest prints were three meters, but most were one and a half and two meters. Most of the photos were taken 2004–2015, but I saw one that was in 1999 and another in 2002. A few of the photos were landscapes, but mostly animals in Africa and elsewhere. A few photos included people, but not many. I guess it is harder to sell people photos. Of course, they all looked wonderful and I think the prices are pretty high.
"No mention of the camera gear used, but I suspect most of them were taken with DSLRs since the bulk of the photos were 2004–2015 of animals, often in Africa. National Geographic galleries believe they have enough megapixels to print two and three meter prints from DSLRs made even 14 or 15 years ago.
"I think all the worry by some about whether a 20 MP or 16 MP (or even 12 MP) Micro 4/3 file is sufficient for fairly large prints is rather ridiculous. :-)
"Actually, most of the worry I see sometimes about print size is asking about making something like 24x30 or 30x40 inch prints—that is 0.762 meter or 1.016 meter prints. Just a very small number of the National Geographic prints were one meter. Almost all were one and a half and two meters, but several were three meters. So, above where I say 'fairly large' that is not really correct. Most people asking and worrying about print sizes here are talking about the smallest or even smaller prints than what they have at the National Geographic photo gallery.
"If you don't remember what the common high-end Nikon and Canon DSLRs were back in 2003, 2004, 2005 era that were probably used for many of the photos from 2004, 2005, and 2006, then look back and see. Nikon was selling only APS-C models, but Canon had FF, APS-H, and APS-C. And the megapixel counts would seem modest compared to current Micro 4/3."
Jim Richardson responds to HR: "Re HR's comments about National Geographic Fine Art Galleries and size of prints: I have some knowledge of the files used because I have several images in the NGFA galleries. HR is quite right about file size on some of the older images. One of mine I see (I just went and looked it up) was shot on a Nikon D2X, which was a 12-MP camera. But of course other, later image files of mine are bigger, including several that are stitched panos from up to eight or nine images from a Nikon D800E, and those are whopping big files. The really big prints they have on display in the NGFA galleries (over three meters) often come from those larger files. But the images from the D2X look very good at one meter wide.
"If you click through the link HR provided to the National Geographic Fine Art Galleries, the image you will see of the wee Scottish island in the loch is mine, one of the stitched panos I referred to in my first comment. What you see there is a center section of the much wider image."
Marc Lankhorst: "I once saw a calculation (but forgot where) that showed you never need more than 18 MP whatever the print size, given the typical resolution of the human eye and the proportionally larger viewing distance needed to view a larger print in its entirety. Of course that doesn't take any cropping into account, but it seems a reasonable estimate."
Mike replies: Thanks for this Marc. I'm sorry you don't remember the reference; I'd like to see it.
It also doesn't take "pixel peeping" (up-close inspection) into account. But I suspect the article you read is on to something; I've heard variants of this over the years. To use a fairly extreme example, Ernst Wildi used to insist that 6x6cm Hasselblad photographs were perfectly adequate for billboards because of the viewing distance.
Doug C: "There are things that require lots of resolution to work as images, but they are hard to find.
"There is a nice aerial photograph of San Francisco after the earthquake and fire taken by George Lawrence in 1906 that requires every bit of its gigapixel equivalent resolution. But I find it strikingly hard to find images that do require that resolution even though I have made my living working in high resolution formats for the last 35+ years.
"A calculation that shows you only need X number of megapixels is pretty laughable. It really is subject dependent and not every subject is the same. George Lawrence's photograph of San Francisco would not be in the MOMA SF if it were that low resolution. It's an 18x48" contact print. And it would not work at a smaller size; check it out. I brought a magnifying glass (that kinda spooked the security guys).
"Bruegel wouldn't work at 18MP, nor would the heroic large canvasses of the Hudson River School. Here's a nice example.
"You cannot tell anything about this painting from an online image. It's 6x7' and to see what's going on in it you have to walk right up and look into it. Close, then closer. Then walk back again to take in the whole. You can do this for quite a while. Back and forth.
"I am no Frederic Edwin Church, but I am trying. But don't bother with 18MP or 50MP for that matter.
"Horses for courses and one size does not fit all."
