Here are some interesting microphotos of the Kindle versus IPad screen appearance and resolution:
http://www.bit-101.com/blog/?p=2722 I have a 2nd gen Kindle. The 3rd gen has better contrast. I find that for reading long books, the IPad is better. Less eyestrain. Easier to flip to a different chapter or section of the book. The photos and figures are better. Perhaps the 3rd gen Kindle would be better. The low contrast is the biggest problem. As you see in the photos, these things are not quite up to the level of good quality paper books. They are better than newspapers or cheap paperbacks. Larger print, too. Eventually they will exceed the quality of paper, in both resolution and contrast. In the distant future I expect we will have digital paper the size of a newspaper, suitable for displaying things like art books, mechanical drawings, and maps. Regarding cameras, years ago I examined a 35 mm film negative and a photo under a microscope to estimate how many "pixels" they have. That is, individual grains with about 1 color each. I read a variety of estimates of this on the Internet. The topic was hotly disputed by camera aficionados. It depends on film quality and the camera. Anyway, my estimate was that ordinary film in our camera captured roughly 16 megapixels. We had to get a new camera the other day after an unnamed party dropped ours. It has 16.2 MP. It seems most of them do. So I guess digital cameras have finally caught up with 35 mm film resolution. They have been better in many other ways for a long time. We stopped using film years ago. - Jed
