Digital BW, The Print

Jerry,

I think Bob's having a go at the Bayer Pattern method used by current
digital sensors to interpolate a full-colour image. It's not really "2.1
real megapixels", but neither is it 6.3 real megapixels. It's actually made
up of something like 1.5 million blue, 1.5 million red and 3 million green
pixels, all spaced out in a grid pattern, which are then mashed together
mathematically to give a full-colour 6.3 Mp image. On the sensor itself,
there are 6.3 million real pixels, but each pixel only records one colour
(red, green or blue).

The new Foveon chip records red, green AND blue values at every pixel on its
surface, so presumably it will give better quality than a Bayer sensor at
the same resolution.

It turns out that human vision is more sensitive to the actual number of
dots than to colour resolution, so the improvement this new technology
offers is not as huge as it first sounds (though it is still an
improvement).

There's some excellent info on this site if you're interested in what the
D60 can do:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/d60.htm

Darren.

-----Original Message-----

Bob, where did you hear that the pixels were interpolated? the Canon D60
has a real 6.3 Megapixel chip. Wouldn't Nikon do the same, just to keep
up with Canon?

Jerry

Bob Frost wrote:
> 
> Jerry,
> 
> I've thought seriously about getting the Nikon D100 with its 6.3
> interpolated megapixels (2.1 real megapixels), but in the end I still come
> back to the incontrovertible fact that from my Nikon F100, Provia 100F,
and
> Nikon LS4000 I get 24 real megapixels (unless Austin tells me I'm making a
> miscalculation somewhere)!
> 
> Prosumer digital cameras are not even in the same ballpark yet - they are
> still an order of magnitude away.
> 
> Bob Frost.


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