The Nobel Laureate physicist of Cal Tech, Richard Feynman, gave a
prescient lecture in the early 1970's (I think) entitled "Plenty of
Room at the Bottom." Stated simply, his premise was that there was
The talk was at the APS (American Physical Society) meeting in 1961
and was an after dinner talk given at Caltech (note proper spelling of
Caltech). What relevance Feynman's talk has to your post, I still can't
figure out. I didn't know Feynman, but I did take care of his dog once.
lots of room for expansion by making things smaller, a prediction
that foretold of the astonishing future of microprocessors, among
other things.
Note that the last D2X sensor incorporated smaller pixels,
certainly the impetus behind Canon forwarding their ridiculous
advertising apologia that their larger ones are somehow better.
The same number of larger pixels covering the same image area
are better.
Thus, it may be possible that the next new DX sensor will be the
same size as this one, rather than FF, but still offer larger
resolution, say 18 MP. Who would then opt for a larger sensor that
exposes the weaknesses of even the finest lenses?
Larger sensors expose certain edge deficiencies of lenses while smaller
pixel sizes expose other lens deficiencies. You might not opt for a sensor
that has a higher resolution than the optical resolution of your lens.
I have only one DX lens, the inexpensive 18-70, plus a sack full of
FF lenses. Surprisingly, the DX lens produces images that are
sharp and fine corner to corner, so I feel this lens could be
pushed in coverage to perform adequately for a slightly larger
sensor, perhaps 1.25/1 conversion factor....THAT, I would consider
ideal.
I disagree. DX lenses were designed to have good optical properties within
the image circle needed to cover DX sized sensor. You can't just extrapolate
your properties to larger image circles. Besides, your going to also have
to change the relative position of the lens and sensor so that the DX lens
will produce an image sensor large enough to cover the larger sensor.
The astonishing sharpness of Foveon sensor images is another
possibility. I hope that technology does not stall.
I would suspect a major challenge is getting dyes with the right
absorption spectra to adequately sense R, G or B, but not absorb
outside of those color ranges. Of course, the absorption ranges of
molecular dyes are not perfectly sharp, vary with temperature, and
can be affected by two photon processes, etc.
After all, Christmas is approaching and such speculation may be
justified slightly on that basis.
Unfortunately, the laws of physics don't change, even for Christmas.
A final personal opinion: The D2X is a medium format camera by any
measure. As others have expressed, the worst that might happen if
By what measure? Name one...
Nikon suddenly obsoletes (is that a word?) all the equipment we
have we will then still be able to concentrate on producing
beautiful images rather than wasting time in forwarding arguments
I suppose if the arguments were more valid than the ones you propose
above, they might make more of an impact! Sorry, but that's the way it
works.
that fall on deaf Japanese ears. I think those guys know what they
are doing, anyway, and will continue to do just fine without our
specious arguments.
Here I totally agree with you. I do some work supported by both Nikon and
Canon and meet with them semiannually for reviews - they are quite well
qualified to make the kind of advances that can be expected given the
combined constraints of physics, economics and engineering.
--
Chasm
