Random musings on 2010
We’re due for a volley in the megapixel wars between Canon and Nikon, which means that we might soon see ~30 megapixels from either or both. But keep in mind that 30 vs 24 megapixels sounds great, but it’s really pretty minor, since it’s a paltry 1.1X linearly. The real value of high megapixel counts lies in downsampling from 30 megapixels to 24 or 20, which cleans up digital nasties. Or the reverse, less upsampling when printing. Which is why 60 megapixels is not only a good idea, but will come, in time. And if that means a 30 megapixel camera which “oversamples” from a 60MP sensor, that sounds great to me. But lenses and technique matter, so pay attention to diffraction, field curvature, depth of field, focus shift and the like, at least for some types of photography. Those links are in DAP.
The quality bar has now been met: the Nikon D3s and D3x are cameras you can live with, for a long time. Canon is way behind, so expect to see something nice from Canon this year. But I do hope that whatever “secret sauce” is found in the lovely D3s makes its way into a D3xs, and I don’t care much whether it’s 24 or 30MP.
Optics are the name of the game with DSLRs going forward, and we’ll see continued emphasis from Nikon and Canon and Zeiss on new and improved designs. But guess what? Some of the “cheapies” are also some of the good ones, with all brands.
Will Apple continue to dumb-down its product line? By that I mean the elimination of the ExpressCard/34 slot from most MacBook Pro models, and the crippled iMac, with its single sluggish Firewire 800 port and no means of adding a second internal hard drive, let alone easily upgrading the only one it has. That’s no offense to iMac lovers, it’s just that one should not have to cough up a bundle for a Mac Pro to get decent expansion capabilities. Such absurdities would not be tolerated in the PC world. It’s bittersweet.
Will the dollar collapse further this year, and will countries race to devalue their currencies this year or next? Will gold hit $2000 or $5000 an ounce as the dollar collapses? Who knows, but gold is insurance, so have 10% of your portfolio in quality gold and silver stocks. You wouldn’t own a house without fire insurance, would you?
Quality goods will increase in price (in dollar terms), so treat yourself and get that lens you always wanted. Oh boy I wish I hadn’t sold my 58mm f/1.2 NOCT-Nikkor, but I needed the money back then. Somewhere down under, the buyer is smirking as he reads this.
