Where there are woodworking buffs, there are camera/computer/ modeltrain/audio/toy/plane/cooking buffs.
I thought I'd share this.
So, again, the MegaPixel race is driven by the marketing and advertising freaks and not indicative of a better camera.
r
I disagree.
The more pixels, the more freedom you have with image cropping. You are able to zoom in on a region of the picture and still end up with an image with adequate pixel density.
If you had enough MegaPixels you could take a full shot picture of your house, crop out everything except your door knob, and have a high resolution
8X10 picture made.
While This is true you could also take a close up of your door knob with a lower grade camera and have the same quality.
There was something on TV (I can't remember what channel now) that showed what the "sweet spot" of todays camera was. I thought it was around 4 Megapixels. Gave you pretty good range of flexibility for regular home use.
While I agree that an 11 Megapixel camera gives you good crisp detail if you zoom in on specific areas, if you shrink the picture down to a normal print size it doesn't look any better.
This door knob scenario was used as an example. You might not always frame your subject correctly or you might take a scenic shot and just want the lower right portion.
More pixels = more flexibility during picture cropping.
See above.
Zooming in on a region and then shrink it down?? Cropping involved zooming in on a region of the picture and having the newly framed/cropped portion become the 'new' photo.
Again: More pixels = more flexibility during picture cropping. (I'm sure there are more advantages to increased pixel density than just image cropping...)
Also, I should add that you might not be able to get close enough to your subject. More pixel density enables you to 'zoom in' (crop) on your subject without an expensive telephoto zoom lense. If you have enough pixel density (MegaPixels), you can get away with zooming/cropping without losing image sharpness.
Yup, it was no different with film, it was always best to use the finest-grain film lighting conditions permitted so cropping and enlarging didn't result in a grainy print. Having more data in your image than you need is easy to live with, not enough is a different matter.
Robatoy laid this down on his screen :
They had the best available at launch -the Apollo missions had Hassleblads (the best roll film cameras in the world) and 11's computer was less powerful than an XT - it had only 4K of RAM. Would you like to try to run your software on that?
At any rate there are three cameras on the rover, one is a low res colour imager but the other two have about 160Mp each!
It may well be, but that does not negate the usefulness of resolutions beyond 1 Mp.
Unlike with computers, where the best maxim is to get the best you can afford, cameras do have a utility ceiling. I'd suggest something larger than 4Mp in a compact camera should do well enough for woodworking pics. I have a Sony Cybershot with 7.2 Mps but woodworking is not the only thing I use it for. The basic rule is the better your original shot/resolution/focus/lens etcetera etcetera the more you can do with it when you put the file on your PC.
Oh and moving your camera closer to the subject is not equivalent to upping the resolution. The closer you get to a subject the more obvious is any inherent distortion of the lens. For most large piece woodorking shots I'd reccomend moving away from the subject and using the optical zoom (there is no point in using the digital zoom as you may as well just crop it on the PC) til the subject fills the frame.
Mekon (who used to make his living doing this stuff)
I dunno.
Santa dropped a Cannon A720is under our tree. It's an 8MP vs the old
2.3MP Ricoh RDC5300 that preceded it. So far, I like the pictures from it much better than the Ricoh. The flash seems to be much better as well as the 6x optical zoom vs the 3x of the Ricoh. I also like the anti blur and the movie/sound capabilities. I put a 4GB card in it (max 32GB) as opposed to the 64MB max card I have in the Ricoh. It takes two AA batteries vs the 4 AAs for the ricoh and doesn't appear to eat them at anywhere near the rate the Ricoh does. It's also much faster on powerup and between shots.Also, the price of $185 (Amazon) vs the $550 for the Ricoh in '99 made Santa feel good.
Sorry, I didn't explain myself clearly. I ment if you take a picture, then make it a normal "Print" or web sized picture. No zooming involved.
Only because it had the best lenses (Zeiss) and a switchable back.
That is incorrect. The largest CCD was 1024 x 2056, but only half was used for imaging.
r
However the smaller the pixel the higher the noise. This is why an APS-C camera can get usable images in much less light than a compact with the same pixel count.
Garagewoodworks,
While I agree that more pixels is better when cropping, you are slightly wrong about cropping. Cropping is the selection of a range of pixels based either on pixels, inches or picas, and removing everything else outside of that crop.
So I start with a 8x10 image. If I crop out a 4x6 image, I will get ONLY a 4x6 image, not a 4x6 image blown up to a 8x10. Cropping makes the physical size of the image smaller. The density of the image (how many pixels per inch) remains the same when I crop, that's why you want a LOT of pixels when you crop. You can enlarge, (blow up) a 4x6 cropped image to a 8x10 but you will have a choice - either keep the same density and lose some definition snd/or incur noise or reduce the number of pixels per inch, which MIGHT make your image worse. However, if you start with a highly dense image (pixels per inch), you probably won't see a big difference when you enlarge. That' why I agre with you on the idea - more pixels better!
Nikon has stopped all work on new 35mm film cameras to solely work on digital cameras. They did this because they were coming out with cameras with large sensors that came close to the 35mm format with out enlarging.
And for everyone else, the standard density of JPG images on the web is 72 pixels per inch. You will probably never see anything higher. It's hard to see a big difference in an image that is 72ppi vs one that is 150ppi on the web.
MJ Wallace
Other cameras had the switchable backs (eg Mamyia 645) The T* lenses on the blads were (and I guess still are) magnificent, but the bodies and viewfinders and other 'blad technology was the best available at that time. Just beautiful equipment.
Yes, I was wrong, I was reading the specs for the orbiter, not the rover.
Mekon
Yes, I am referring to cropping and enlarging. More pixel density the better (less of a loss of image sharpness.) In my door knob example above in thread I mentioned taking a picture of a house and zooming/cropping in on the door knob and making a 8X10 photo.
I hope this wasn't the only reason they stopped production. There are advantages to digital format other than resolution. (I don't need a dark room or a 1hr photo lab near by.)
MJ Wallace
It goes way beyond having more pixels. There are noise issues as well. Plus the fact that each pixel has dynamic range issues. If you have a 6 MP camera and each pixel can discern 256 levels of light, then the result of that is far better than a 20 MP camera where each pixel can discern only 4 levels of light. The ideal would be 20 MP with 256 levels each, but good luck processing all that info off a AA battery.
That is what optical zoom is for.
Only if you have a telephoto zoom lense. Last time I checked, the good ones are pretty expensive and you can only use them on digital SLR's (like the one I own).
Good luck doing that with a non-SLR type digital camera.
Exactly right.
And a whole lot less wash water going into the environment.... water that had all kinda of nifty bromides and crap in it. Also, the making of film is hardly a green process. But I miss the way Kodachrome 25 used to lie to me.
I couldn't agree more. The whirr of the diaphragm shutters on long exposure was a bit musical. I have been a long time Contax user and Zeiss....what can I say? I just sold an 85 (f2.8) mm portrait lens (Made in West Germany) for more money than I paid for my entire Contax collection. I shuddered at the thought of parting with it, but I could not turn down the offer. NASA's decision had also to do with their dislike for focal plane shutters. They wanted the 120 (220?) size film, but didn't like focal plane shutters that were that big and their inherit distortion on moving objects. These days people don't buy 'blads anymore... they lease them. Now there's high MP count CCD I could live with. It is hard to imagine to be able to put a few select pieces of Hasselblad into a case and walk off with knowing it can be as much as $ 100,000.00
One of the reasons they kept the pixel count to a minimum, was to minimise the physical size of the CCD, having less mass and better chance of surviving a hard impact. That is also why the lenses were restricted to a max of 3 elements and no adhesive was allowed to be used. Some really interesting design parameters.
rPS, I always like to run into people who truly understand the Zeiss story.... then I tell them about an acquaintance of mine who bought a Zeiss microscope at an auction for $ 200.00 only to discover that the package also included a Zeiss-built 35 mm camera and an additional $
20K worth of optics and lighting gear... including ring flash and all kinds of really nifty stuff. I took some pictures of phonograph styli and grooves and wondered how-the-hell that ever worked as well as it did.
I remember listening to a Kodak rep at a seminar wanting us to get into silver reclaimation saying that over the last hundred years we have lined the sewers of the world with silver halides.
Mekon
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