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JohnR66
Guest
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 Posted:
Sun Nov 13, 2005 5:40 am Post subject:
Digital wishlist |
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The progress of digital photography has been amazing to me over the last few
years. There are, however, improvements that I wish for. I'm sure most of
them will be realized in a few years:
1) Full frame 13-16 MP DSLR - under $1,000!
2) 8-10 MP compact digital with larger sensor (APS or sub APS sized perhaps)
with good 3 or 4x zoom.
3) Li-ion rechargable batteries that don't weaken or quit after 2 or 3 years
(and cost a small fortune).
3a) Better yet, reduce power requirements so that standard akaline batteries
(AA, AAA) may be used.
4) Improved dynamic range for DSLRs and especially compacts. Highlights blow
darn easy in digital.
Well, That's it for now.
John
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Al Dykes
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Nov 13, 2005 5:40 am Post subject:
Re: Digital wishlist |
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In article <K_vdf.49119$qk4.28433@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
JohnR66 <nospam@att.net> wrote:
| Quote: | The progress of digital photography has been amazing to me over the last few
years. There are, however, improvements that I wish for. I'm sure most of
them will be realized in a few years:
1) Full frame 13-16 MP DSLR - under $1,000!
2) 8-10 MP compact digital with larger sensor (APS or sub APS sized perhaps)
with good 3 or 4x zoom.
3) Li-ion rechargable batteries that don't weaken or quit after 2 or 3 years
(and cost a small fortune).
3a) Better yet, reduce power requirements so that standard akaline batteries
(AA, AAA) may be used.
4) Improved dynamic range for DSLRs and especially compacts. Highlights blow
darn easy in digital.
|
:=)
good enough, cheap, right now. pick two.
Santa says that if you get the 16MP camera with improved dynamic range
(i.e. 16 bits) you'll immediatly be asking for a $8,000 quad-CPU 64
bit system with 10krpm disks to be able to crunch those raw images.
IMO there is a point of image print quality beyond which the consumer
mass market won't spend *any* money and it becomes a rush to the price
floor. The fact that I can buy an 8MP camera for a few hundred
dollars is becasue there is a mass market demand.
The kind of camera you propose is so far above the requirements that
Mom and Pop need that it will *always* be expensive, at least for a
while.
Maybe you are a pro and tired of schleping your current rig, a
digi-back 6x7 and a Macintosh laptop costing $20k all up.
it's all relative.
--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. |
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Yukon Cornelius
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Nov 13, 2005 5:40 am Post subject:
Re: Digital wishlist |
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"Daniel Silevitch" <dmsilev@uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:slrndnd5ln.pne.dmsilev@bardeen.local...
| Quote: | On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:43:22 GMT, JohnR66 <nospam@att.net> wrote:
The progress of digital photography has been amazing to me over the last
few
years. There are, however, improvements that I wish for. I'm sure most of
them will be realized in a few years:
2) 8-10 MP compact digital with larger sensor (APS or sub APS sized
perhaps)
with good 3 or 4x zoom.
I'm not sure I'd call it a compact, but the Sony DSC-R1 fits this bill.
APS sensor, 10 MP, 5x zoom.
-dms
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Then maybe #2 should be further qualified..."produced by a camera
manufacturer, not a spyware proliferator and malware enabler".
Boycott sony. |
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Roger N. Clark (change us
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Nov 13, 2005 5:41 am Post subject:
Re: Digital wishlist |
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JohnR66 wrote:
| Quote: | 4) Improved dynamic range for DSLRs and especially compacts. Highlights blow
darn easy in digital.
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What? 10+ stops isn't good enough for you? Film has only
5 (slide) 7 (negative) stops? You can only print about
5 or 6 stops. DSLRs have tremendous dynamic range. You just
have to learn to use your light meter correctly.
Roger
Photos, digital info at: http://www.clarkvision.com |
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Daniel Silevitch
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Nov 13, 2005 5:41 am Post subject:
Re: Digital wishlist |
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On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:43:22 GMT, JohnR66 <nospam@att.net> wrote:
| Quote: | The progress of digital photography has been amazing to me over the last few
years. There are, however, improvements that I wish for. I'm sure most of
them will be realized in a few years:
2) 8-10 MP compact digital with larger sensor (APS or sub APS sized perhaps)
with good 3 or 4x zoom.
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I'm not sure I'd call it a compact, but the Sony DSC-R1 fits this bill.
APS sensor, 10 MP, 5x zoom.
-dms |
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Paul Rubin
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Nov 14, 2005 5:40 am Post subject:
Re: Digital wishlist |
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"Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark)" <username@qwest.net> writes:
| Quote: | Look at the data! The dynamic range is 10+ stops for digital and
about 7 for negative and 5 for slide film. And digital has HIGHER
signal to noise AT ALL LEVELS than film. So, if you can't get
the scene's intensities within range with digital, you can't
do it with film either.
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So do the autoexposure systems of current digicams/DSLR's do a good
job of this? It sounds like digital at a given ISO setting should be
underexposed compared to film of similar ISO. |
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Roger N. Clark (change us
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Nov 14, 2005 5:40 am Post subject:
Re: Digital wishlist |
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Graham Fountain wrote:
| Quote: | Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark) wrote:
Graham Fountain wrote:
Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark) wrote:
Look at Figure 8 on this page:
http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/dynamicrange2
It shows the transfer function of a digital camera matches
the characteristics curve of color negative film very closely,
right up to the highlights.
They will be close together until they hit the peak. But the roll-over
into blown highlights takes a completely different form. Film does it
considerably more gracefully. Look at a print with blown highlights from
either one and the film print looks nicer.
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Look at Figure 8, above. The reason your digital blown highlights
look bad is because of poor metering, NOT because of digital
limits. Read the paragraph above Figure 3. The data in the high
end of the test was within 4% of each other. While film is rolling over,
and showing poor tonality in the high end, the digital sensor's
response remains linear and shows far better tonality. If you
meter correctly for digital's characteristic curve, you do
much better than film at all levels, including all the way up
to and including film's complete saturation. So, again,
the poor print with blown highlights reflects poor metering
for the medium, not inherent limitations in that medium.
| Quote: |
Note also the scatter in the data
from film compared to digital. DSLRs, which their much better
signal-to-noise ratios produce smoother (more noise free)
images than film at ALL levels.
I agree there, and the difference is greater in shadows - digital
shadows are quite a bit better than film shadows. But digital's noise
does become progressively worse the darker the image becomes, precluding
the option of putting the desired part of the image into the shadows.
Dark/lost shadows look better on a print than blown highlights do.
Again, you just need to know
how to use your light meter correctly. Just like one
must meter differently for negative versus positive slide
film, one must meter differently with digital. And when one
meters correctly, one get superior results.
But it isn't always possible to eliminate blown highlights. Some scenes
don't suit that type of metering at all. For some scenes, metering in
this fashion will put the scene that you want to record down into the
noisy shadows and will give a worse image than blowing the highlights
would have done. Night shots or broad daylight shots are a couple of
examples of photos with extreme range of lighting variations. Some
scenes can be metered by lowering exposure, some can't. This sometimes
happens regardless of if you are using negative, slide, b&w or digital.
I agree that you have to meter differently for different mediums, but
sometimes you can't help blown highlights. When this happens film looks
better than digital.
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Look at the data! The dynamic range is 10+ stops for digital and
about 7 for negative and 5 for slide film. And digital has HIGHER
signal to noise AT ALL LEVELS than film. So, if you can't get
the scene's intensities within range with digital, you can't
do it with film either. Again, you cite blown highlights
and film looking better. Again, I would say you simply didn't know
how to meter the digital correctly for that situation. Because if
you did, you could do a better job than with any film because
digital has higher signal to noise, higher tonality, and higher
dynamic range than film.
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