"Brendan" writes:
> Technically digital cannot or
>ever surpass film if only because the resolving
>ability of the optics has a finite limit of which some
>low speed films have already reached.
Not necessarily. With chemical film, light-activated molecules are being
used. The smaller the molecules, the more light is needed to activate
enough of them to produce a dark enough image, which also explains why fine
grain is typically mutually exclusive with fast films.
However, with digital CCDs, the smaller they become, the less light they
can take before they are full. Since silicon stuff is mostly planar, this
means the smaller the cells, the less their capacity (but not sensitivity..
they are already more or less counting individual electrons). Therefore,
I'd expect the film speed equivalent rating to _increase_ the smaller the
"grain" is.
Those that know any solid state physics can tell me why this isn't so :-)
>Digital still hasn't reached there yet even with the
>X3 but yet they race ahead and try to develop better
>chips, yet there doesn't seem to be near as much
>research into improving optics. We all know the
>quality of the final image is directly related to the
>optics, yet these digi cams are being stricken with
>inferior lenses. Any one else see a problem here?
With mosaic CCD technology, there probably isn't any reason to research
improved optics. Near as I can reason, the sharper the lens, the more
objectionable the color artifacts will become. Which is my guess is why
consumer digi cams are "stricken" with inferior lenses -- if they were not
then the average consumer probably would prefer their disposable 35mm over
digital images :-)
However, layered CCD technology should eliminate that, so I expect optical
quality to start to become more important once those sensors become
commonplace in digital cameras. That'll be some years, but, since C & N
already have digital SLR offerings, I'm hopeful that P will OEM the Sigma
body with a K-mount lens flange on it as their digital SLR solution.. then
we should get to see P glass on digital SLRs blow away C & N glass on
digital SLRs for a few months :-)
hoping,
patbob ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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