From time to time I read that some people bemoan the increase in DSLR photosite density (e.g. – “number of megapixels”) because “it will cost so much to store all the data.”
While there could be other reasons to be less than excited by increases in megapixel count beyond a certain point – especially for certain kinds of photography – this “reason” seems very strange to me. A few examples of why…
Today I saw a 32GB compact flash memory card on sale for $135*. It wasn’t that long ago that people were paying this much for 1 GB of flash memory. 32x the memory for the same price in a couple of years? Wow.
I recently purchased a new external hard drive. This 750 GB hard drive cost a bit more than $150. Again, it wasn’t that long ago that we were paying this much for a drives with only one quarter the capacity… and 1 TB drives at this price are just around the corner.
*Oops. I originally made an error and typed “$35” for the price of the 32GB card instead of $135. Now that price would have been truly remarkable. Sorry if I got your hopes up – you’ll probably have to wait a year to see them at that price. :-)
I’m with you, Jim. I can only wonder about folks who make the anti-MP argument based on the cost of storage – I suspect that a good number of them may be at least slightly computer-phobic and/or are unaware of how the market is changing. I do understand some of the other more rational debate about the value of increased photosite density (do we really need a 22MP cell phone camera!? ;-) but the cost of memory, storage, and processing is gotten lower on a per photo basis, not higher.
Take care,
Dan
I’ve heard two facets of this argument…
1. The collective size of the RAW files you’d need to store being too great
2. The collective size of the processed files you’d need to store being too great.
In both instances the argument is rather weak considering storage prices have been declining since the advent of the hard drive. Storage cost is far less of an issue compared to computer processing power to work on larger files. This particularly is true as newer software is released and used on older machines. Either way people need to work with in their budget. My recommendation to those claiming storage prices are too great… think long term not short term. Storage prices will almost certainly continue to decline.