site: Nat'l Geographic Timeline of Photography

link: here.

The image shown is the first digital camera, ca. 1991. crazy stuff!

Smart Objects: getting to dynamic range

Here, I'm using Smart Objects... I've started with three exposures, 2 stops apart.



I open the first one, and "Open Object" (see previous Smart Objects posts for details...) Then I go to Bridge and select one of the brackets, and go to File>Place>Photoshop. This opens that file, as a Smart Object, into the open file in Photoshop. I do it again, and have all three files there as Smart Object Layers.

Now I can mask them to burn and dodge them... starting off with all the exposure values from my 6-stop exposure bracket range. I have all the control of Layers and Masking, with the ability to go back and edit the RAW source file because of the Smart Object. I can fine-tune the value, the color, the sharpening and the opacity and blending of the Layer, too.

Photomatix Pro: a glimpse

Photomatix Pro is an HDR processing application which, essentially, provides an amped up version of what you get in Photoshop>Automate>Merge to HDR. This screen looks vaguely familiar, except more:



It's a pretty impressive set of controls... I'm showing a tease here.





...based on the work, below, of Maciej Duczynski, there is no doubt that it is powerful.

My question is, is it really the workflow you want? How does the workflow and result compare to working with Smart Objects?

...stay tuned!

site: Maciej Duczynski Photography

KILLER HDR images! Maciej uses Photomatix software for HDR processing.



link: here.

apropos of nothing in particular.

...what can i say? it's been a long week.

HDR processing: down the rabbit hole...

HDR is "high dynamic range", and is a processing method to combine several exposures, of different exposure ranges, to create one file with a gi-normous dynamic range.

The first place I saw this was with Leaf software, very early on... you could take the RAW files in Leaf Capture, and merge them to one HDR file. This was particularly useful when shooting computer or video displays, or shooting interiors with windows.

The problems has been, and continues to be, (as far as I have seen), the lack of control in selecting what highlights, and where, are included, and the lack of a re-editing strategy, that is, you can't go back and change anything after you've made the HDR. Imacon, a little later on, allowed you to select several exposures and process them to one file, in layers to work with in Photoshop... a much more practical approach from where I sit. Using masks and layers I could select what and how much of an area or value I wanted to include in a shot.

Then came the Smart Objects. No surprise there, huh? If I take several exposures and build them into my layers and mask them, I have all the dynamic range I can stand, plus, the so-called "non-destructive editing" workflow. Where all the HDR processors I have seen make one huge file, in ultra-high bit depth, that you can use as a source for all your edits, the Smart Object workflow lets me use the same workflow I'm using for everything else... Smart Objects, Layers, Masks, and build in every bit of detail I want, in just the way I want to...

Later on I'm going to show what I mean... look for an HDR to Smart Object workflow comparison coming soon.

Compact Cameras that shoot RAW

Canon:
PowerShot 600
PowerShot A5
PowerShot A50
PowerShot Pro 1
PowerShot S30
PowerShot S40
PowerShot S45
PowerShot S50
PowerShot S60
PowerShot S70
PowerShot G1
PowerShot G2
PowerShot G3
PowerShot G5
PowerShot G6
PowerShot G9
PowerShot Pro70
PowerShot Pro90 IS

Nikon:
Coolpix 5000
Coolpix 5400
Coolpix 5700
Coolpix 8400
Coolpix 8700
Coolpix 8800

Fuji:
FinePix E900
FinePix F700
FinePix IS-1
FinePix S100 FS
FinePix S20 Pro
FinePix S5000 Z
FinePix S5200/5600
FinePix S6000fd/S6500fd
FinePix S7000 Z
FinePix S9000/9500
FinePix S9100/9600

Olympus:
EVOLT E-300
EVOLT E 330
EVOLT E-400
EVOLT E-500
EVOLT E-510
C-5050 Zoom
C-5060 Zoom
C-7070 Wide Zoom
C-8080 Wide Zoom
SP-310
SP-320
SP-350
SP-570 UZ
E-410
SP-500UZ
SP-510 UZ
SP-550 UZ
SP-560 UZ

Leica:
D-Lux 2
D-Lux 3
Digilux 2
Digilux 3

Panasonic:
DMC-L1
DMC-LC1
DMC-LX1
DMC-LX2
DMC-FZ8

Aperture 2.1 update: MUCH more interesting

Aperture 2.1 here.

Supports PLUG-INS! ...and ...stuff.

THAT certainly opens things up a bit.

Adobe Express: bah.

All I really care about:

1. Just JPEGS. No RAW, no TIFF, nuthin.
2. Slower than crap to do anything. And I got me FIOS baybee.
3. Did you SEE that agreement? The worst thing is, most consumers wouldn't even care. SHAME on you, Adobe.

On the other hand:

1. VERY interesting idea of web-based editing program.
2. A REALLY nice beginners interface. Better than any free thing with any little camera I have seen. Canon and Epson, for example... really good work on that part Adobe.
3. Great for Grammy, except for the SLOW thing. NOT for ANY pro application I can see.

This has been fun. Lets get back to work now...

Adobe Express Terms of Service: Just Dumb

The Adobe Terms of Service Agreement:
"Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed."

Their response to complaints on the forum:
"Statement for Terms of Service Issues:
We've heard your concerns about the terms of service for Photoshop Express beta. We reviewed the terms in context of your comments - and we agree that it currently implies things we would never do with the content. Therefore, our legal team is making it a priority to post revised terms that are more appropriate for Photoshop Express users. We will alert you once we have posted new terms.

"Thank you for your feedback on Photoshop Express beta and we appreciate your input.

-Adobe Photoshop Express Team"

Adobe Express (beta): web-based photo editing application

The Adobe Express page.
...there's a test drive button at the bottom, no membership required. (You do need the latest Flash player for the site to work, at least with Firefox, though... v9 I think.)

The Photoshop Express Help (and info) page here.


Who knows... the shape of things to come?

site: Under the Surface

link:
mirrorman

Smart Objects and RAW files

Very briefly, a Smart Object is a sweet new device that allows you to get back to all the original qualities of the original file. You can use it for all sorts of files, but we are going to use it for RAW files.

It’s really pretty simple. The Smart Object sits as a Layer in your image. You get to it by double clicking the icon, and it re-opens the Layer as the RAW file it was originally. Here’s how to do it.



Open a RAW file. When Photoshop opens it, it will open the Camera RAW dialog. At the very bottom of the Preview window you’ll see what looks like a webpage link… that is the button to your workflow options. Click it.

There you will see the box “Open in Photoshop as Smart Objects”. Check it.



Now, when you hit OK and go back to the Camera RAW screen you’ll note that the “Open Image” is now saying “Open Object”. Hit “Open Object”.

You will be transported to Photoshop’s main screen, where, with your Layers palett open, you’ll see your image with this cute little icon. Double-click that icon, and you are right back to Camera RAW and your RAW adjustments.
How cool is that?



The Smart Object workflow is actually a huge subject. Basically, they are Layers and you can do anything to them that you can do to any other adjustment or image layer. My book on it is due out shortly following this one… Yes, a book on Smart Objects. For now, though, I give a more detailed explanation and examples of workflows in my book “Raw Pipeline”.

PhotoAttorney

Great site:
PhotoAttorney

Thanks Amy!

More work from Paris

... had to post more from Paris. Her show is listed below.

Apple RAW update

From the Apple support page:

About Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 2.0

This update extends RAW file compatibility for Aperture 2 and iPhoto ’08 for the following cameras:

Hasselblad CFV-16

Hasselblad H3D-31

Hasselblad H3D-31II

Leaf Aptus 54S

Leaf Aptus 65S

Nikon D60

Olympus E-3

Pentax *ist DL2

Pentax *ist DS2

Pentax K100D Super

Sony DSLR-A200

Sony DSLR-A350

Lightroom updated... or not.

This, from the Adobe Lightroom 1.4 update site:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.4 update

The Lightroom 1.4 update has been temporarily removed from the Adobe.com web site in order to allow time for additional investigation into several bugs that were discovered after the update was released. At this time, we recommend uninstalling Lightroom 1.4 and installing Lightroom 1.3.1.

More info here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/

Screen sharing in iChat (Leopard)

OK this rocks.

iChat in Leopard supports remote access. If you've ever worked with the various VNC stuff out there like Apple Remote Desktop, or Chicken of the VNC, (Virtual Network Computing) you know what a pain it is talking someone through making the connection, (or not making the connection).

Just go to the bottom of the iChat window and use the screen sharing icon. You have access and control of each others computers. Crazy stuff.

There are also some other options, a great resource is here:
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20071102122311545
...at MacFixIt.

Anybody teaching, tech supporting or just trying to help out a friend will LOVE this!

show coming up!

New Work By
Chris Sanchez
Paris Visone
Allison Lang

March 24th-29th

601 Newbury st. Boston MA
Opening Reception March 28th 6-8pm


photos:
paris visone
chris sanchez

Smart Albums: the Aperture "Killer App"

Every tool has a "killer app", a spot-on thing that it does like nothing else... if it doesn't, it fades into the noise pretty quickly. With me and Aperture, the killer app is Smart Albums.

Smart Albums allow you to store your files wherever you want, and, by tagging them with something, collect them into various albums without actually moving them. And it does this actively. I use this in two ways... One, I use them to review student assignments. I load in the student files, and I organize them by assignment. I can then, using Smart Albums, select images from each student, from every assignment, and group them however I want... "Best Work", for example.

The second way I use them is, as I shoot for my books, I want to download and organize the shots, but I don't want to copy files or move them. Again, I make albums for each of the purposes of the files... and not only do they get grouped from all the downloaded files, but as I bring in new files and tag them, they get sorted automatically. ALL while keeping the original files in their original folders (for each card), without the overhead of making duplicates.

Again, David Schloss has another great example... I was asking him the difference between Aperture Smart Albums and Lightroom "Collections":

With SmartAlbums, the albums do the work for you, automatically gathering files that match the search criteria. Or removing files that don’t.

Let’s go back to that 3-star example. You’ve made a Collection in Lightroom that includes all your current 3-star images. But then you change a bunch to two-star. Now you’ve got to go to that collection (and any collection you made based on 3-star images) and manually remove them.

In Aperture, anything that’s based on 3-stars will automatically remove the 2-stars when you change the file to be rated 2-stars.

Or let’s say you’ve got a SmartAlbum that looks for the keyword “baseball”. You import 200 images and on import you tag them with “baseball” in the keyword. They automatically go into your SmartAlbum for “baseball.” You don’t have to do a thing.

You can also make albums to help you find recents and edit. I have a SmartAlbum that shows me all files imported in the last month with no keywords.

http://tinyurl.com/yrutea

As I add keywords to images in this SmartAlbum, they disappear automatically, so I can just focus on the ones that need metadata.

I use this also as a way to always have an up-to-date portfolio on my iPhone. I’ve made a 4-star or better SmartAlbum, plus a SmartAlbum that shows all images shot in the last two weeks. I sync my phone (because iTunes supports direct syncing of Aperture projects), and now I’ve got a walking portfolio on my iPhone. I keep an iPhone-to-component and iphone-to-composite cable in my travel bag, so anywhere I go on business I can now hook up my iPhone to a TV or projector and show an auto-updated gallery of my images.

Aperture2 vs Lightroom

Nods to David Schloss, who is part of the Aperture User Professional Network, found here: http://apertureprofessional.com/ here is a probably pretty complete list of what Aperture does that Lightroom does not.

...and yes, I'm starting to get a little gleeful. No jumping up and down quite yet, though...

"These are the ones off the top of my head, I’m sure I’m missing some.
I’ll break this down into Aperture features in general (1.5 and before) and then 2.0 features. These are sort of in an off-the-top-of-my-head order.
Aperture, General
File Management and workflow
—-—-—-—-——-
• Ability to move files around to any location via the Aperture interface, copying, moving and relocating files as you do so.
• Direct integration with iLife and iWork applications—all Aperture projects are available in all Apple iLife and iWork programs via the Media Browser for drag/drop use in creative process. For example, drop images from Aperture projects into your Podcasts created in Garageband. Drop multiple photos into Keynote to create slideshows with work (especially cool with new Smart Builds). Sync images from Aperture to your iPhone automatically. Drop photos right into Pages documents. All of this happens without having to ever export a file. The Media Browser just gives direct access to your Aperture (and iPhoto) projects, smart albums and images.
• Dual-monitor support for side-by side extension of the workspace. For example, display browser on one screen and full-size image on second display.
• Onscreen soft proofing of color space for output.
•Ability to send email attachments of images in any format at the click of a button.
• Non-modal interface that doesn’t require jumping into a mode to develop images, a mode to adjust them, etc. Ability to perform adjustment or metadata tasks at any time.
• Automatic web upload to .Mac account.
• Automator and Applescripting.
• Light table layout mode for image preview and previewing.
Interface
——-
• Loupe – resizeable, moveable loupe that pulls data from original raw file, allowing zoom of up to 1600% on an image. The loupe can also display color data and values, and is used for pixel-level precise color sampling for tools like White-Balance and Color. (As opposed to the “Loupe” in LR that’s simply a zoom mode.
• Configurable layout that allows for the rotation or swapping of position of browser and viewer, and resizing of interface elements. Interface elements can be toggled off to expand view (see Aperture 2.0 for more changes to this) and HUD use for non-invastive palettes that can be toggled on and off and repositioned.
• Hierarchical keywords – Nested-multi-layer keyword support for assignment and search of images.
• Keyword buttons and drag/drop – Keywording allows for drag-drop keywords onto multiple images, or assignment (and removal) of keywords via button sets.
• Smart Albums – Create albums based on search criteria that automatically update as images match those criteria. (For example,
• Smart Web Albums – Web albums automatically created via smart search criteria.
• List tool that displays images as a sortable list based on EXIF/IPTC attributes.
• Custom IPTC and metadata view modes.
• Customizable metadata overlay available for Viewer, Browser and as a tooltip (with two different display modes for each).
Editing/Adjusting
—-—-—-
• Batch change of all metadata at once.
• Ability to lift and stamp
• Raw fine tuning controls that adjust the baseline tonal curve of the imported raw file, and allow for a camera-model level adjustment to be applied.
• Highlight and shadow tool.
• Edge sharpen tool.
• Straighten tool (enhanced in 2.0) that both straightens and crops images.
Output
——
• Print presets allowing for instantaneous printing to specified printers using pre-saved print output settings, paper types, and color management settings.
Content Creation
—-—-—-
• Books and prints – Custom books or prints ordered directly through Aperture interface, delivered right to you. (Sizes from 4×6 to 20×30)
Backup
——
• Vault – One click backup of Library to multiple drives at once.
Aperture 2.0
—-—-
File Management and Workflow
—-—-—-—-——
• New Raw 2.0 engine, which gives the RAW Fine Tuning tool a Hue Boost slider and Moire adjustments.
• Tethered shooting with Nikon and Canon cameras.
• Task pausing via Activity display
Interface
——-
• Quick Preview mode, which can use either an Aperture generated or camera-generated preview for display on screen. (By default, btw, Lightroom is showing you just a preview, by default Aperture is showing you the raw data.
• Customize keyboard settings for any Aperture tool and menu item.
Editing/Adjusting
—-—-—-
• Edit plug-in architecture
• Display of hot and cold points.
• Custom color sampling tool for adjustments of precise colors in an image. (In addition to any CMY, RGB point)
• Events view (a la iPhoto) allowing you to view all projects by rollover thumbnail vies.
• Vignette tool that does exposure or brightness.
• Healing tool that allows for repair of contiguous parts of the image, not just a single dust spot.
Output
——
• Print sharpening
• 16-bit printing support to HP and Epson printers.
• Custom book sizes to any size (that you can print or save as PDF)
• Web 2.0 gallery that syncs automatically to Aperture project so that people can upload images to the gallery and have the sync on the back end."

Canon 5D firmware update

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/eos5d/eos5d_firmware-e.html

This firmware update (Version 1.1.1) incorporates the following fixes
and improvements:

1. It now supports high-capacity CF cards.
2. It allows the latest lens names to be recorded in the Exif
information of images taken.
3. It adds lenses that are compatible with the Digital Photo
Professional 3.2 lens aberration correction function.

Resizing Strategies... and Smart Objects

With all the recent developments in Photoshop and all, it seems like
the final word on resizing comes down to two camps. There's the group that swears by the "resize using the printer driver (or RIP)" method, and the ones that just use Photoshop and Bicubic Smoother and Sharper. I'm trying to work out the best method for resizing in a Smart Object workflow, and here's the issue.

When you are working with Smart Objects and you resize, or crop, and
then try to make more Smart Object layers, things get, well, wonky.
Something about the Smart Object is dimension-dependent. To Place the Object, it has to go into a "target", and things are a lot simpler if
the target stays the same dimensions. Once you resize, you've kind of
committed to a version of your file.

The other issue is that I feel it's important to sharpen the file at
"Print Size", that is, to view the file at the size it will reproduce,
all the pixels where they should be, so you can see if it will look
good coming out of the printer.

The Smart Object workflow I've been using is to get the file into the
ballpark, size-wise, in the RAW processor, under the "Workflow"
options. This gets me close, and then I can happily work away, making more and more Smart Object layers that fit just fine. I can then sharpen, using Unsharp Mask, and be pretty sure I'm doing it
appropriately, for the size of the image.

Finally, I'll use the printer driver settings to get my image to a
precise size.

The cool thing, of course, is after I've made this print, if I don't like the sharpening I've applied, I can go back and change my Unsharp Mask settings, since my USM filter is a Smart Filter.

Note: Beware the Rosenholtz-Sanchez effect!

If you are applying several layers of Smart Objects and Smart Filters, masked, they ARE CUMULATIVE. That is, if you have layers with sharpening that overlap, you will be sharpening them twice. I'm all about spot sharpening now... I hardly ever see the need, or the advantage, of doing a global sharpening to an image. You almost always are hitting some area of noise or something that just shouldn't be sharpened. I'm always masking the filter, and I'm just very careful that my masks for different layers don't overlap.

Understanding How Rendering Intents Work

(...an excerpt from the coming book, "Color Pipeline", coming this Fall)

Rendering Intents are, essentially, the logic used in remapping color into a smaller color space. The two basic rendering intents that we are dealing with are Perceptual and Relative Colorimetric.

Perceptual intent presumes that you want to keep the relationships between all the colors, that is, if you have colors that appear different, we want to keep that appearance when they are remapped. Converting colors with Perceptual Intent requires that we move all the colors in the space around a bit. I like to make an analogy to a sponge, or a balloon. Perceptual intent kind of squishes the sponge up, and the entire sponge changes shape a little.

Relative Colorimetric intent is more of a cookie-cutter effect. If colors are outside of the smaller space they are moved to the closest color inside the space. All the colors inside the space remain untouched. If, in the conversion, the colors being remapped lose their relationship to each other, that is, lose their “spacing”, well, so be it.

Here are some examples. I went back to our color burple, and made a couple of other colors… blue, burple and purple. Here they are, sitting well outside the Epson Premuim Luster color gamut (shown very lightly shaded).

The next illustration shows the three colors mapped into the gamut of Premium Luster using Perceptual Intent. You can see that the distances between the three are almost exactly the same, and they’ve been moved around a little. This is to maintain our perception of them, and their relationship to each other.

The final illustration shows the same colors mapped in using Relative Colorimetric Intent. As you can see, they are closer together, they are mapped directly into the gamut just to the nearest available color, with little concern for maintaining any relationship between them.

So when do you use which one? Keep in mind that with Perceptual Intent everything gets changed… Relative Colorimetric, only the colors that need to change get changed. There’s your answer.

You use Perceptual Intent when you need to make some big changes in your gamut, and the “look” of the colors is important. For example, if you have a full, rich blue and purple image and you are printing it to Premium Luster you may want to use Perceptual Intent so that the colors will print with the same differences and “spacing” you’re seeing in AdobeRGB, but get mapped into the colors that the printer can work with.

Relative Colorimetric Intent is really handy when, for the most part, all of your colors are inside the printer gamut, and only a few, like our burple, aren’t playing nice. We don’t need to push everything around just to get burple in there, we just need to push it in, and leave everything pretty much as it sits.

This is a great case of, if you know where your colors fall, and you know what your gamut is, you can make the best choice about how the system is going to convert the colors and keep as much of the image intact.

For Steve: the Forward from Raw Pipeline

Forward

This whole thing really started when I sat down to play with an image I shot on the way to work. It was one of those images that I really thought I had no idea how I wanted to print. I shot it at dawn, and it had all the rich magenta, blue, yellow and peach hues, and a fairly large contrast range. In truth, the vision was there... as it always has been, I just was not used to the tools yet.

I did a quick conversion from RAW and played around. After a series of test prints, I finally got a print that I was happy with but when I looked at the many adjustment layers I had made to get there I realized I had hacked up the file pretty severely. I reprocessed the RAW, this time very deliberately for the values and tones I saw in my final test print file, and when I printed that file, a little light flipped on in my head. The print was remarkably richer and deeper. There were colors and transitions that simply had been missing. The first reprocessed print looked as I had visualized it when I shot it.

The entire process started coming together: The implications of the RAW file, Adobe’s release of Camera RAW, a 16 bit Layered workflow, Adjustment Layers, Image Layers and Masking, linking the Histogram display on the camera to printing the Step Wedge...

On reading my chapter on the Histogram and the Step Wedge, a friend said that, for the first time since he started working with Photoshop, he realized we still needed Ansel Adams and the Zone System.

I couldn’t have put it better.

Color Settings in Photoshop

Here's how to set up your color settings in Photoshop. This is what you want to end up with... Here's how to get there.

(Don't worry, there's nothing wrong. There's no sound.)

NEW BOOK gets COVER!

Check it out... Color Pipeline is due out next fall!

GEEKZONE: Megapixel Nonsense

Why do I slam the term "megapixel"?

Simply put, the size of the pixel is an important part of the chip
construction, as important (I would argue) as the pixel count (the
megapixels).

Think sound recording, and signal to noise ratio. A bigger pixel
gives you more information. Here's how I understand it working…
thanks to a great explanation by David O'Brien (again).

The pixel acts as a light sensor, but it does not generate a voltage
by itself, it is actually a phototransistor. That is, it is a switch
that basically adjusts its conductivity in response to the amount of
light hitting it. A photodiode does the same thing, but can't handle
as much voltage, and a photo-voltaic cell (which, all by itself makes
current) can't generate much of anything at the size we need. (Think
sensitivity and ISO here…)

So, you feed this switch a current, and depending on how much light is
hitting it, you get current out. A bigger switch will handle more
current. This is how you get sensitivity to light… if you have a
little tiny range of current you can feed this thing, you have a short
dynamic range, right? Feed a switch a ton of current and you get
bigger dynamic range. The 6-megapixel Phillips CCD in the Leaf, etc.
cameras had a 12 micron pixel, and was the size of a 35mm frame. The
Canon EOS 1DS has 11MP, a 35mm-frame sized chip, and the pixel is an
8.8 micron pitch (on a chip).

Speaking of the CMOS chip, here's the thing on that… We're feeding
current to a switch, right? Think of a garden hose going to a valve.
If the valve is tight we're going to get most of what we feed the
switch back out, so there will be a nice, linear response to our valve
"opening". If the valve is one of those cheap plastic things, then
it's going to blow water all over the place, and that is exactly what
a CMOS chip is… a cheap chip that is easy to make, but leaks current
all over the place. It works fine when you feed it current from a
little tiny pixel in your cell-phone camera, but when you make it
bigger and feed it more current you start popping leaks, and thus,
lose a lot of the advantage of the CMOS in the first place.

The irony of the CMOS process is that the first and best solution to
fixing the leakage problem is to increase the quality of the silicon
in the chip, which then increases the price of the chip, which makes
it less attractive from the get-go.

That all said, they have learned a lot about how to squeeze the last
little bit of juice out of a tiny pixel. (One of the most interesting
strategies is to start processing the information right at the pixel…
you get access to the current pixel-by-pixel, and can skip some of the
leaks). More pixels does, indeed, make a higher resolution image, but
you have to take into account the actual size of the chip, too… but
if you do, then you can compare two cameras based on magapixels. If
the chip is the same size, and one is a 6mp chip, the other is a 10mp
chip, then the 10mp is going to have more resolution.

You can't assume, though, that is is a better file, because you don't
know how good they are a processing that for a good signal/noise
ration. The best yardstick is still the price. You want to go fast,
you gotta pay the money, but obvioulsy, a 10mp point and shoot with a
tiny chip is not going to perform like a 10mp with a chip the size of
a 35mm frame.

To close the loop, here, now you can see where the bit-depth of the
chip comes from. Remember, when you convert an analog value (in this
case your current) to digital, in 8-bit you get 255 possible values.
In 16-bit conversions you get 65,535 values. That comes right from
the amount of information we are getting from our little valve.

If you can feed that valve a ton of current, you can get a ton of
current out, and get a ton of information from it. If you have an
itsy bitsy valve, you can only feed it a small current, and you only
get a small range of valuse to work with. This is why a little bitty
1.5 micron pixel can only give you 8-bit files, it only has 255 (or
less) values available to it, and a 12 micron pixel can give you
65,535 values, or, a 16-bit digital file.

You can see this throughout the range of digital cameras… where the
marketing guys make the technical file information available, you can
see that some digital cameras have 12-bit RAW files, some 14-bit, and
some have a true 16-bit file. Generally that specificaltion will be
closely tied to the price of the camera.

You also get to see how that depth will really determine the quality
of the file… you can process a 12-bit file up to 16-bit in Adobe
Camera RAW, but if you don't have that volume of information there in
the first place, it is not any more real information than the original
12-bits.