About Digital Cameras

The Truth About resolution: "New York Times tech writer David Pogue was recently filming a TV episode on digital cameras for the Discovery network. In the episode Pogue visited several large electronics stores posing as someone who did not know much about digital cameras.

As Pogue points out, clerks were rather frank with him pointing out, for example, that five megapixels is more than enough for prints up to poster size.

Pogue goes on say every time he makes that statement in his columns he is inundated with furious comments from readers challenging the idea that five megapixels is sufficient for poster size prints.

The Test…

So for the Discovery network digital camera episode they conducted a test, a megapixel test.

They enlarged the same photograph to 16 x 20 inches in a professional photo lab, three times.

* One print had 13 megapixel resolution
* One had 8
* One had 5

Same picture - each printed to 16 x 20 inches!

Next Pogue hung the three prints side-by-side in Times Square and asked pedestrians if they could tell the difference."

Only a minority of about five percent had good enough eyes and the technical knowledge to see well enough to spot the difference

The test is flawed because it reviewed perception not quality - just as in music most only like what they know.