At 08:50 PM 10/30/2008, you wrote:
><snip>
>In the ordinary world of serious amateurs and pro photograhers, the likes of
>which populate this OM list, is there likely to be an upper limit beyond
>which the mega pixel capture of digital cameras will cease to have any
>relevance?
>
>jh
And they don't already?
People forget the megapixel relationship is a square root.
I believe it has been discussed many moons ago, that lens and technique
have as much to do with resolution as the pixel count. Perhaps a
Hasselblad with a $30K back compared to a point and shoot with
image stabilizer, simple means the 'blad has mirror slap and the P&S
does not.
I think if you look at film, the grain structure is also very quantized.
The difference, though, is that film does not have a periodic
sample structure, and the randomness actually improves things a bit.
The main thing pixel count buys is higher sample rates, like sampling sound
at a faster rate, but if the sound bandwidth has not changed (lens resolution,
photographer technique, sensor anti-alias filter, etc) then the sound
spectrum is the same. And the noise and distortion in the sound becomes
more important than the sample rate (bandwidth / pixel count).
So perhaps the real magic is still with the lens and the photographer.
To me, the real measure of camera sensor performance improvements
is the ISO noise range and sensor dynamic range, not the pixel count.
In part answer to the question, I think that display size and viewing distance,
lens quality, along with the number of photons reaching any one grain of
film or pixel will set the practical limit.
WayneS
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