How Many Mega Pixels Is Enough???

[Ilkka Nissilä]

I've heard that Nikon settled on using a 6MP sensor on their D1X

The D1X sensor isn't 6 MP.

Admitting that we (in all age demographic) are spoiled by the images of the digital cameras with much higher MP sensor, the practical resolution should be much lower than we think.

Looking at the photos of books made, e.g., in the 1970s and 80s, I have the "Zoo: Suuri eläinkirja" series of books (I believe the original was published in France) which contain a lot of wildlife photography. The image quality is quite terrible by today's standards.  Newspapers of the same era contained sports photos of ice hockey that were super grainy and almost binary in how many gray tones they had. I don't see any reason why we should wish to go back to that, or set standards based on what was possible at that time. And in fact even then much better was possible, as glossy magazines and books had photos made with medium and large formats and they looked very nice even by today's standards (probably because photography was more difficult then, so more thought was put into it, and print distribution was expensive so editors selected what was published).

I don't agree with the assessment that film image quality should be compared with digital by evaluating equal areas of sensor/film as the film could be much much larger than the generally available digital sensors back then (and even today).  I'm not suggesting that I prefer film - I don't, but 1:1 comparison of the same area is simply not fair or application-relevant outside of macro photography or wildlife or similar subjects.

If the goal is high image quality, in any era of photography, the aim should be set to better than the most discerning viewer can see. That way the photographer can be confident no one could do better and so it is good enough. If the goal is something else (emotion, unusual documentary content, etc.) then different standards and values are applied to what is good enough. If it moves the viewer or changes the way they see the world, then it is probably good enough. This has little or nothing to do with how many pixels are used. But different subjects and purposes have different requirements.

[Akira]

The D1X sensor isn't 6 MP.

Okay, it was 5.3MP, but that rather supports the efficiency of 6MP cameras like D100 and later models.

[Birna Rørslett]

The D1X sensor isn't 6 MP.
...

Indeed it was, but not in the usual square pixel layout.

The native format was approx. 4000 x 1300 pix, because the sensor sites had 4 subdivisions of which only 2 were utilised. Thus each "pixel" was elongated 2:1.

Various programs could eke out a few pixels more along either axis. Nikon software converted this into approx. 3008x1960 by interpolating in both directions. Thus 6 MPix, but not directly off the sensor.  Bibble and other programs made D1X deliver approx. 4000 x 2600 pix by a different interpolation scheme, hence 10MPix. One could argue benefits and drawbacks of either procedure. Newer NX products can be set to give 10MPix from D1X NEFs, however.

Had Nikon populated the pixel sites fully, D1X would have had 10 MPix natively.