CrunchGear

Per a Canon employee talking to Tech Digest, the engineers behind the 5D Mark II were held back by the megapixel race instead of focusing on the sensor. The chaps in marketing reportedly wanted to beat out Nikon’s latest DSLR flagship (rumors says it’s coming tomorrow 9/18 btw) and us consumers are apparently dumb, paying attention just to the mighty megapixel. 

This engineer indicated that if they would have throttled the megapixels back and added the 50D full frame sensor, the camera could have been so much better. While it’s hard to say if the engineers claim that the new DSLR is only slightly better than the old model so soon, the 21 megapixels do jump out and catch ya - you know, marketing wise. 

Good amounts of consumers still feel the need to buy megapixels. It is almost as they have been conditioned by Moore’s Law that the latest and best technology has the highest, most, or fastest spec. Nevertheless, cameras hit a megapixel roadblock years ago and generally by cramming more of ‘em in smaller sensors, results in more digital artifacts, or noise. So let’s not fall for marketing ploys anymore. Maybe if the megapixel truth would have been pounded a few years ago, we would have seen a better Canon 5D Mark II today.