Reply #15: I'm a profesional as well [View All]

I've been involved in digital imaging virtually from day one, and film previous to that and concurrently.

"They also vary in size."

Yes, they do. But there are only a few standards, and I point out below how to figure the size of your chip (it's also part of any camera review, widely available, and published by the manufacturer). Pixel count has NOTHING to do with the size of the chip. If a manufacturing process makes chips in the APS size of 5.0 mp, then that same manufacturing process is going to create a full frame 35mm chip of about 7.5 mp (1.5 times the physical size of the chip).

"more resolution is worthless without more information."

In digital imaging, resolution essentially comes from more pixels, and more pixels is more information.

"Not all pixels are created equal."

No, of course not, but in any given situation, more pixels means more information. Even with two competing, very different technologies, ccd vs cmos, the end results are pixels that, to the end user, are pretty much "equal".

"And a chip of a given size will fit a given number of pixels, period."

I don't know what you're thinking here. There are, in D-SLR's, two sizes of chips essentially, APS, and full frame 35 (with slight variations). I'd always figured that the little point and shoots were APS size as well, but I can also imagine them being smaller (this is fairly easy to figure out, as all manufacturers, including the manufacturer of the 7mp camera we are arguing about, will publish their "35 mm equivalent" information for the lens, all you have to do is divide to find out how much smaller it is than full frame 35). The point being, that even just within the APS chip size format, there have been everything from less than 3mp, to more than 12mp. The same pixel count variation would be true in smaller chip sizes as well. I'm sure there is an upper limit with current chip-making technology, but obviously that isn't what you meant in your above sentence.

Pixel counts vs chip size, in terms of manufacturing ccd's, has been experiencing the same sort of size:information ratio progress that all computer chips do.