Evidence for the prosecution
I'm going to keep it for the weekend to make my mind up, but things are not looking good for the Olympus C-8080WZ. It's a nice-looking camera, solidly built, with a magnesium alloy body and a huge chunk of glass in the lens. It turns on quickly (what we want) and it's autofocus performance is good. Nice macro feature, and a super-macro feature - also what we want.
But. And it's a big but: noisy. When I say noise, I mean the visual kind. Problem is, it's an 8-megapixel camera, but the sensor on it is the same size as a 5 megapixel model. Straightforward reason for this: cost. Not of the sensor, but the need to develop new lenses to cope with different sensor sizes.
The sensor (CCD) in most digital cameras is teeny weeny, about the size of a fingernail, no more. And the lens has to focus all the light onto this small spot, which is why that digital SLR models (pace The Canon 1DS, which costeth of the fortune) turn, say, 28-70 mm zoom lenses into 42-105 mm zoom lenses. Because instead of focusing onto a full frame of 35mm film, the lens has to focus on a small proportion of it.
Obviously there's only a finite amount of light and detail that can be focused down to a fingernail-sized area. Which is why the lens quality of a digital camera is so important. Stick a higher-resolution sensor into a camera with a lens designed for the lower-resolution sensor, and you are not necessarily going to see more detail, simply because the lens isn't capable of resolving it. The overwhelming problem with an 8MP CCD is that it's hard to get enough light onto it, even with a lens specifically designed for the job. It's the laws of physics or something.
Because there's not enough light, the camera artificially boosts what it sees: hence noise. It's like using a really fast kind of film, 1600 ISO say. Where you used to get film grain, you now get noise. Like flecks of colour in a black and white image. The extra detail and resolution captured by the CCD is just spoiled by noise. Now, with the Olympus the problem is not as bad as it is with some of the other 8 megapixel models on the market; but it's bad enough. Fact is, any ISO setting above 50 will see noise.
And ISO 50 is not, for me, a realistic option. If I was still buying film, I'd mostly be buying 200 or 400 ISO, because I like to shoot indoors without the flash. And I don't think I'm alone in preferring to do this. So, my advice: probably 5 megapixels is the pinnacle of what can be achieved with the sensor at this size. See what the 11 megapixel Canon 1DS can do with its full-frame sensor, and you see the future. It's time to make it at least the size of two fingernails. After all, the same is true of film: you get a huge leap in quality and detail with the use of medium- and large-format film stocks as opposed to 35mm. In the pipeline are 10- and 12-megapixel digital models. It'll be interesting to see whether this is just more pixels squeezed into the same space.
But. And it's a big but: noisy. When I say noise, I mean the visual kind. Problem is, it's an 8-megapixel camera, but the sensor on it is the same size as a 5 megapixel model. Straightforward reason for this: cost. Not of the sensor, but the need to develop new lenses to cope with different sensor sizes.
The sensor (CCD) in most digital cameras is teeny weeny, about the size of a fingernail, no more. And the lens has to focus all the light onto this small spot, which is why that digital SLR models (pace The Canon 1DS, which costeth of the fortune) turn, say, 28-70 mm zoom lenses into 42-105 mm zoom lenses. Because instead of focusing onto a full frame of 35mm film, the lens has to focus on a small proportion of it.
Obviously there's only a finite amount of light and detail that can be focused down to a fingernail-sized area. Which is why the lens quality of a digital camera is so important. Stick a higher-resolution sensor into a camera with a lens designed for the lower-resolution sensor, and you are not necessarily going to see more detail, simply because the lens isn't capable of resolving it. The overwhelming problem with an 8MP CCD is that it's hard to get enough light onto it, even with a lens specifically designed for the job. It's the laws of physics or something.
Because there's not enough light, the camera artificially boosts what it sees: hence noise. It's like using a really fast kind of film, 1600 ISO say. Where you used to get film grain, you now get noise. Like flecks of colour in a black and white image. The extra detail and resolution captured by the CCD is just spoiled by noise. Now, with the Olympus the problem is not as bad as it is with some of the other 8 megapixel models on the market; but it's bad enough. Fact is, any ISO setting above 50 will see noise.
And ISO 50 is not, for me, a realistic option. If I was still buying film, I'd mostly be buying 200 or 400 ISO, because I like to shoot indoors without the flash. And I don't think I'm alone in preferring to do this. So, my advice: probably 5 megapixels is the pinnacle of what can be achieved with the sensor at this size. See what the 11 megapixel Canon 1DS can do with its full-frame sensor, and you see the future. It's time to make it at least the size of two fingernails. After all, the same is true of film: you get a huge leap in quality and detail with the use of medium- and large-format film stocks as opposed to 35mm. In the pipeline are 10- and 12-megapixel digital models. It'll be interesting to see whether this is just more pixels squeezed into the same space.
posted by Anonymous at
Friday, May 21, 2004
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