Digital Cameras
Friday 5th January, 2007 15:01 Comments: 6
BabyLa posted this on Dave's forum and it made me smile:
My Canon IXUS is very good, not that I know much about cameras but the guys in Jessops recommended getting an IXUS as they upscale the pixels or something like that. Plus, my camera is purple :D
I'm guessing by upscale he means the silly interpolation rubbish that cameras do nowadays to provide an effective resolution that's far greater than the resolution the CCD in the camera can provide. Most cameras do seem to use decent algorithms, but there's no reason why you couldn't use a graphics package on the RAW image to get exactly the same effect. I'd much prefer to take photos at a native resolution (or perhaps lower, interpolation to create a lower resolution image doesn't typically look bad, as it's not trying to create additional information out of nowehere).
I'm a big fan of native resolutions (I hate that my dad runs the 1280x1024 monitor at 1024x768), so it annoys me that most HDTV screens are a weird 1366x768 resolution. Considering that computers monitors tend to run at certain resolutions (e.g. 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1280x720, 1280x800, 1600x1200, 1680x1050 - a bit weird I know - 1920x1200, 2560x1600), and that HDTV comes in two resolutions (1920x1080 and 1280x720), it seems strange to pick a fairly random resolution. If/when I buy a new HDTV screen, I'll probably go for one of the 1080p models, with a native 1920x1080 display.
Anyway, I love how BabyLa likes her camera because it's purple. I'm still not sure if she's intentionally playing up to the stereotype, but she's a nice girl so I'll let her off.
My Canon IXUS is very good, not that I know much about cameras but the guys in Jessops recommended getting an IXUS as they upscale the pixels or something like that. Plus, my camera is purple :D
I'm guessing by upscale he means the silly interpolation rubbish that cameras do nowadays to provide an effective resolution that's far greater than the resolution the CCD in the camera can provide. Most cameras do seem to use decent algorithms, but there's no reason why you couldn't use a graphics package on the RAW image to get exactly the same effect. I'd much prefer to take photos at a native resolution (or perhaps lower, interpolation to create a lower resolution image doesn't typically look bad, as it's not trying to create additional information out of nowehere).
I'm a big fan of native resolutions (I hate that my dad runs the 1280x1024 monitor at 1024x768), so it annoys me that most HDTV screens are a weird 1366x768 resolution. Considering that computers monitors tend to run at certain resolutions (e.g. 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1280x720, 1280x800, 1600x1200, 1680x1050 - a bit weird I know - 1920x1200, 2560x1600), and that HDTV comes in two resolutions (1920x1080 and 1280x720), it seems strange to pick a fairly random resolution. If/when I buy a new HDTV screen, I'll probably go for one of the 1080p models, with a native 1920x1080 display.
Anyway, I love how BabyLa likes her camera because it's purple. I'm still not sure if she's intentionally playing up to the stereotype, but she's a nice girl so I'll let her off.
Fab - Friday 5th January, 2007 16:23 Yep 1366x768 (my Samsung) is a bit wierd to start with, but you soon get used to it. A lot of HDs come as 1280x720 which stikes me as a avoid at all costs area.
There's nothing wrong with 1280x720, it's one of the two HDTV resolutions and most widescreen monitors support it (my Dell 20" does). The only thing I've seen that's 1366x768 are widescreen TVs. I'd rather get a screen that'll show 720p natively, than one that needs to be upscaled slightly.
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All digital cameras do some form of interpolation, normally between colour channels. It's not actually such a terrible thing...
I don't mind "some form of interpolation", in fact most cameras take photos at the maximum resolution and then downsize them to the chosen resolution to create a better image, but don't you think it's a bit extreme when manufacturers have a native resolution of 6.3-megapixels producing an in-camera interpolation of 12.3-megapixels? Or a 3.1 million pixel SuperCCD sensor, capable of producing a 6.2-megapixel image? You're talking double the resolution!
Interpolated images are generally softer, when you resize them to make them larger they can get noisy, and the interpolated image from the camera offers little to no improvement over what can usually be obtained from the interpolation function of a decent image editor; the only reason they can potentially look better is because of the JPEG compression that most users typically go for (so they can fit at least 3x the number of photos onto the memory card, compared to RAW).
Interpolated images are generally softer, when you resize them to make them larger they can get noisy, and the interpolated image from the camera offers little to no improvement over what can usually be obtained from the interpolation function of a decent image editor; the only reason they can potentially look better is because of the JPEG compression that most users typically go for (so they can fit at least 3x the number of photos onto the memory card, compared to RAW).