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Physical Limits in Digital Photography
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Technology today is approaching or even at the limits of resolution, film speed, and image size imposed by the laws of physics for cameras in the 35mm format or smaller. Further significant improvements in speed or resolution will require the use of larger sensors and cameras.

    Thus today’s equipment is sufficiently powerful to allow a physicist to see directly—without the need for instruments and calculation/interpretations beyond the camera itself and a computer monitor-- the effects of both the photon nature of light and the wave nature of light. A single picture taken at f/22 and ISO 3200 will display uniform unsharpness unrelated to motion blur or focus error and the noise patterns of each primary color as well as overall brightness that reflect the statistical nature of photon detection.

    Currently available products are pushing the limits of what is physically possible in terms of resolution and low-light performance. Therefore a photographer must relearn how to make choices about what size of camera to use for what assignment, and what tradeoffs to make when shooting concerning aperture and depth of field and concerning film speed versus image quality. Past experience and rules of thumb developed in the film age will give results that are qualitatively and quantitatively different than what digital experience is teaching us.

    http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/guest/physical_limits_long.html

  • 7 Replies sorted by
  • goannagoanna

    Is this some sort of peer-reviewed (and published in an academic journal) paper?

    Or has the writer just decided to foist a whole lot of complicated stuff onto a website in a hurry? I've worked as a science journalist for some time and I'll be buggered if I'll bother slogging through this - without somebody else to broker it all to me. Hey, I'm a layperson. Start talking about quantum physics and I reach for my tinfoil hat!

  • crunchycrunchy

    Simply put, light consists of photons. Number of photons which reach individual "pixel cell" during "shutter speed period" determine noise picked-up by the sensor. That's all. There exists physical limit to the camera noise and we cannot do anything about it including the producers of sensors/cameras, etc. Producers can only add some noise filtering algorithms into the cameras in order to "improve" picture, but if you want pristine picture you would always get some amount of noise. I was asking myself many times before why nobody writes a paper about those limitations. Finally it's here! :-)

    Complicated stuff onto a website in a hurry? I would not say so.

  • kurthkurth

    The author has the credentials so it's comforting to know I won't have to keep buying cameras ad infinitum !

    http://www.nrdc.org/about/staff/david-goldstein

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Human limits

    In past experiments, researchers determined that rods in the eye could pick up a minimum of two to seven photons, but they weren’t quite sure because they couldn’t control the exact number of photons in a flash of light. But now researchers have greater control. In this experiment, volunteers were put in a completely dark room. Researchers flashed exactly 30 photons at their eyes, assuming that only about ten percent of them would reach the rod cells. The volunteers had to guess whether the flash came from the right or the left, even if they didn’t think they could see the light. When flashed with only 30 photons, participants responded correctly more often than not, which led the researchers to conclude that the eye could see a minimum of three photons.

    http://www.popsci.com/human-eye-can-see-individual-particles-light

  • CidCid

    Again: where is the like button for this one ;o)

  • kurthkurth

    @Vitaliy - These "human limits" seems to take alot for granted. And it sounds as if 10% is pretty high, but that would depend on environmental factors and the inverse square law, and considering there's alot of assuming, i.e, the result is the subject guessing whether they saw the flash or not, at least in this article, it's sub-title "exactly three to be exact" seems to be overstating their case. And just think.... these researchers think they can determine the wave/particle controversy by studying the eye/brains reaction to just one photon....makes Heisenberg jealous.

    Maybe this has other farther reaching consequences ...like artificial eyes and transhumanism.

    Thank goodness we've got digital sensors to measure those kinds of things, and not just somebody's eyes, which is introducing a whole different discipline....i.e. psychology, or even worse.... neurology.

  • goannagoanna

    This is heady stuff! Scientists working at this level aren't to be expected to deliver material which is comprehensible to the rest of us. I wanted to get views of his associates or people working in the same field.

    In an attempt to find any peer reviews of this "paper" I searched Google Scholar for any references to this particular David B Goldstein - in vain.

    Back to Northlight Images, then...

    In their section Writing for this Site I found:

    So, you're thinking of writing something? What areas of expertise can you bring to an article that not only makes a good read on the site, but potentially makes people want to find out more about yourself too? Look upon article writing as a way of establishing your expertise in an area.

    Our aim is for the site to host authoritative articles, that get cited elsewhere.

    Well, Goldstein's article is getting quoted elsewhere, on popular websites. This is far from academic peer reviews (and more like that kind of citizen science where everybody's entitled to their own theory of relativity) but almost certainly it will throw up somebody working in Goldstein's field who'll give the public some pointers.

    Until then, or until Goldstein finds a real scientific journal prepared to publish his "paper" I'm personally not considering this one worth my own time.

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