InTouch Magazine Articles Archive

Issue 21, August 2008

Digital Photography for Beginners - 20

By Adam Gardiner.

Why are some Cameras better than other Similar Ones? This is a good Frequently Asked Question (FAQ). I ask it myself all the time – for part explanation of the reason read the following: Photographic Quality – Pixel for Pixel There will be times when, comparing results of your photography with other people’s, you will question why photographs taken in the same conditions on the same outing are much better from one person than another although the cameras appear to be similar. They both may be 6 MegaByte compacts with 4 times optical zoom lenses set to landscape, autofocus, and white balance correction and yet one set of pictures can be clearly seen to be better than the other. Why should this be?

Normally one would suspect that the lens on one was better than the other in that it was made of glass by a respected manufacturer and not a plastic clone, or alternatively was much cleaner with no scratch marks. But if they were both of equal quality then the smart money would be on the ‘photo-diode’ sensors in the ‘CCD’ arrays. These miniature ‘lenses’ may well be of different dimensions even though they are of equal number. They both may have 6,291,456 pixel positions but be differently sized and arranged. The best CCD base will be the same size as a 35mm film camera’s – 36mm x 24mm - the poorest performing may well be much smaller. There are other features affecting CCD performance which I have ignored for simplicity.

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