Beyond the megapixel

Wired just released an article on digital camera technology: why megapixels alone are not a good indicator of camera and photograph quality.

For years, resolution was considered the main measure of image quality in digital photos, but continual improvements have only shown up the fallacy: Grainy, blurry and underexposed photos look just as bad at 8 megapixels as they do at 5.

Camera vendors are concentrating on other fields to enhance camera quality:

Low-light shooting

While camera’s used to be limited to a sensitivity of 400 ISO (i.e. almost worthless in night situations), new image processing algorithms and larger sensors allow newer models to go up to 3200 ISO

Flash

Soft-flash (Casio) and i-Flash (Fujifilm) are ways to use a flash without ruining the natural lighting completely.

Zooming further in, or out

By using a right-angle construction within the body of the camera, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1K can get to a 10X optical zoom (35 mm to 350 mm). Kodak uses two 5X zoom lenses to get the same zoom capability

Keeping steady

Image-stabilization technologies, both optical and gyroscopic, avoid blurry photo’s.

Capturing bright and dark

enhancing the dynamic range of the sensors by using e.g. variable pixel size

Protecting shooters from themselves

Find the face in the picture and focus on it, or advise the photographer on how to improve his pictures.

And I would add to that: networking. Kodak, Canon and Nikon already have cameras with built-in Wifi, and for the ‘old’ ones that don’t have it, Eye-Fi might have a solution (via Scoble).

Read the article @ Wired, or dive even deeper in thetechlounge.com

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