Digital BW, The Print

Ok, I'll jump in here.

First, I vote for the Sonys.  We have one of the smaller ones, and if we could
afford it, we'd get one of the 'top of the line' models.  Their drawback is
needing to use Sony's relatively small and expensive 'Memorysticks', and the
biggest plus is their battery system.  At least 3 straight hours of shooting
with the LCD screen active.  I don't think any other camera brand can claim
that.

That said, the subject of megapixel size of *all* these capture devices is a big
lie, that all the manufacturers seem to get away with.  They claim a pixel count
for *each* sensor.  When in reality, it takes an R, G, & B component to make up
each pixel.  What this means is that there is a phenomenally large amount of
interpolation going on in all of these cameras.  And these capture chips use an
R-G-G-B, not just RGB.

That in turn, explains why these digital cameras (actually filmless cameras, as
the 'captures' are analog, and then 'written' digitally after the fact) are good
at certain types of scenes and terrible at others.

The digital cameras are good when there are areas of broad tone (where the
algorithms can interpolate the spaces 'between' the actual captured information
without too much error), and are terrible when there is a lot of fine detail
(like the information between the branches in a forest in the winter).  They
*are* good at hard edges (like branches), but are not good at interpolating the
color information between the branches.

Harvey Ferdschneider
partner, SKID Photography, NYC


Jerry Olson wrote:

>  Mike, do you think that the Sonnar lens on that camera is up to Zeiss
> standards? It seems the price of the Sony is incredibly low with a good
> zeiss lens on it. 35mm Zeiss lenses of that type run over $2000.
>
> Jerry
>
>
>
> Michael Kravit wrote:
> >
> > I just bought the Sony 5 megapixel for my son as a College Graduation gift.
> It is an awesome camera.
> >
> > Mike
> >   ----- Original Message -----
> >   From: shashinka@...
> >   To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> >   Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 2:22 PM
> >   Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Re: Shooting Digitally
> >
> >   In a message dated 1/16/02 3:13:38 PM, willym@... writes:
> >
> >   << I am considering the S1, as well as the Olympus E-20.  Have you
> produced
> >   any
> >   quad prints from S1 photos?  How large have you tried printing?  What are
> >   the limitations of the S1?
> >
> >   Thanks for any guidance you can give.
> >
> >   Bill Morse
> >   PhotoProspect
> >   Cambridge, MA 02139 >>
> >
> >   Check out dpreview.com for some great reviews.  You'll see that the Sony 5
>
> >   megapixel camera did much better in sharpness and lack of shadow noise as
> >   compared with the E-20.  I'm not sure about the other Sony specs though.
> >
> >   Andy Darlow
> >
> >   Photography, Digital Print Consulting and Custom Editions
> >   Andrew Darlow Images International
> >   www.andydarlow.com
> >   andy@...
> >
>





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