On 8/2/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED], discombobulated, unleashed: >David Pogue's column in today's NY Times takes on the megapixel >controversy. He conducted tests in an effort to show that an increase in >megapixels doesn't necessarily yield better results. The column is aimed >at consumers and the heavy emphasis on megapixels in P&S marketing. His >first test was with a 13 megapixel camera. He doesn't specify which one. >He took a shot of a toddler, then downsized it to 8 megapixels and 5 >megapixels in PhotoShop. he then had 16 x24 prints made. They were >digital C prints, printed on a Durst Lambda at 400 dpi. He displayed the >prints in Union Square and asked volunteers to try to determine which >was which: lo-res, medium-res and hi-res. One of twelve viewers got it >right. He published the results on his blog and received a number of >angry letters that claimed the results invalid because the lo-res images >were derived from the hi-res by downsizing, rather than being shot lo- >res. So he devised another test. He reasoned, quite correctly in my >opinion, th >at he couldn't use different cameras, because the results would be >skewed by other factors. A Canon pro came up with another method. He >suggested using a Caonon 1DS 16.7 megapixel camera to take the picture >and effectively reducing megapixels by zooming out and cropping. Pogue >agreed and they repeated the test. They produced three shots at >different focal lengths and cropped two of them to 10 and 7 megapixels >respectively. The longest focal length image was kept at 16.7 >megapixels. Again they made three 16 x 24 prints on the Durst Lambda. >This time they displayed them in a library and had 50 people evaluate >them. Only three could differentiate the various resolutions. Pogue >ackowledges the value of higher resolution for cropping and understands >that on a large sensor it can be a plus. But his point is that with tiny >P&S sensors, 5 megapixels may well yield results equal to or better than >8 megapixels. But we knew that. One has to wonder how many experienced >photographers would be a >ble to differentiate between the three prints? I guess we'll never know.
Interesting, but doesn't this come back to what i was saying about the limiting factor being the resolution of the printer? -- Cheers, Cotty ___/\__ || (O) | People, Places, Pastiche ||=====| http://www.cottysnaps.com _____________________________ -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
