[Leica] Re: digital versus film

["Doug Richardson" <doug@meditor.demon.co.uk>]

From: LRZeitlin@aol.com wrote:

>Six megapixel cameras which will probably provide almost the
imaging capabilities of 35mm film will be available in the comsumer
market
before years' end. Nine megapixel cameras, which will equal 35mm
capabilites,
should soon follow.

When I scan a 35mm Leica slide in my HP PhotoSmart scanner (not
exactly a state-of-the-art device), I get a 1500 x 1200 pixel image.
Now in theory that's a 1.8 megapixel image, but as Jim Brick told us
in posting last year:

"It takes 4 pixels in the camera, to record one image pixel. The
stated resolution of consumer digital cameras must be divided by four
to get the "real" resolution."

(That makes sense - the little Fuji digital camera I bought last
spring to record the arrival and growing up of our new puppy is a 640
x 480 model, but the images it produces are very soft when displayed
at that size.)

So taking Jim's rule, to rival the results I get from a scanned slide
will need a 7.2 megapixel camera. But that's using a cheap scanner.
The results from a good-quality scanner will require even more
megapixels. A 9 megapixel array may the the equal of film for the
general consumer, but digital technology will still have some way to
go to rival film. Thinking back to the quality of the images which Jim
Lager projected using the latest Leica projector when lecturing to the
Leica Historica last spring, I'd hate to think how many megapixels it
would take to produce that kind of image sharpness. (Perhaps someone
like Jum Brick can provide us with an estimate.

For the consumer market, I'd expect to see digital capturing about 50%
of the business by around 2005, and being dominant by around 2010. But
given that one of the driving forces which led to the development of
apo lenses was the weakness of traditional lenses when large final
images are required, I suspect that film will be the only medium to
match apo lens performance for at least another decade in the
professional market.

Nor is resolution the only factor we should consider. What is the
virtual "speed" of today's digital arrays? Also there is the time lag
of getting the image off the array and into storage - when will
digital arrays match the frame rate of a film camera with a motor
drive?

For those of us who use "Barnack" Leicas and the lenses of yesteryear,
the conversion to digital may come sooner. Given the level of Japanese
interest in the Leica, I'd expect that once the technology for 10+
megapixel arrays becomes established and relatively inexpensive, we'll
see Japanese companies offering drop-in digital replacements for film
which can be used in screw and M models of Leica, and in classic Nikon
and Canon cameras.

Regards,

Doug Richardson