A great analysis by Roger over at Lensrental.com trying to decide what dSLR to buy. Inreresting thing was to compare Nikon D800 and Canon 5D Mark III at 24-70. The new Canon 24-70 II is amazingly sharp and of course the Nikon D800 is 36 megapixel vs Canon at 22, so would seem to be no contest.
In reality, these high resolution sensors mean that the quality of the glass make a huge difference. Here is what he learned:
- As expected, the Nikon D800 with the Nikon 24-70 is the best performing with average MTF50 (that is where the contrast of black and white bars falls to 50%) is 1000lph at F/4 so it is the best resolving
- The Canon with the Canon 24-70 II is 910lp/Ih. So about 10% less, which shows how much a difference a lense makes (the Nikon has 30% more pixels, so should be about the (36/22)^(1/2) more lines per height or about 28% better. You’d need to print an 11×26 b
- They also tried a Tamon 24-70 and found that it was $1,000 cheaper so a Tamron on a Nikon D800 has the same resolution as the Canon/Canon
- All of these are really high resolutions and are as good as a terrific Zeiss F/2 50mm!
