Re: benefit of digital camera

Most if not all digital sensors have millions of tiny (very very tiny)
lenses built into the chip. Your image gets collected by the camera
lens and sent to the "film/sensor" plane, then it goes through the chip
lenses into the chip sensors. Yes, this has something to do with your
question.

These chip lenses work best with light hitting them reasonably straight
on. Too oblique an angle and your resolution goes down.

So, for digital (not film), the exit pupil of a lens is a major
consideration. This is most true for wide angle lenses. Often a great
film lens is a mediocre digital lens, and a mediocre film lens can be a
great dig lens. many folks love the Sigma wide angle zooms on digital
cameras. No-one would suggest that Sigma makes Leica quality glass (or
even Nikon or Canon quality glass). But through luck or forward looking
design, their wide angle glass has bigger exit pupils than normal.

Many (not all) of the "all in one" digital cameras have been designed
with this in mind. My Sony F707 with it's Ziess zoom is amazingly
sharp. If sharp was the only criterial for a great camera I would never
have moved on to a DSLR!

Now, I just want to see one member of your group use "F/68" on a DSLR
:-)

On Thursday, April 15, 2004, at 01:15 AM, henk thijs wrote:

> Mark wrote:
>
>
>
> I often use the D1X as a backup to what I shoot on TMax 100 with the
> F5.  There are some occasions where I prefer the digital over film. 
> Usually that is with some portraiture and close-up work.  The 6
> megapixel images can usually be interpolated up as much as 1.5X-2X if
> necessary for larger prints.  For landscape work I definitely prefer
> the F5 and TMax 100-the 6 megapixel digital file just does not hold
> the fine detail necessary in some landscape work.  A 22 megapixel
> digital back would be nice for that.
>
>
> What I missed in the whole discussion about digital is the matter of
> the lenses. One of the F68-group, who is a specialist for the
> technical side of Nikon, Leica & Canon, explained that , if you want
> to have the benefit of 5 megapixel or higher, you need specific
> designed lenses. Especially for landscape this was absolutely
> necessary; he organised a workshop where the different newest, prof.
> dig. camera's were tried out. The results were really convincing for
> the special designed Leica-lense of the Digilux2; especially in
> respect to landscape; w.o.w. not a matter of 'does not hold the fine
> detail', but a matter of lense-design. (it was a bit of a surprise
> that the price of the Leica looks reasonable :-) Does anyone has
> equivalent experience, or is it just the Leica-myth??
> cheers,
> Henk
> --
> -----------------------------------------
> H e n k   T h i j s  -  P h o t o g r a p h y
> photography        http://home.hetnet.nl/~ghmthijs
> member of F68    http://www.f68.nl
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
--------------
Tom Ferguson
http://www.ferguson-photo-design.com
Received on Thu Apr 15 08:36:23 2004