20 Apr
2004
20 Apr
'04
8:01 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Tony Duell once stated:
My 3.1M pixel camera gives me pictures that are 2048x1536 in size, so yes,
you do get an image with 3.1 million pixels in it, but I suspect that the
CCD is larger than 2048x1536 and some interpolation is done. I have seen
pictures from a 15MP camera (I forgot who) that were gorgeous (huge things
... the jpegs alone where ridiculously huge) but it isn't on the market yet
(test camera). Also, I read an article about Sports Illustrated using
digital cameras (high end SLR units) and their workflow---now much faster
due to the "development" time being negligable.
-spc (Wouldn't mind having a B&W digital camera ... )
Even if you take a normal fine-grain silver
halide image, under average
conditions, you'd have about 15M pixels (I found that in a few
references on the web). That's about 5 times more than a 3.1M pixel
digital image -- except they're analogue pixels, in a sense; the size
and colour are infinitely variable, not variable in discrete steps.
Moreover, 3.1M pixels in the camera aren't 3.1M pixels in the final
image. It depends how they're used, but in the camera, you typically
need three pixels, one for each of R, G, and B, to get one RGB pixel in
the image. Some techniques use even more (the Bayer algorithm uses 4).
Argh!. You mean they fiddle the figures? I'd assumed that a 'pixel' was
an RGB triad, not a third of one. So you mean you may only get 1 million
points in the image from a 3.1M pixel camera?