Re: Pentax K10D beats (sharpness, detail) Canon 40D?

Wolfgang Weisselberg <ozcvgtt02@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Chris Malcolm <cam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Wolfgang Weisselberg <ozcvgtt02@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Chris Malcolm <cam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hence most cameras now come with menu-settable changes in the degree
of sharpening applied to their jpgs, and to what level of image
resolution. [...]
What I don't understand is why the same kind of flexibility is not
applied to AA filtering.

AA filtering is analog.
This sharpening is digital.
That's not comparing apples and oranges, but apples and sunshine.

Only when you don't have enough digital resolution.

You cannot get infinite digital resolution.

You can if you postulate an infinite universe, which is also the only
kind of universe in which you could possibly get infinite analog
resolution. The particular universe we inhabit is not only not
infinite, but it gets very lumpy as you get down to the fine detail.

When you get down to the details, our hearing digital, as is our
sight.

Actually, when you go down to the detail you'll find that
camera sensors are analog, collecting electrons _analog_ to
the photons received.

Well, it certainly can be argued that the lumpiness of the world in
those regions is rather too messy for it to be called digital in the
cleanly digital sense of the digital computer, but on the other hand
it's far too lumpy to be considered analog either.

And when you get down to the quantum level, the universe is digital.

Quantitized, not digital.
Completely different things.

My point was that quantization intrudes soon enough on the small
scales of the physical world to bring tears of frustration to any
engineer enamoured of the idea of the theoretically infinite precision
of analog. And biological evolution obviously decided to go for
digital encoding and representation where high performing sensors were
concerned. Our ears for example detect frequency by means of a ramped
set of resonating fibres, rather like making a microphone by
attaching vibration sensors to the strings of a grand piano.

Anything we think of as analog is in fact just high enough resolution
digital to pass as analog.

Most interesting.
What does your dictionary say for the word "analog"?

A great deal, most of which is irrelevant to this discussion, and
nothing that contradicts anything I've said.

Would you call a slide rule a digital computer?

No, because a slide rule operates by representing numbers by a
measurable thing, whereas a digital computer represents them by
a countable thing.

--
Chris Malcolm cam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

.

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