"I have at least one friend who doesn't believe you can get those things in digital cameras at all ("for under $50,000"). Well, yes and no. 35mm film doesn't have "pixels" at all, of course, but there are reasonable limits you can compute: what you need is a CCD capable of generating, say, 36-bit color (i.e., 8 bits per channel isn't enough) with at least 3000x2000 resolution. Guess what? The 6-megapixel cameras hitting the market now match that minimum, and both Canon and Contax's models capture 36-bit color."
That isn't where digital cameras fall down, though. Current consumer and "prosumer" digital cameras fall down in the area of dynamic range--the total range, from light to dark, that teh CCD can capture without clipping.
Most consumer CCD devices have a dynamic range of about 2.8 or so, meaning that anything above a certain brightness gets clipped to pure white, and anything below a certain darkness gets clipped to pure black. The latter is especially a problem; the rendition of shadow detail in most digital cameras, to put it bluntly, sucks. Adding resolution or bit depth does not overcome this problem in any way.
A typical "prosumer" camera offers less dynamic range than even cheap consumer-quality color print film. That translates into narrower exposure latitude and clipped highlight and/or shadow detail. Neither of those is particularly a problem for an uncritical user, but it's pretty much kept digital cameras out of the hands of most demanding professional users, especially fashion and fine-art photographers. And it's a VERY serious problem for anyone who prefers black-and-white photography.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2002-02-26 15:03 (UTC)That isn't where digital cameras fall down, though. Current consumer and "prosumer" digital cameras fall down in the area of dynamic range--the total range, from light to dark, that teh CCD can capture without clipping.
Most consumer CCD devices have a dynamic range of about 2.8 or so, meaning that anything above a certain brightness gets clipped to pure white, and anything below a certain darkness gets clipped to pure black. The latter is especially a problem; the rendition of shadow detail in most digital cameras, to put it bluntly, sucks. Adding resolution or bit depth does not overcome this problem in any way.
A typical "prosumer" camera offers less dynamic range than even cheap consumer-quality color print film. That translates into narrower exposure latitude and clipped highlight and/or shadow detail. Neither of those is particularly a problem for an uncritical user, but it's pretty much kept digital cameras out of the hands of most demanding professional users, especially fashion and fine-art photographers. And it's a VERY serious problem for anyone who prefers black-and-white photography.