On Fri, 21 Nov 2008, Stephen Davies wrote:
> There does seem to be some 'Duff Gen' floating around about Digital Cameras.
That's the Internet :-)
Keep the brain in gear and verify for yourself if it's important.
> I went totally Digital (as opposed to film) some 4 years ago. I'm on my 
> 3rd & 4th DSLR ( A Nikon  D2X & D200 ).
> I got my ARPS ( Associateship of the royal Photographic Society) with a 
> panel of A3 sized prints all taken with a nikon D70 6.1MP Camera. So, I 
> could be classed as a 'serious amateur'.
As I understand it, Peter (or Peter's wife) has a specific need, and 
it's not 'just' for an A3 print. I understand that the need is for 
detailed study on the texts and other marking on old documents, "some of 
which are larger than A3" and he/she or other studiers are likely to be 
looking at these documents at significan magnification. I believe his 
reasoning for 10M is because that's the resolution he needs to resolve 
the detail.
If the evidence/arguments I've seen for numbers of pixels in compacts is 
correct, and the evidence looks fairly convincing to me, then I think a 
compact is inadequate wehatever lens quality it has .. and I agree 100% 
about the lens! At the end of the day, compacts have a small CCD and 
will be resolution limited.
One possibility that occurs to me is that it's probably feasiblr to pick 
up a cheap-ish second hand DSLR that's no longer fashionable but still 
offers 10M. Maybe ebay or a 2nd hand camera shop is the place to go.
One other thought. It's _possible_ that resolution cf detail resolving 
ability might be better in monochrome.
Gordon.
-- 
Gordon Scott                  http://www.gscott.co.uk
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