Olympus: 12 megapixels is enough

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Digression -- Equivalency film vs digital

Your mileage may vary, but the fact is that my digital camera has opened the door to new levels of quality I was never able to achieve with film, not even Kodachrome 25, except in the unusual case of using a Celestron C5 telescope (mirrors have no chromatic abberation). My Nikon D-200 is considerably superior to my old Olympus OM-1 and K64.

Keep in mind I use a subjective metric "quality" rather than a difficult to define metric "resolution". Resolution is important, but we are already "diffraction limited" at 10 megapixels on an APS-C size sensor. You can slice it up as fine as you like but there will be no increase in actual image detail, and it has to do with the wavelength of light interacting with the edges of the aperture. To exceed this you must go with a larger sensor and there is absolutely no reason for your pixels to be smaller than the "circle of confusion" (no lens ever made can focus a point-source of light onto a point on the film or sensor). I suppose if you made a cluster of pixels (RGB or RGBG) the same size as the circle of confusion you could eliminate the anti-moire' diffusion screen.

No technical reason, that is; if you slice your sensor into 40 million pixels you might be able to sell more of them, but not to me

Digital images, being continuous tone, I consider superior where wetter water is wanted:

Example: http://www.orneveien.org/nikon-d200/big/088.htm

The film look of National Geographic is achieved with a suitable "S" curve applied to a digital image to increase its mid-range contrast and color saturation. Using "curves" in The Gimp, Aobe Photoshop or Corel Photo Paint achieves this outcome.

Posted by: mggordon   Posted on: 03/09/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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