2010-10-04

#025, Ketchup

It's been fourteen photos since I posted an image captured with a digital camera.

The little digital GH1, fitted with the Zeiss 4/85, has done a good job under adverse conditions. But I've been thinking a lot about image quality and technical fidelity recently, and this image isn't up to my usual standards. The horizontal bands across the image come from amplifying the digital signal too much - iso1600 - and don't look like anything that occurs in nature.

Back when digital was taking over from film, there was a lot of forum-angst over how many megapixels are needed for 'film quality'. But the arguments would revolve around capturing fine detail, which become visible as an image is enlarged. I'm insulated from the debate by virtue of not caring, then or now, but it still seems misguided. It's like comparing the sound quality of a vinyl record to a compact disk by asking how loudly they can be played.

(But to be fair, this image would be comparing an LP to an overly-compressed MP3 - no contest, in my opinion.)

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I have broken the links to hundreds and hundreds of photos, which will take a long time to repair. The workaround is to replace "photo.matthewpiers" in the link URL with "matthewpiers.smugmug". Awkward, but only temporary.

This is happening because I have revamped matthewpiers dot com. More of what I write and photograph will be going there, so check it out as well.

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