>>But Mark Hammons is right -- what we REALLY need is a digital OM. Olympus
>>makes all those nice OM lenses; Olympus is committed to digital
technology;
>>so why not?
One of the few times in my life I was ever told I was right. :-)
>>Cynical answer: Because digital users insist on autofocus. They want a
>>totally-automated, brain-free-operation camera.
>>
>>Response to that: So make it autofocus! It should be easy to move the
CCD
>>forward or backward to focus, much easier than the way Contax moves the
film
>>plane in one of their cameras.
Good idea, I hadn't thought of that!!
>>Michael A. Covington / AI Center / The University of Georgia
>>http://www.ai.uga.edu/~mc http://www.mindspring.com/~covington <><
>>
>Why would you build a camera with CCD to take superb OM lenses when cheap
>zooms on point and shoot digital cameras exceed the image quality that can
>be delivered by a current commercially available CCD?
>
>Winsor
>
First of all, it seems "Megapixel" (1024x768, 1280x1024) CCDs are already in
mainstream production and price range. If you want to maintain the 3 by 2
aspect ratio of 35mm film, then you would need a 1500x1000 or so, which
I assume is easily within the same price range.
The idea would be to introduce an OM digital body with a megapixel class CCD
to begin with. Then, as higher resolution CCD's became available, they
would
be used ( maybe his would result in a new body number). Another neat thing
would be if Olympus would offer to retrofit new CCD's and associated
electronics
into older versions of the OM Digital body. I would think within a short
time we
would be up to 2400x1600 and then 3000x2000.
If you use the criteria of the Leica S1 I mentioned in my original message,
you would
be at lens-limited resolutions when you got to 5100x3400 pixels. This
assumed Zuiko lenses have the same sharpness and MTF as Leica lenses
which I'm sure at least they are very close. It might be several years down
the
road, however, before a 17 Megapixel CCD was down to consumer prices
Why do it at all? For the same reason a film-based SLR has advantages over
a film-based P&S --- much much greater versatility with interchangeable
lenses,
flashes and all that.
And by the way, my understanding is that most digital P&S cameras of recent
make do have lenses that could be improved upon -- even for their megapixel
class CCD's. That is why the Nikon Coolpix 900 has a Nikkor lens -- the
first
Nikon P&S with a lens Nikon deems suitable to be called a "Nikkor".
Mark Hammons
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