Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/02/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Well, Jim old man - actually I now working in public relations/marketing, so I know full well what marketing hype is all about. I also know that while certain people go on and on and on about how digital just can't cut it for various technical reasons, the output is getting better and better and better - to the point that many many people who are highly regarded in photography for shooting things other than rocks and trees to turn into 40x48 murals, have switched to digital. Perfect? Far far from it. And, as I noted, with the Foveon examples posted we are looking at images on our various monitors, not at prints. But I believe that for anyone needing up to, say, 16x20 prints - and certainly for anyone whose needs are primarily for prints smaller than that, for book or magazine reproduction, etc., the days of film are limited. That doesn't, btw, make me at all happy. I shoot only film. I don't own a digital camera. I like the results I get with film. But then there were people who liked their copper plates and glass plates too. ;-) B. D. - -----Original Message----- From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Jim Brick Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 1:18 PM To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us; leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us Subject: [Leica] RE: Foveon Chip At 10:42 AM 2/11/2002 -0500, B. D. Colen wrote: >Stunning barely begins to describe it. Granted, we are looking at these >images on our monitors, but the fine detail is really pretty amazing. >Obviously there are those on this list who will pooh-pooh anything digital, >and those who will continue to tell us that digital development has hit a >brick wall and it will be a decade before digital equals film. BUT...for the >rest of us in the real world this does indeed give one pause in terms of >making any further investment in film-based equipment at this time. > >B. D. It's a good thing that the journalism folks are not scientists. Everything that a marketing organization utters is always the greatest thing since sliced bread. Unfortunately marketing folks know that the journalists will run wild and blow everything out of proportion making the "breakthrough" seem like the second coming. There is a h-u-g-e amount of marketing hype associated with the Foveon announcement. All of the same rules still apply. Foveon pixels are still no smaller than any other pixel and Leica lenses still resolve too much detail for the Foveon or any other sensor to capture without producing unwanted artifacts. Nyquist, like Murphy, is still in there taking his piece! All this chip might do is reduce the amount of color interpolation that would normally be done. But I'm wondering how silicon happened to know to filter the exact primary colors (R, G, & B) and not let any other wavelengths through. Color film filters are exact. That's how we get our film's color pallet. Adjusting the filter layers in film produces saturated Velvia and E100VS, neutral Provia 100F, Astia, and E100, etc. I guess we'll see. The examples that they show on their web site are completely bogus. When's the last time you had color moire patterns on your digital images? That problem was solved years ago. And getting type to have every letter a different color is laughable. Actually, impossible because a pixel cannot resolve a character. Only a point of light. So let the marketing hype continue. Jim - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html