Bluebird Meadows Owner's Web Log

Daily activities of the owner of a 20 acre Organic Farm plus
observations, notes, and comments on a wide variety of topics.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8	Digital Cameras - Numeric Ratings Of Optics/Chips If you have shopped for a digital camera, you know a major point of comparison is the megapixel ratings. This tells you the size of the image file that the camera records with each picture. Generally, the larger the megapixel rating, the better. The only problem is, that number tells you nothing about the optical quality. Some of the cameras with high megapixel ratings have plastic lenses. Some of the lower megapixel cameras have fine glass lenses. Some cameras with fine glass lenses don't have a well matched chip for recording the image. I think the digital camera industry should come up with a numeric rating for lens/chip recording quality. Similar to the "f" ratings of SLR lenses, this numeric rating should tell you about both the light gathering capability as well as the quality/fidelity of the image capture. As an example, a L+25/85 rating might indicate that the lens/chip combination had 25% greater light gathering capability than the human eye (a good camera for low light conditions) and correctly recorded 85% of the correct pixels from some standard optical test image (this optical standard would have to be invented). With this new rating, I could better compare digital cameras and combine it with the megapixel rating to make the best buying decision for me.
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31

Owner's Web Log
Copyright 2005 Michael S. Brown
May 2006