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[Sil Greene <Sil_greene AT unc.edu>]

Reported 04.03.09 20:56 from James Dasher:
.:On Tuesday, Mar 9, 2004, at 20:18 US/Eastern, Sil Greene wrote:

.:> If you want proof, consider that Digital Zoom is done in software (or
.:> occasionally hardware -- circuitry -- which can be just as buggy as
.:> software, with the advantage of being harder to patch).  Ask yourself 
.:> how often your commercial software works as advertised, every time.
.:>
.:> Optical zooms don't have that problem.  :)
.:
.:To go off on a related tangent: One problem optical zooms *do* have, 
.:though, is that camera and lens manufacturers haven't really begun to 
.:modify the lenses for digital photography.  As a result, whether you 
.:use a point-and-shoot or digital SLR, digital prints always look - 
.:well, *digital*.  No matter how great the image resolution,  You can 
.:almost always tell a digital print from a film print.

That's not an optical zoom problem; it's a problem that you could (and I 
will) argue is inherent in the *digital* mechanism.  This is why a great 
optical lens on an old film SLR is still a great optical lens on a 
digital SLR.  I've noticed the same effect.  It's not the lens, it's the 
medium you're capturing to.

Face it, oh tech companies of the world -- digital, for all it's pros and 
all your R&D dollars, doesn't hold a candle to analog.

--Sil

-- 
"If you put your supper dish to your ears you can hear the sounds
 of a restaurant."  --Snoopy    (Charles Schultz 02-12-2000 RIP)
Sil_Greene AT unc.edu