Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/04/08

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Subject: Re: Re: [Leica] Digital resolution
From: austin@darkroom.com
Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2000 17:17:59 -0400

The new crop of high end consumer digital cameras are 8 bits/pixel/color, or 24 bits per pixel.  The Fuji FinePix 4700 is 2400 x 1800 x 3 bytes/pixel, so an uncompressed image is almost 13M bytes!

It is true the information density of film (amount of information stored per unit area) is far greater than current digital storage technology...so in answer to "should you keep your analog camera"...I believe so, if the work you do isn't better suited to the lower resolution offered by the current crop of digital cameras, and you don't need the picture in a minute.

Personally, I use both...but I have to admit, I really like using my Leica M6 over the digital camera...by a large margin!

>
>I was actually asking about digital cameras, rather than the scanner.
>
>As Tim Swan and others have pointed out, film holds a lot more information
>(at least 200 megabytes) that can be extracted today with a better scanner
>(or a print).
>
>I guess I'll hold onto my M3s awhile.
>
>Mike Quinn
>
>Austin Franklin wrote:
>
>> "24 bit color" means three 8 bit values, one for each color.  It depends on
>> how many bits the A/D converters have (I believe most current mid/low end
>> scanners use 12 bits), and then how many are stored.  Obviously, 12 bits
>> per color is 36 bits/pixel.
>> 
>> Does that answer your question?
>> 
>> 
>> ----------
>> From:  Mike Quinn
>> 
>> Oops. Thanks for (very tactful) the correction.
>> I should have said 28M bytes of STORAGE. My mistake.
>> 
>> That represents only 10M pixels (according to Nikon).
>> I guess the gap is closing faster than I thought.
>> Maybe I should join Dominique and start disposing of my Leicas...
>> 
>> How deep are the pixels on those digital beasts?
>
>
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