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From that page:

Invention Disclosure: This patentable and novel process is first published December 21st, 2005. Feel free to use this technique today for your own photography, but camera designers should contact me before implementing it in firmware. Thanks!

Perhaps the guy should credit the people who had the idea before him. And not only that has a much more profund understanding of what is actually going on. I recommend reading the Expose (to the) Right and the Understanding Histograms articles. Short story is that if you only underexpose the image then you will lose detail in the image.

Furthermore, the entire underexpose and push in Photoshop idea was not created a month ago.

On second though, this is the guy that compared the 20D to the D70 and concluded that the extra 2Mpx in the 20D was useless but that the faster flash-sync of the 70D is absolutely vital (1/250 vs 1/500). Google him and you'll find quite a few humorous threads discussion his ego.

That said, this advice is basically sound. Just as long as you know that there are trade-offs. When comparing digital and analog the import part is to understand that analog handles overexposure better, and digital handles underexposure better.

From that page:

Invention Disclosure: This patentable and novel process is first published December 21st, 2005. Feel free to use this technique today for your own photography, but camera designers should contact me before implementing it in firmware. Thanks!

Perhaps the guy should credit the people who had the idea before him. And not only that has a much more profund understanding of what is actually going on. I recommend reading the Expose (to the) Right and the Understanding Histograms articles. Short story is that if you only underexpose the image then you will lose detail in the image.

Furthermore, the entire underexpose and push in Photoshop idea was not created a month ago.

On second though, this is the guy that compared the 20D to the D70 and concluded that the extra 2Mpx in the 20D was useless but that the faster flash-sync of the 70D is absolutely vital (1/250 vs 1/500). Google him and you'll find quite a few humorous threads discussion his ego.

That said, this advice is basically sound. Just as long as you know that there are trade-offs. When comparing digital and analog the import part is to understand that analog handles overexposure better, and digital handles underexposure better.

I agree with most of what you said here, except for the thing about "ideal conditions"...there is no way to get "ideal conditions" with film...you're always going to have a high amount of grain in the image...and as such, the image quality will always fall below that 24MP mark...

Now, as for the validity of his claims, take a look at some of the links at the bottom of the page...specifically this one which explains that at 16MP, digital cameras actually get into the medium format range...or this one that deosn't try and come up with some arbitrary value for MegaPixels and actually gives a comparison of the different images...or this one which uses a figure closer to your figure (21.4MP) for film that finds the D60 (6MP) is about the same quality as 35MM...there's more, but I'll let you find the rest...

This just isn't true. I've switched to digital as well, but the resolution of 35mm film is roughly 24 megapixels. This is still 3x the resolution of the best consumer digicams.

First of all, we're talking about DSLRs, not digicams. Canon's 1Ds MkII is over 16MP, and it's over a year old.

Second, most calculations of 35mm film's resolution, like that one you quote, are purely theoretical. Lots of assumptions have to be made when comparing the grain on film to the sensor sites on a chip, but what really matters is how the final image looks. And for several years now, DSLRs have surpassed 35mm film in image quality and resolution. For example, see this Luminous Landscape article comparing the original Canon 1Ds to the Canon 1V and Pentax 645. The DSLR yields an obviously superior image to film, regardless of the theoretical extra information the film may contain.

Note that the 1Ds is several years old, and has since been surpassed by the second-generation 1Ds-MkII. Even my own camera, the 5D, is pretty far beyond the reach of a 35mm film camera in terms of image quality. (Note: I use Canon equipment so that's all I've referenced, but similarly Nikon's D2X outperforms 35mm film cameras).

NiCads work great in the cold anyway - you could use them if you happen to find the 15 grand necessary to visit the Antarctic under your sofa. Of course, you'll be going by (and living out of a) ship when you DO go, and it'll have plenty of juice for your Li-Ion batts to charge daily anyway.

Read here:-

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/locations/antarc tic-archive.shtml

Yes, digital is faster, and the wave of the future, etc., etc., but there are some areas where film cameras still have an edge. In particular, range of sensitivity: you can load ISO 50 slide film, or ISO 1600 negative film (but of course it's a bit grainier as you go up in ISO).

Modern digital SLRs have ISO ranges from 50-3200, and they beat 35mm film in terms of quality no matter what ISO you choose across that range. In particular, digital is a lot better than 35mm film at high ISO settings.

My favorite has to be shooting with Velvia slide film.

Look at these Velvia sky images scanned at 3200 dpi (about 15 Mpixel); if I saw that degree of noise in my digital camera at ISO 50 or 100, I'd send it to the repair shop.

Yes, digital could do it too, but the body alone would've been above $1300; I'd rather spend that on a lens.

If you use your camera seriously, the cost of film and development alone will quickly negate any cost advantage of the film camera. Film has become an expensive oddity compared to digital. And, frankly, a good digital P&S will beat your 35mm film camera in image quality in most cases.

Here's another page that goes into the nitty-gritty a little more.

"(the one in my early 60's Rolleicord makes it easily beat any digital camera that costs less than a car --- in all aspects of image quality)"

BULLSHIT.

I'm ok if you are saying a Rolleiflex beats the ass of the digital era, but there is NO WAY a rolleicord could do such a thing.
Rolleicord are crappy cameras, they got some attention because of the name Rollei, that's all. That's not a true Rollei state-of-the-art camera.
More on the digital versus argentic film here :
http://luminous-landscape.com/essays/clumps.shtml

A good medium format or large format can beat consumer DSLR, OK. No way a rolleicord can do this. No way can do any 24*36 SLR that don't cost a car also.
The cheapest way to get the best quality available for the consumer is to use an old large format camera. A 1500 $ large format camera can beat a 15 000 $ Hasselblad ensemble or a costly digital back.

Oh and i think when he's saying Schneider Kreuznach sucks he means just the ones in Kodak. Because that's not a true Schneider, just like Zeiss in Sony cameras are just label, not true Zeiss optic, neither is the Leica in Panasonic.

I saw this article about a week back. I am quite sure that this will never see a practical application ... They take a 16MP input image to produce a 0.08MP output image!!! They are using a $15000 camera system to produce images one quarter the size of VGA!!! Say what you want, but there are better ways to improve DOF.

They reduce resolution by a factor of 180, but only improve depth-of-field by a factor 7. This is particularly silly because the only reason they have a bad depth-of-field is because they are using a huge expensive sensor. If they would switch to a small cheap sensor like you find in any cheap digicam (1/1.8"), they would get the same improvement, and save $14800.

The light-performace of this small sensor would be just as good as their large one - if you use the same huge pixels that they do (to produce a 0.08MP image), you will get the same low light performance.

If you want more details on why this idea has no use, check out this thread:
http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?show topic=9354

Interesting article, no practical application.

High Dynamic Range is also a useful tool in photography, especially for digital photographers who find that the useful dynamic range of a digital camera is less than that of an equivalent film camera. Multiple-exposure bracketing can be combined with the use of special processing software in order to yield images that would be difficult to obtain with a digital camera, or sometimes even a film camera.

Photoshop CS2 includes this technology out of the box (Photoshop CS2 HDR) -- in the demo page, notice that the sky is properly exposed as well as the vegetation on the hill in the foreground; this would be impossible to capture with many cameras. As the article linked by the original post states,

"HDR, or High Dynamic Range, is ... designed to emulate ... lighting to closely mirror the changes we see in the real world."

And indeed that's what the photographic equivalent does. Unlike a camera, our eyes can properly "expose" the ground as well as they can the sky in the same scene. In fact, this is mentioned on pages 2 and 3 of the linked article in the original post.

More:

HDR - High Dynamic Range Compression - a Photoshop plugin

The Future of Digital Imaging - High Dynamic Range Photography (HDR)

Aizu University's Atrium High Dynamic Range Source Images

High dynamic range imaging - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stitched HDRI

If you would like to try this yourself, many digital cameras have a bracketing feature. I'd suggest at least five exposures, separated by one half stop or one full stop. However, it does not work well for moving objects since there will be a short amount of time that elapses between exposures.

Here is my first attempt:

High Dynamic Range Candy Corn

This particular shot was taken with a Canon EOS 1Ds MkII camera and manual bracketing, although I've made other successfull attempts with the bracketing feature of my Nikon D70.

Really, I had always thought 16MP was the technical limitation of 35mm...and the effecive range goes further down the scale...plus, ISO 50 is only good for still subjects, for motion you need something closer to ISO 400 which shows even more grain...

Of course, as far as digital medium format cameras go...there's the Hassleblad H1D and here's a new 39MP camera back...which according to this table is somewhere around double the "Apparent Image Quality"...now even if you don't belive this guys calculations (which seem to hold true in the field, Medium Format ISO 50 only equates to about 50MP...which means a 39MP camera is definately getting into Medium Format quality...

The D2X is nice, but I think we should save the title of "Holy Grail" for another camera. And it's not a Canon.

I'd choose the Contax 645 medium format film camera with a 39 megapixel digital back.

check this sucker out:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/ contax645.shtml
http://www.phaseone.com/Content/p1digitalbacks/Hot news/Ultimate%20range.aspx

A different analysis on the same subject can be found at http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/shootout .shtml. The conclusion is that there isn't much benefit either way.

Such an animal does exist... or at least did exist. Check out the Kodak DCS 760M, which is now discontinued. It was a monochrome-only B&W professional digital SLR. While it's not 32-bit, it did yield fantastic images.

Mike

No DSLR uses multiple CDDs (AFAIK). You'll get rather a good B&W by just taking the green channel.

Finally film resolution is always quoted for some tiny contrast ratio (20%? something like that). Digital resolution is at 100% contrast ratio so it can actually look sharper even when the lpi is lower.

If anyone's not seen it, this DSLR vs medium format shootout from a few years ago has some interesting stuff in. Has a film person made a rebuttal? I'd be interested to see.

here's the page that OpenRAW points to, to describe RAW:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/unders tanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml

Here is a more balanced view. There are pros and cons to both methods but the bottom line is that if you shoot anything other than RAW, you're losing information. Many people wouldn't care about that but that's not really the point. A RAW file is like a negative. It can be reprocessed down the road with different parameters. Once it's been converted to a jpeg, all you can do is work with the information you have.

cheers,

Kris

Unfortunately, no standalone raw processors can support Nikon's encrypted format

Heh, well said - it's quite surprising how many crap comments there are on this story, you'd think more pro photographers/designers (or their IT techs) would chip in with some decent advise on colour workflow and calibrating to a specific target. Though, as is usual on Ask Slashdot, the submitter didn't provide many details, so it's harder to give him specific information to help him find a solution.

With regards to colorimeters -- these'll all allow you to calibrate to a "baseline" rather than the best that each device can display -- I've got a Spyder (mk.1) and it's not too bad, though the new ones look much better (increased sensitivity) - though no-one's mentioned so far that the software that comes with these (PhotoCal or OptiCal) requires a seperate licence for each machine they're installed on, so at 30-40 monitors it's not going to be as cheap as it first appears. The GretagMacBeth stuff seems like another good choice (e.g. the Eye-One), as do the Monaco/X-Rite calibration tools, but they're more expensive. Ideally you go for a solution that's not just limited to calibrating screens, but can do printers as well, but again it'll cost more (it's usually worth it though - you might as well do the entire loop while you're at it). Or, if he's really serious about it, standardise on the same model of monitor, such as the Sony Artisan (with built-in calibration that actually adjusts the CRT guns, rather than just generate a profile).

Like another poster said, lighting's also an issue, too; hooding the monitors to minimise reflections is usually a good idea, and standardising on specific lighting such as Just Normlicht fluorescent tubes or Solux halogen bulbs (fed with a specific regulated voltage) helps immensely.

The Hassleblad/Fuji X-Pan is probably the best of these. It is really cool because you can flip between the usual 2:3 and panoramic aspect ratios between photos and it moves the film with the motor to compensate!

Thanks for the information--actually from the article. There is a detailed review of the epson r800 at the luminous landscape, a good place to find tutorials on photoshop by the way. Some of these tutorials have been translated to GIMP by the GIMP Guru.

An Epson 2200 or Canon S9000 is going to set you back about $500. Good inks for the Epson (the Ultrachrome inks) cost another $90.00 (for all colors), and good paper (archive quality) goes for about $0.50 / sheet. With Epson, I get longevity at the cost of image "punch". With Canon, I get faster, quieter prints and stronger colors, but they fade faster. If I go with a cheaper Epson (say, the 2000), I have to deal with terrible metamerism, a cheaper Canon I get terrible B&W. Each print is going to cost about $1.50 a page at best. This doens't factor in the cost of the printer itself.

Or, I can custom profile my photos for specific machine output (using Dry Creek's wonderful database), take my photos to CostCo/Sam's Club/Walgreens, where they print on Fuji Frontier's, pay $0.18 for a 4x6, get better color and more longevity.

Pretty simple decision to me.

An Epson 2200 or Canon S9000 is going to set you back about $500. Good inks for the Epson (the Ultrachrome inks) cost another $90.00 (for all colors), and good paper (archive quality) goes for about $0.50 / sheet. With Epson, I get longevity at the cost of image "punch". With Canon, I get faster, quieter prints and stronger colors, but they fade faster. If I go with a cheaper Epson (say, the 2000), I have to deal with terrible metamerism, a cheaper Canon I get terrible B&W. Each print is going to cost about $1.50 a page at best. This doens't factor in the cost of the printer itself.

Or, I can custom profile my photos for specific machine output (using Dry Creek's wonderful database), take my photos to CostCo/Sam's Club/Walgreens, where they print on Fuji Frontier's, pay $0.18 for a 4x6, get better color and more longevity.

Pretty simple decision to me.

Why does every digital camera have a crappy motor-driven zoom? Aren't there others out there that would prefer a normal (no-zoom) lens? Isn't a motor-driven zoom totally useless?

Why would I want a no-zoom lens on a compact digicam? That would be like having a prime lens on an SLR that can't be removed and exchanged for a different focal length. Maybe what you meant was a manual zoom? A manual zoom can certainly be faster and more precise than a zoom driven by buttons.

You might want to look at the Minolta DiMAGE A2 or A200. The DiMAGE series is one of the few non-SLR cameras with a manual zoom lens. Also has a 2/3" 8MP sensor, fairly large for a digicam. It will also do macro at the telephoto end (200mm equiv.) as close as 5 inches, so it's decent for macro photography alone and even better with some close-up adapters. Most digicams will only do macro at the wide end. I bought an A2 because this guy said things like this about it:

"I'm happy to say that at Minolta the design engineers appear not only to be photographers, but enthusiastic ones at that. Controls on the A2 are well placed and easy to use. Unusual for a digital camera, almost every function can be controlled without going through menus on the rear LCD."

Minolta are also the ones that integrated their "Anti-Shake[tm]" image stabilization into the body of their recent cameras (A1, A2, A200, Z3, 7D), thus when they created their first SLR it turned every Minolta AF-compatible lens made in the last 20 years into an inexpensive image stablized lens. Pretty cool, that. I don't think Minolta is really getting the recognition it deserves for some of the technology they've employed over the years. Here's a review of the very nice Minolta Maxxum 7D digital SLR.

They also have one of the nicest compact ultra-zooms out there, the Dimage Z3, with 12x zoom, 4MP and Anti-Shake. It compares quite favorably with other ultra-zooms like the Olympus 7xx series and the Panasonic DMC-FZ10/15/20.

Why does every digital camera have a crappy motor-driven zoom? Aren't there others out there that would prefer a normal (no-zoom) lens? Isn't a motor-driven zoom totally useless?

Why would I want a no-zoom lens on a compact digicam? That would be like having a prime lens on an SLR that can't be removed and exchanged for a different focal length. Maybe what you meant was a manual zoom? A manual zoom can certainly be faster and more precise than a zoom driven by buttons.

You might want to look at the Minolta DiMAGE A2 or A200. The DiMAGE series is one of the few non-SLR cameras with a manual zoom lens. Also has a 2/3" 8MP sensor, fairly large for a digicam. It will also do macro at the telephoto end (200mm equiv.) as close as 5 inches, so it's decent for macro photography alone and even better with some close-up adapters. Most digicams will only do macro at the wide end. I bought an A2 because this guy said things like this about it:

"I'm happy to say that at Minolta the design engineers appear not only to be photographers, but enthusiastic ones at that. Controls on the A2 are well placed and easy to use. Unusual for a digital camera, almost every function can be controlled without going through menus on the rear LCD."

Minolta are also the ones that integrated their "Anti-Shake[tm]" image stabilization into the body of their recent cameras (A1, A2, A200, Z3, 7D), thus when they created their first SLR it turned every Minolta AF-compatible lens made in the last 20 years into an inexpensive image stablized lens. Pretty cool, that. I don't think Minolta is really getting the recognition it deserves for some of the technology they've employed over the years. Here's a review of the very nice Minolta Maxxum 7D digital SLR.

They also have one of the nicest compact ultra-zooms out there, the Dimage Z3, with 12x zoom, 4MP and Anti-Shake. It compares quite favorably with other ultra-zooms like the Olympus 7xx series and the Panasonic DMC-FZ10/15/20.

Besides Bob Atkins, here is another link that I've used in the past that explains this pretty well: Photo Tidbits Also here is a bonus link to Luminous Landscape where they have a good overview of "bokeh", the quality of that out-of-focus effect: Luminous Landscape - Bokeh

The EOS 20D comes close, but the D70 and Digital Rebel (aka 300D IIRC), are crippled compared to a higher-end ($2000+) pro slr. The amount of shots captured per second, frame buffer, noise are far closer to that prosumer "all-in-one" solution than a Nikon D2X.

You made some ok, somewhat well informed points until you got here. You are flat out wrong.

First of all lenses cost a lot yes, but they also hold their value pretty well if you want to resell them. Lets see what your prosumer camera is worth in 2 years. Also there are off brands such as Sigma that make good lenses so you are not stuck with just Canon or Nikon if you buy one of their bodies.

The Canon 20D takes 5 frames per second for 5 seconds, it is very impressive.

The point where you are flat out wrong is with the Noise. I can speak for the Canon DR and 20D from personal experience and in comparison with prosumer cameras they are noise free. The reason I switched from my G2 to the SLRs was because of the noise issue. Check out DR review and look at the comparisons on noise at different ISOs vs prosumer cameras it is amazing.

And as for DSLRs not being there yet, they are way past "there" the Canon 1Ds is superior to 120mm medium format film, let alone the 1Ds Mark II. Face it except for some artists and a few hold outs film is dead.

Man, that Epson R-D1 sounds rad.

Here's some info about the difference between RAW and JPEG files at Luminous Landscape.

This is one big thing Photoshop has over GIMP at the moment for professional photography, although even Photoshop doesn't handle them as well as 8bit images yet. If I get a camera soon that has RAW output this could seriously change my views on what OS I use for my photography (100% Linux and WINE at the moment).

Here's a review of the original 1Ds from luminous-landscape. To sum it up (it's rather lengthy), the author favorably compares the 1Ds to medium format film.

The camera doesn't magically convert/multiply a 100mm lens into a 160mm lens (on a 1.6 crop factor camera) -- the lens is the same, the sensor is smaller.

Across different cameras, the lens is still projecting the same image based on whatever lens size, but depending on the size of the sensor, not all of it is getting captured (i.e. some of the full image is being cropped out)..

See here --
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/unders tanding-series/dslr-mag.shtml
Scroll a little more than half-way down and look at the pic of the bird with the blue and red boxes.

If you squeeze 50 megapixels on a 5mm CMOS, there's still gonna be a crop factor because the 5mm CMOS is a lot smaller than the film negatives these lenses were originally intended for..

Yes, it was badly worded. As others have mentioned, the original 1Ds was full-frame as well. The big thing about this one is the 16.7 MP resolution, which if I'm not mistaken beats medium format cameras for some applications (i.e. especially for low-light photography, and if you're not making a very large print).

Good comparison between medium format and the old 1Ds here.

This is a great camera! I want one, but one thing wrong with the story submission. This is not recent news, many people have gone over this before, but a 6MP sensor is enough to get you better then 35mm film.

The 16.7MP of this camera is getting very close to medium format (if not already there).

Again awesome camera!

see
not file
like-it-is
shootout
This guy is one of the best. If you don't believe me check out dpreview or google

This is a great camera! I want one, but one thing wrong with the story submission. This is not recent news, many people have gone over this before, but a 6MP sensor is enough to get you better then 35mm film.

The 16.7MP of this camera is getting very close to medium format (if not already there).

Again awesome camera!

see
not file
like-it-is
shootout
This guy is one of the best. If you don't believe me check out dpreview or google

This is a great camera! I want one, but one thing wrong with the story submission. This is not recent news, many people have gone over this before, but a 6MP sensor is enough to get you better then 35mm film.

The 16.7MP of this camera is getting very close to medium format (if not already there).

Again awesome camera!

see
not file
like-it-is
shootout
This guy is one of the best. If you don't believe me check out dpreview or google

Apparently one of the best price-performance ones at the moment is the Sony Artisan (unless you've got serious money to spend, that is). There's a review over at Luminous Landscape. Wish I had a spare $1800, my (Spyder-calibrated) Trinitron is starting to annoy me: the blacks are a bit undefined, even with good desk lighting (Solux bulbs) and a hood :(

Some info from 3 reputable sites:
http://www.photo.net/equipment/digital/sensorsize/
http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/key=Pixel_Quality
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/counting1 .shtml

As for lens quality, it ought to be obvious that a better lens will provide better image quality. If it's not, go here, click on a couple lenses, and look at their MTF chart. If you're not familiar with how to read an MTF chart, here's the low-down: a better lens has all the lines closer to the top of the chart (for a more detailed explanation, check out Canon's glossary). Pick a couple lenses of comparable focal length, look at their MTF chart, and then compare the price. For instance, look at the 80-200mm f/4-5.6 compared with the 70-200mm f/4L or f/2.8L. The 80-200mm is currently going for $120. The 70-200mm f/2.8L is currently going for a little over $1100. FYI, lenses with an "L" in the name are their pro series. There's a lot more to a lens than just its ability to resolve detail and show contrast, of course -- look here for more info on why pro lenses are so much more expensive (and better) than consumer-grade lenses. And by "consumer grade" I'm not even getting close to the level of a camera phone lens.

In all seriousness, the really odd bit about this article is that the author doesn't seem to know his audience . . . he writes about the most basic of features at a very high level for the novice (like metering, b&w, & sepia features), but then spends an inordinate amount of time describing camera raw files . . . which would be more appropriate for the more advanced user. Then he goes on do describe digital SLR features which are pro and pro-sumer level cameras. But when the author writes about advanced features, he writes about them in a very condscending way . . . like he is coddling a newbie.

I would guess that the author wrote the article with the entire audience in mind (from beginner to pro), but because of this, the author has created a mediocre article that is not very useful for anyone. It's like building the perfect automobile for everyone, without regard to the needs of specific end consumers . . . you wind up with a single product that is not very good for anyone.

Beginners would do better to read tutorials on Cnet etc. and advanced users would find more benefit at sites like luminous landscape

The author claims that he will write reviews next . . . Based on the quality of this article, I would read these with caution. I'd suggest the reviews at DPReview instead.

The books about digital photography seem to assume you can't even take an autofocused picture with flash without help

Heh. I think a lot of people do have a problem doing even that, at least until they grasp the fact that they have to press the shutter down halfway and wait for the camera to focus before taking the picture.

I can recommend a good book that I've been borrowing from the local library for the past few weeks: Rick Sammon's Complete Guide to Digital Photography: 107 Lessons on Taking, Making, Editing, Storing, Printing, and Sharing Better Digital Images. It is chock full of excellent examples of everything you're looking for. The printing is high quality so you can actually see the differences in pictures when he's showing what different settings will do. Every example has accompanying explanations so you know how and why he changed something to improve his pictures. There are lots of fun exploratory ideas throughout the book.

It's really one of the best digital photography books I've seen, and would serve as an excellent introductory book for anyone just getting into digital photography, or someone transitioning from film photography, or for anyone who's been at it for a while and wants to get better. There's also a lot of hands-on and very well explained Photoshop projects for enhancing or playing with your digital images.

This book is so fun and informative that I'm thinking of actually buying it, and I can't remember the last time I payed money for a book that wasn't work-related instead of just checking out websites (which I still do, of course, and there are some damn good photography websites out there). The cover price is $60 but as you can see it's available on Amazon for around $30. I feel it will be a good investment.

I've seen a few posters here who seem to think this stuff has all been done before with film, but there are some definite differences between film and digital that you will want to understand. For one thing the dynamic range of digital sensors doesn't come close to film yet, which makes photographing high-contrast scenes difficult (scenes where there are both really bright things and dark things in the picture). In turn, film never came close to the dynamic range of the human retina. There will be many cases where you will be disappointed if you aren't aware of this potential problem and know how to compensate for it. Even if you understood the problem with film, digital will have new gotchas.

There are also issues with file formats (RAW, TIFF, or JPEG?). Each choice will slightly (or strongly) affect the resulting photos. If you actually want to get into this stuff beyond point-and-shoot, it is helpful to have an understanding of how all the "old" film rules translate into the digital camera world, including how the affect of different lenses will be different due to the size of the sensor in the camera compared to the size of "standard" 35mm film. Etcetera.

I mentioned there are some good websites, so I should probably throw in a few here:

Some EXCELLENT in-depth technical articles here. I like the ones that explain why digital SLRs are better even though most only have 3MP sensors (hint: the sensors are bigger so each pixel can gather more light, meaning more signal and less noise than in a consumer chip and thus cleaner pictures and greater ISO ranges). I was stumped by that for a good long while. Couldn't understand why a 3MP DSLR could command 4-12 times the price of my 3MP compact. Lenses are important, sure, but the most important thing in digital cameras is the characteristics of the sensor.
The learning section at DPReview. Good technical and non-technical stuff here.

This is a bit old now, but here's a piece comparing the 1Ds to drum scanned medium format film. http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/shootout .shtml. If an 11 MP digital beats medium format, a 6 MP digital is going to look pretty good next to 35mm.

Lets try that again!

22 mega pixel back

There is something similar to this. You can buy digital film backs for medium format cameras that essentially is the film. Although nothing compared to this camera the resolution is much better then 35mm.

Back in October 2002 Slashdot asked Digital Camera Passing Quality of Film? which referenced a field report from Luminous Landscape. Now that was a great article, full of technical info. (The Canon 1DS 11-megapixel camera surpassed 35mm film.) Why is Slashdot calling attention to an informationally empty piece like Beyond Megapixels?

Back in October 2002 Slashdot asked Digital Camera Passing Quality of Film? which referenced a field report from Luminous Landscape. Now that was a great article, full of technical info. (The Canon 1DS 11-megapixel camera surpassed 35mm film.) Why is Slashdot calling attention to an informationally empty piece like Beyond Megapixels?

The problem with focusing solely on pixel count has been very eloquently explained by Michael over at www.luminous-landscape.com in three separate editorials.

He's been reviewing the current crop of 8MP digital cameras and writing about their usability and ability to be a tool for digital photographers. This has resulted in a ton of heat from brand afficionados as he often knocks a camera for its usability issues, even though the image quality when viewed at 100% on a screen might be better than another camera. There's much more to making a good camera than just pixel count!.

The problem with focusing solely on pixel count has been very eloquently explained by Michael over at www.luminous-landscape.com in three separate editorials.

He's been reviewing the current crop of 8MP digital cameras and writing about their usability and ability to be a tool for digital photographers. This has resulted in a ton of heat from brand afficionados as he often knocks a camera for its usability issues, even though the image quality when viewed at 100% on a screen might be better than another camera. There's much more to making a good camera than just pixel count!.

The problem with focusing solely on pixel count has been very eloquently explained by Michael over at www.luminous-landscape.com in three separate editorials.

He's been reviewing the current crop of 8MP digital cameras and writing about their usability and ability to be a tool for digital photographers. This has resulted in a ton of heat from brand afficionados as he often knocks a camera for its usability issues, even though the image quality when viewed at 100% on a screen might be better than another camera. There's much more to making a good camera than just pixel count!.

While I haven't kept up with the firmware upgrades for Kodak's DCS 14n, I was very interested in the camera when it was first announced (Photokina, September,2002). The reviews, comments and first photos made me decide to wait. I ultimately bought a Canon 10D earlier this year.

Even though I own (a very small amount of) Kodak stock. Why? I don't like buying something that's, perhaps, been released too early to meet some deadline, not that that, *ahem* , ever happens in the computer world. I was and still am concerned about Kodak's late entry into digital photography and that they, while a powerhouse for so long in traditional photography, may not be able to catch up.

The best alternatives (or first choice), IMHO, are Canon's 1DS, though it's about $3000 more (or so), or medium format photography with a digital back ($14,000+? for just the back). I went the cheaper route with the 10D ($1500), switching from Nikon (akin to going from all Mac to all Linux perhaps; it's not quite as drastic as going from Mac to PC), and, so far, haven't regretted it.

Michael Reichmann has another comprehensive (albeit not as technical) review here.

Spoken like someone who doesn't really know what he's talking about...

Here's an article comparing the Canon 1Ds to 6x7 medium format film scanned with a $100 per scan drum scanner process.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/shootout .shtml

The result is that they're really close. And then when you consider the fact that 6x7 film is something like 6 times the surface area of a 24mm by 36mm film negative... well, you get the idea.

Interesting page. Here's another comparison where an 11mp digital camera beats medium format film on a drum scanner.