Please allow me to ask this somewhat off-topic question: The NY Times has an article on why smaller-pixel cameras can be worse than larger-pixel ones. It's at < http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/technology/personaltech/13basics.html >. The following passage strikes me as containing a number of dubious assertions. << Photons (light particles) pass through a camera’s lens and are captured by the cups in the tray. Each cup is either red, green or blue (the three colors that are the building blocks for all other colors). The more photons a cup catches, the brighter that cup’s color. Totally empty cups record black; totally full cups record white. Larger pixels (cups, remember), with larger surface areas, capture more photons per second, which in electronics-speak means a stronger signal — and in camera-speak means less noise and cleaner colors. Bigger pixels can also capture more photons per exposure without filling up, so larger pixels hold on to their color longer and don’t go white as quickly as smaller pixels.

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It seems to me that any advantage conferred by larger pixels' ability to capture more photons per second is exactly nullified by their having to do so simply by virtue of their size. If the same fraction of the image plane could be covered by pixels having lower resolution than the human retina, it seems to me that making them smaller would be an advantage. If smaller pixels are not an advantage, I'd expect this to be because they require that a higher fraction of the image plane be covered by interstitial material (and so is not used to sense the image); at some point this would become noticeable. But I don't really know about electronic cameras. Are there any technoids out there who can evaluate the Times's argument? --Dan _____________________________________________________________________ "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi." --Peter Schickele