Re: Olympus and others. Greater mega pixel capacity expected soon? Skinny on E-3

frederick <lost@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:

There are only so many photons to go around, and they are emitted
randomly. That gives an upper limit to noise-freeness in regard
to pixel size. That's an unalterable physical fact.

But s/n ratio should be looked at from the POV of an entire image, not a
fixed number of pixels.

Most certainly not.

Just today I have seen an image (printed!), that was fine in
the sunny parts but very disturbingly and visibly noisy in the
shadows --- even though it wasn't a large poster or something
like that. If you averaged that to the whole image, you't have an
acceptable noise level --- which would be similar to describing
a car behaviour 'satisfactory' that runs well above 5 MPH, but
bucked and screeched and randomly jumped about between 1-4 MPH!

Or describing nitroglycerine as "mostly" unexplosive (it is not
explosive, unless you disturb it badly enough --- when it becomes
extremely explosive).

I've seen E3 and other Olympus sensor analysis that showed the main
problem isn't sensor/sensel size so much as the fact that the olympus
sensors clearly underperform on a square measure basis compared to the
better sensors of Canon, Sony/Nikon. If they could get their act
together on that, then 4/3 might have a future.

They can only win by either offering similar noise (and thus
reducing resolution), being way ahead technologically (unless Canon
and Nikon and Co. catch up, and you can bet your life on that
they will!) or being so much better in another quality (size,
price, weight, ...) that the lower image quality or resolution
is not as important[1].

At the moment I don't see how 4/3rds will find a large niche
between the convenience point&shoot and the DSLR rig.

-Wolfgang

[1] Compare 35mm still cameras to medium and large format,
even back in the film days, where the same sensor could be
used by all: 35mm "won" because of the size and mobility,
not because of image quality!

Comare also your point&shoot or mobile phone "camera" you
always carry with you versus the vastly more capable DSLR rig.
.

Relevant Pages

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