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Electronics: Digital Photography Comes Of Age
Thursday, 2005 March 17 - 12:40 am
Kodak now has 16, 18, and 22 megapixel CCD sensors for digital photography.

I had no idea we had progressed so far in the megapixel department.

Back when digital cameras were first being introduced, the best ones had 640x480 resolution... that equates to 0.3 megapixels. (I shouldn't even have to say this, but of course, Apple was one of the pioneers in this market, with its QuickTake 100 camera. That was eleven years ago.) In those days, photography buffs scoffed at the notion that digital photography could replace conventional film photography. They calculated that 35mm film had the equivalent of 20 megapixel resolution, when you took the film grain into account. It was inconceivable that we would be able to manufacture a device that had electronic elements comparable to the size of silver iodide molecules.

Well, guess what. We've reached that mark. In a decade of digital photography, we have made a 70-fold improvement in image quality.

My trusty four-megapixel Canon PowerShot G2 already produces pictures with way more detail than I need. With a 22 megapixel image, one could make a 12"x20" picture at 300 dpi; that's good enough for professional magazine photography, isn't it? One could make a large poster (4'x7') at 72 dpi. Yow.

It's only a matter of time before film cameras are gone altogether. The expense and inconvenience of film processing is just too high, and digital photography just keeps getting cheaper and easier.

We've already seen music go completely digital; cassette players and vinyl record players are utterly obsolete. Television and consumer video is headed that way, with our DVDs and our DVRs. What else do we have that's currently analog but could be rendered digitally? Taste? Smell? Touch?

Imagine putting an electronic gizmo in your mouth and having it reproduce the taste, smell, and texture of chicken wings. Zero calories. It will be a weight-loss revolution. Maybe I should go ahead and apply for the patent now.
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Posted by Ken in: techwatch

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