How much resolution?

[cmr164]

It is my contention that folks are drinking MPixel koolaid these days.
Certainly I would like to have an EOS-1Ds and probably will one day
but the 2MP DCS520 (EOS-D2000) was a better cam overall than the
3MP EOS-D30 when comparing the feature set. And the 4MP EOS-1D
seems like a better cam than the 6MP EOS-D60 or even the EOS-D10

Here is an example. First with the complete shot and then with a crop
of the eye. You can see me and the university grounds in the girl's
eye. Of course the raw 36 bit image is somewhat better still but the
derived tiff is 12M and that is more than needed to make the point.

http://www.iisc.com/dgrin/Umass99nov23portraitsh_s.jpg (http://www.iisc.com/dgrin/Umass99nov23portraitsh.jpg)

Click on the image above if you are ok with an 800k image or if not
just look below.


http://www.iisc.com/dgrin/Umass99nov23portraitsh_eye.jpg

[gus]

So mate what do i get extra for my money by taking a raw or tiff over a 5 meg shot ? I have read it heaps.

[cmr164]

So mate what do i get extra for my money by taking a raw or tiff over a 5 meg shot ? I have read it heaps.
Well the main diff is that 12bits of RAW GRGB provides a lot more data for interpolation than 8bits of RGB. Another diff is that the larger imager pixels in the lower MP cams have better signal to noise ratios.

Read the writeup on the Mars PanCam imager
http://dev.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/pancam_techwed_040114.html