On Thu, 27 Feb 2003, Michel Adam wrote: > In marketingspeak, 'effective' might as well mean 'we are faking it'. [snip] > So, are all of these pixels representing 'measured' data points, or are some > of them derived on the fly from others?
You've got it backwards. If it says "effective megapixels," you can trust it. If it doesn't, you can't. Effective megapixels is the total number of pixels that comprise the image. Any other way of referring to resolution may include the extraneous edge pixels, which isn't entirely accurate, but if you see the words "effective megapixels" then you should be able to trust that. > And then there is the matter of what is a pixel: does it take three of > them, one green, one blue and one red to make up a dot of color? I'm not as clear about this, but I believe it depends. Each tiny sensor, which is filtered to be sensitive to only one colour, constitutes a pixel. There are more green pixels than any other colour, as this is somehow more natural looking. A collection of red, green and blue pixels will approximate an actual dot of colour, but this requires interpolation, since the camera has to assume that the blue value of a green or red pixel is the average of the nearest blue pixel. I could be totally out to lunch on this, so take it with a grain of salt. :) chris
