On 11 Mar 2003 at 23:58, Stephen Hoffman wrote: > I was talking to someone far more knowledgeable than myself and he was > saying that there is a difference in the quality of the pixel rating between > professional digital cameras and the garden variety point and shoot digitals. > Something to do with algorithms. For example, would a Nikon D1 or D1H with less > than 3 megapixels produce better photos than a Kodak DX3900 with 3.3 megapixels? > Sometimes it's hard to understand why some of the professional digitals are so > expensive when their megapixels are so ordinary. Thanks.
There are many considerations but basically any camera's "megapixels" value is simply a count of the number of pixels in the output image. The sensor and algorithms used to generate the final output file vary considerably between digital cameras. A physically small sensor obviously needs to have a more dense array which can lead to inferior sensitivity, poor noise performance and low dynamic range. DSLRs invariably have fairly large sensors relative to PnS type cameras so so their sensors are more expensive regardless of the density due to yield per silicon wafer. Cheers, Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications.html Pentax user since 1986 PDMLer since 1998