Still Photography Throwdown: Silver Halide vs. Silicon

摘要

Still photography has a rich history of technological innovations torecord the light in a scene dating back to the early 19th century (atleast). The recent decades have seen these technologicalinnovations create a revolutionary shift in the materials, processes,and uses of still images. Most of the still photography world hascompleted a move from silver halide (AgX) technology thatdominated the field for over a century to digital still camerasbased on silicon (Si) sensors that arrived on the scene about twodecades ago and have essentially supplanted AgX capturetechnologies in most applications. This research ponders thequestion of whether the image quality obtained with Si has alsosurpassed that of AgX in the context of typical consumer andprofessional photographic prints and soft displays. Four camerasystems, two digital and two film based, were evaluated using bothobjective image quality metrics and psychophysical evaluation ofprints and displayed images. The results show that a high-enddigital SLR does indeed produce better images than an equivalent35mm film system, but that a typical digital point-and-shootcamera has substandard quality that can be somewhat attributed to“too many megapixels” and “too much post processing” for thelens capabilities and sensor size. The conclusion is that indeed filmis done, but there remain significant areas for improvement indigital systems. In particular improvements in printing techniques,lens-sensor matching, and noise reduction are called for.