Dilemma
Here's a dilemma for the Digicam manufacturers. This was something I was thinking about not long ago. Whereas Sony announced their technological leap forward next-generation CCD not long ago, with 8 megapixels, it makes more sense from a marketing point of view, to make smaller incremental jumps, which is what Sharp are proposing with their new 6 megapixel CCD.
The numbers game here makes the same kind of sense that it does in the computer industry. A faster processor in a computer can be meaningless without other improvements in the architecture, like bus speed, hard drive speed, memory speed etc. (I'm anti-laptop simply because, no matter how fast the processor of a laptop is, the low energy consumption s-l-o-w hard drives compromise performance).
With a Digicam, putting more pixels into an image-capturing CCD of the same size will almost certainly lead to a loss of quality, as noise interferes with the image - unless you develop a new lens to work with the new CCD. I've noticed the same thing on my DV camcorder. Its compact size is coupled with a physically smaller CCD so that a standard-size lens can offer a greater optical zoom. But the ability of the camera to work in lower light conditions is not so great, and the pictures are noisier, a long way from the "broadcast quality" you can get with some DV camcorders. Next time, I'll be looking for a physically larger camera with a bigger lens.
Phil Askey on DP Review comments that more megapixels doesn't make a better camera, and I agree. We've talked about it before. For your standard photo album print, 3 megapixels is all you need. For A4 prints, 5 megapixels is more than adequate. And to capture more detail with more megapixels, you need to improve the lens on the camera first. Photography is about capturing light, not pixels, so always look to the lens first. And then look to useability aspects like startup speed, read/write speed, burst mode, autofocus speed and accuracy etc.
It's what has always annoyed me about the Fuji range of cameras, because the biggest claim made by Fuji is their interpolation of the captured image to double the file size. Well, whoopee to that. My tests of Fuji cameras, and the sample images I've seen, confirm that all you get is a softer, less detailed image when you do that.
I got 4 words for ya. Nikon. Minolta. Canon. Olympus. These people know lenses.
The numbers game here makes the same kind of sense that it does in the computer industry. A faster processor in a computer can be meaningless without other improvements in the architecture, like bus speed, hard drive speed, memory speed etc. (I'm anti-laptop simply because, no matter how fast the processor of a laptop is, the low energy consumption s-l-o-w hard drives compromise performance).
With a Digicam, putting more pixels into an image-capturing CCD of the same size will almost certainly lead to a loss of quality, as noise interferes with the image - unless you develop a new lens to work with the new CCD. I've noticed the same thing on my DV camcorder. Its compact size is coupled with a physically smaller CCD so that a standard-size lens can offer a greater optical zoom. But the ability of the camera to work in lower light conditions is not so great, and the pictures are noisier, a long way from the "broadcast quality" you can get with some DV camcorders. Next time, I'll be looking for a physically larger camera with a bigger lens.
Phil Askey on DP Review comments that more megapixels doesn't make a better camera, and I agree. We've talked about it before. For your standard photo album print, 3 megapixels is all you need. For A4 prints, 5 megapixels is more than adequate. And to capture more detail with more megapixels, you need to improve the lens on the camera first. Photography is about capturing light, not pixels, so always look to the lens first. And then look to useability aspects like startup speed, read/write speed, burst mode, autofocus speed and accuracy etc.
It's what has always annoyed me about the Fuji range of cameras, because the biggest claim made by Fuji is their interpolation of the captured image to double the file size. Well, whoopee to that. My tests of Fuji cameras, and the sample images I've seen, confirm that all you get is a softer, less detailed image when you do that.
I got 4 words for ya. Nikon. Minolta. Canon. Olympus. These people know lenses.
posted by Anonymous at
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
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