For well over a year now I have been using an EOS 400D and in the main I have been very happy with it. The images have always tended to be a bit soft but I have generally put that down to the stock EF-S 18-55mm lens and a bit of unsharp mask in Photoshop does wonders. I added an EF 28-135mm IS to the collection a few weeks ago and was a little disappointed not to see a noticeable improvement in the image quality but as I said, it sharpens up okay in Photoshop so no worries.
Now for a little while I have been in the market for a second body. My son is getting interested in photography so I wanted a second digital EOS to allow us to shoot together. I discussed the options with my brother who is a wedding photographer and uses EOS kit. He suggested going for a 'prosumer' camera as opposed to something like a 350D that I was looking at. I was sceptical, after all I would be dropping a few megapixels and would need to buy an older camera so it must surely be less good than a modern one.
Today the box arrived and I became the owner of a rather battered (but still fully functional) 10D. First thing I did was pop outside and take a few pictures. (Well, actually the first thing I did was charge the battery but you know what I mean
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I loaded the pictures into elements and you could have heard my jaw hit the desk from a mile away. The quality of the images, the level of detail, everything is light years ahead of the images I have been getting from the 400D. And this is without having to sharpen the image at all, just looking at it in the organiser! (Shots taken in RAW on both cameras.)
So now I can see the point my brother was making but at the same time I am totally confused. How can a 6.3 megapixel camera produce an image that is substantially sharper than that from a 10.1 megapixel camera when using the same lens?