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Re: cameras used

Max Galladé wrote:
> 
> Wright this is great stuff for me although I'm not an optical engineer.
> I thought that Sony uses their Video camera lenses in their digitals as
> well.

I have strongly suspected that they did, in the earlier Mavicas, but those
were far lower res. cameras intended for floppy storage of images, anyway. 

Sony has some of the finest optical designs, in house, but has also been
known to use Zeiss lenses, too. IDK if the design in the 770 is in-house or
Zeiss (they don't always tell you). It cleverly uses the focus motor to
extend the theoretical resolution of a 3:1 zoom system to a full 5:1, and is
a real marvel of modern electro-optical design. [Having designed zoom
lenses, I don't impress all that easily, either.]

> Are those video camera lenses better than what eg.Nikon, Canon has to offer?

No. All the video lenses are pretty comparable, and pretty adequate for
video. Certainly they cannot do what a lens designed for full-frame 35 mm
format can do on a sensor of that larger size. They were designed for a 1/3"
or 1/2" CCD, and can do great *video* on those smaller formats. Still
pictures require more demanding resolution (and far lower noise), so don't
try to blow them up much above postcard size or the digital artifacts,
grainy noise, or other limits will become apparent. My grandkids show me
great stuff on my digital camcorder, as seen on a TV. That's what it does
best. It has a "still" feature that I consider near worthless, and never
use.

> My 35mm camera is a Leica R4 with Leitz Summarit lenses and I might be wrong
> in saying that my 990 pix are as good as those R4 pix.On the other hand I
> never blew any R4 pictures up.

At 11X14, the Leica and film would probably win hands down, if film speed
and 990 ISO settings were the same. If you don't do such blowups, the 990 is
probably comparable (and a lot easier to carry and use!).

I once ordered a 990, and then canceled and bought the Sony 770 because the
990 lacked any decent way to add a remote cable release. [The Sony has only
an IR remote, but that works sorta OK.] The 990 takes fabulous pictures, and
has the finest macro known, without add-ons. [I have to add Tiffen close-up
lenses to my Sony to equal what the 990 lens does on its own.]

The 990 has a problem in the corners of some pictures called lateral
chromatic aberration, but the "purple fringe" effect isn't particularly
noticeable in most shots. It was a good compromise, needed to get the zoom
range in a very compact lens. That problem, and the noise level at higher
ISO settings, makes me slightly prefer the lower pixel-count 950, if I was
to buy one today. [Less pixels are way faster to process and store, BTW.]

The Sony Cybershot Pro DSC-D770 was designed as a "pro" camera, and the pics
are "soft" in both contrast and saturation, to prevent clipping (and loss of
detail). Post-processing is almost mandatory. The 990 has more contrasty,
vivid-color pictures, but may clip off useful data at the extreme ends of
the brightness or color range.

> The higher Resolution 2048x1536 is also great for editing purposes
> ,especially cropping.

Yep. My 1.5 MP Sony forces me to view-finder compose more carefully when
shooting, as the cropping can cause troubles, sooner, if it has to be
severe. I also never use the "digital zoom" which extends me to 10:1,
effectively, but crops too much. Instead, I add on a 1.4X teleconverter to
get about 7:1, with no cropping.

My prime need for the camera was documenting fish stuff, like our Desert
Springs Action Committee work trips, and fish pictures for the web, labels,
etc. I don't need huge posters, but have enjoyed the fact that (to my
surprise) I can hang a few 8X10s that are not embarrassingly "digital." [My
Lexmark 5200 does beautiful photo quality on premium paper, and the
conversion algorithms in QImage do a really great job of interpolating JPEGs
to printer output.]

The big heavy Sony 770 body is easier for my old shaky hands to hold steady,
than the tiny pocket-size 990. A tripod is much too slow for most field
work, for me.

http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=972804&a=7152836&f=0 gives one
of our trips, last June. The unassisted macro is evident in the picture of
the springfish in Doug Habersaat's photo-tank setup (# 4), and the butterfly
(# 14). The latter was only about 1/2", full wingspread. All shots were hand
held, BTW.

snip...
> May I have your permission to post parts of this interesting discussion on
> my website?

Certainly. My fishy postings are always usable in any not-for-profit way
that benefits the hobby (assuming proper attribution is used and I'm given a
copy or link).

Wright

PS. Photo 15 makes wonderful "wallpaper" for your computer. :-)


> Wright wrote:
> 
> That is not true. Perhaps you are overlooking some assumptions? The camera
> marketing types are *eager* for you to do so, for the pixel race has sold a
> *lot* of snapshot cameras.
> 
> Only if the *lens* can resolve details as small as a single pixel, is that
> statement generally true. As soon as lens resolution (or focus, etc.)
> provides details that are all larger than the pixel size, then you have
> essentially "empty resolution." About 90% of the consumer digital cameras
> have lenses that cannot possibly resolve to the capability of a 3 MP CCD.
> 
> If the tiniest image of a perfect point source is covering 20 pixels, then
> another point source next to it, but displaced by only one pixel, will not
> be resolved as a separate point. It's that simple.
> 
> The consumer cameras often use very poor lenses designed for low-res video
> cameras, to get a huge zoom range. Folks don't seem to care.
> 
> I downloaded the USAF test chart from the web, and proved to myself that the
> lenses were the real limit to resolution of several cameras I considered,
> and the absolute number of CCD cells was unimportant. My Sony 770 has only
> 1.5 MP, but I can do 8X10 prints that cannot be told from film pictures,
> with it. Internal algorithms and progressive scan make it the equal of all
> but about 3 cameras with higher MP, and you don't want to pay for any of
> them.
> 
> Wright
> 

-- 
Wright Huntley, Fremont CA, USA, 510 494-8679  wright at killi dot net

       http://www.atchison.com/Killifish/BAKA-WCW-10.html

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