A #NerdyFilmTechStuff rant:
While we obsess over counting camera photosites, professional imaging is sinking into the quagmire predicted by Goodheart's Law.
While we obsess over counting camera photosites, professional imaging is sinking into the quagmire predicted by Goodheart's Law.
If our intent in demanding more K's (4K, 6K, 8K) is to safeguard resolving power, we're undermining our own intent by evaluating cameras by a metric that’s just a count of circuits across the sensor's surface that ignores their size, precision, technology, sensitivity, quality...
…and even ignores whether the camera is actually recording them (like, if it's brazenly throwing away data in a compression algorithm). And ignores other relevant components like whether the optics in front of the sensor can even resolve the tiny size of individual photosites.
All of this creates a huge gap between the stated goal (enumerating resolving power) and our beloved metric for achieving that goal (counting sensor circuits while ignoring literally everything else that affects resolving power, including failures in the very thing being counted)
Interested parties are always incentivized to game the system anyway, even if rigorous safeguards are in place to try to foil them, so why are we using such a weak password (so to speak): handing them such a comically game-able metric so they can manipulate us.
For anyone whose goal is not to create images of higher quality, but to make more money: if they know that our willingness to part with our money is aligned with this metric over what the metric was intended to measure, of course they’ll game it!
They’ll do anything to get the megapixels up (and the price down) even if it means a reduction in actual image quality. Our obsession with megapixels was already overwrought, and with stakeholders now aggressively gaming that metric, we doubly need to rethink image evaluation.
I discussed this large gap between the intent and actuality of obsessive pixel counting (as well as other topics) in my 2-part Resolution Demo:
This isn't a static issue: it’s a feedback loop. Stakeholders who are first incentivized by the prevalent myth to expend R&D on increasing megapixels at the expense of all else are then incentivized to loudly/publicly reinforce that myth that only megapixels matter... and so on.
Fellow nerds, let’s smash this feedback loop by demanding pixel quality not be sacrificed at the altar of pixel count!
Better pixels, not just more pixels!
FIN
Better pixels, not just more pixels!
FIN
PS: apologies for misspelling Goodhart’s Law.
