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Just in case you were wondering what the pro photographers buy as digital cameras...

http://www.hasselblad.se/products/level3.asp?secId=1135&itemId=3362

Well, actually, I think that most are still going for Nikon, Canon, etc. at under half the resolution since this is a SERIOUSLY silly price and not a particularly fast shutter, but if you need something like this you probably need it badly.

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22 megapixels is kinda overkill, especially when you consider that a 4 megapixel 8 x 10 photo is about at the limit of the resolution of the human eye. Going to higher resolution won't add any detail that you can see without a magnifying glass.

Depends how big it's enlarged, of course. I'd imagine that these are being used for things like advertising posters, where 5x4 film or similar would have been used in the old days.

But they are also meant to be looked at from farther away. I should add that a 4 megapixel 8 x 10 image is at the limit of human vision resolution at a normal reading distance of 10 inches. At a viewing distance of 10 feet, you could blow it up to 10' by 8'.

Remember that they aren't necessarily using the whole frame.

Hmm. You would have thought so, but it doesn't seem to work quite that way; minimum size of dot you can resolve doesn't seem to be quite the same thing as the amount of detail beyond which no extra detail has a perceptible effect on the overall impression. Otherwise, at the size of a small print, it would be impossible to tell the difference between three and six megapixels, 35mm film and 6x6 rollfilm - but it does seem to be. (though I've never found a way of putting that test together with comparable lenses)

Another thought - I'm pretty sure some image editing processes benefit greatly from having a much higher resolution image than strictly necessary for the end result. Presumably this affects pro studio work more than anyone else.

Give me an Autochrome any day... if only we still knew how to make them.

Hasselblad stuff is seriously good though.

My brother's stepfather uses 22MP cameras (tethered to a maxed G5 and Photoshop) for professional Catalogue work.

You can zoom into the image quite some way (well a little way at least on those gigantic Apple Widescreen monitors).

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