Craig, I can't believe we are having this discussion. You are wrong. ...and Re: "you have ignored a basic rule of science that says that to accurately reproduce
a signal, you need a recording medium that is at least 10 times as accurate as the
signal itself."
I don't know where you got this but it is clearly misapplied and/or misstated here- as would be true with any recording medium. If one could just ever equal the resolution of an original signal one would already have achieved perfection and would have nothing left to do. For example, the grooves in a phonograph record do NOT contain 10x the accuracy of the sound(the original signal) of a violin. Those grooves can only approximate the resolution that exists in the original signal. So too, film does NOT have 10x the accuracy of the light hitting it. Film can only capture a part of the information available in the light that a lens throws upon it.
The fact that films capable of extraordinary resolutions are used to evaluate lenses is because lesser films are inadequate for resolving what the lenses are doing to the light. If better films were available, they would reveal even more about the lenses, 'cause the information exists in the light always. If your notion that a top flight lens offers no more resolution than 800 speed film were true, then using that lens with finer grained high resolution film would yield no better result than using it with the 800 film- but it does! You KNOW this is true. Where do you suppose this extra resolution comes from? Answer: It's in the light passing through the lens all along, and then some. Even using a cheap lens the greater resolution available from using the hi-res film is readily apparent. Film simply does not have greater resolution than is available in the light passing through a lens onto it. In fact, however bad that lens may be and whatever it is doing to the light as a result, the film lags in recording that information. Only the best film will tell you the most about that lens...or the reality in the light beyond it for that matter.
I have spent the last 18 years working regularly in a rudimentary b&w darkroom. I am no expert on photography, but I am acquainted with certain counter-intuitive principles in photography having to do with relationships between such things as contrast and latitude for example. There is nothing counter-intuitive about the subject at hand here. I know that great efforts have been made in an attempt to make phonograph records and film more closely approximate the resolution available in the sound and light they attempt to capture. Neither medium captures all the resolution available in the original signal. I repeat, NO film captures all the resolution available in the light a lens throws upon it. Foveon captures "far" more than film.
Those search engines are worth far more(dare I say too much?) than indicated by thier failure to return information on Foveon to date. If Carver Meads analog silicon retinas and the word of George Gilder are worth anything, then Foveon is not a myth. |
