Chris
A compressed Tiff or Img file of 1000x1000 plane white is only about 4
bytes
because one byte gives the colour and the other bytes give the run or
number
of repetitions. Fax uses this Hoffman coding. It is lossless. You could
zip
an uncompressed TIFF image file with the same effect.
Its all mathematics.
true. And I had another look at TIF- it's been ages since I used TIF when
in days of yore it was fervently defended as 'lossless' and did not
compress - I was going to add that TIF was now a compressed format as the
standards (as decided by the group that determines such things) had
changed - but I was lazy and didn't bother
So I just saved that white 6k x 6k image again in the four different TIF
compression options available to me (and yes, they are all TIF compression
options) .. the compressions options and sizes were:
compression size
none 105,516 Kb (interesting, - a different size from the
first time)
LZW 106,337 Kb
JPEG 1,225 Kb
ZIP 300Kb
With a lens there is a fundamental limit due to diffraction quite apart
from
the figure of the lens. A fast lens will have higher resolution than a
small
aperture. There is a lovely function sin(x)/x that gives a curve with a
peak
with ripples around it and all lenses has it, with bigger lenses this
curve
gets tighter.
of course - I wasn't going to go through all the permutations of lens
resolving power limits.. just mentioning they were there ;)
I recall also the "error function" and it is important in the resolution
of
telescope images. I once did some work trying to resolve the discs of
stars.
The solution was an array of telescopes first used in radio astronomy.
Like
other physics the construction took many years. To see small things you
need
very big things over a long integrating time... the search of ET radio
communications is like that. People did not like the observational
results...
physics scares most people. I don't know why.. it's something I've never
stopped learning. I'm currently reading some of Richard Feynman's memoirs,
good for a giggle :)
Science itself is under attack.
i agree with you on that. A shame people have forgotten that science is a
philosophy that has nothing whatsoever to do with qualifications and in fact
the concept of qualifications is almost an antitheses to science.
Sorry.. but the little compact digital ... Photography is difficult here,
even people who snap their children have been prosecuted and the thought
police are a reality.
yup, same here in Oz. Funny thing is that while th propaganda-fed masses
revile anyone holding a camera, no one batts an eye at a camera phone.
