I’ve had a few conversations lately with some photo enthusiasts and fielded some questions from casual snapshooters that have piqued my interest in their concerns to the point I’ve done a bit of research:
- Typical point & shoot digital cameras are built around digital sensors are considerably smaller than 110-film. Do you remember those flat cameras about the size of an ice cream sandwich? They recorded 13 x 17mm images on cartridge film. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an 8×10″ print worth hanging on the wall from such a small negative, even from images made under optimal conditions.
- Most consumer-grade digital SLRs have sensors about 16 x 24mm in size, or roughly the size of a frame of 35mm movie film. Referred to as APS-C, for Advanced Photo System Classic, this was another failed format that mimicked only the the 3:2 aspect ratio of a true 35mm still frame, which measures 24x36mm. Canon’s APS-C sensors measure approximately 14.8 x 22.2mm, while Nikon’s DX sensor measures slightly larger, at 15.7 x 23.6mm.
- Camera manufacturers, who would much rather sell you on megapixels as if that were some measure of picture quality, use an archaic system to describe sensor size, a non-standard ”inch” system, or approximately 1.5 times the length of the diagonal of the sensor. Apparently this is how the image size of early video cameras were expressed, a measure of the outside diameter of the glass envelope of a video camera tube. For example, A Canon PowerShot G9 stuffs 12.1 megapixels onto a 1/1.7″ chip which actually measures a mere 7.6 x 5.7mm in size, only 19.6% the size of a 110 negative.
- Most casual snapshooters set their P&S cameras on the simplest, do-everything-for-you “A” for automatic setting. As a result, sensor sensitivity increases automatically as required to get a good exposure in dim light, even when flash kicks in, automatically, of course. Along with this increase in sensor sensitivity, so goes digital noise, not unlike the hum you would hear from a piece of audio equipment turned up to full volume without any signal input. Even at relatively low increases in sensitivity, the result from a tiny sensor is invariably a snowstorm of digital noise.
Small point & shoots, while marvels of technology, can’t be expected to deliver great results in less-than optimal conditions. the resolution required for email or web display are far lower than what is needed for quality prints larger than 4×6″. Sunny days with a little bit of fill-flash likely will get you great pictures, but move into the shade, or indoors with dim light, and the results will likely be another story. I don’t expect anything that would make a great 8x1o” worth giving as a gift or hanging on a wall from today’s point & shoots, with a sensor 1/16th the size of a 35mm frame, and sometimes the results from even an APS-C sensor, the equivalent of a half-frame 35mm camera like an Olympus Pen F, can leave much to be desired.
