does anyone know if higher native resolution is more important for better picture quality than interpolation value higher than a native resolution.example kodak 260 has lower native resolution than agfa 1680's 1600x1200 interpolation(1343x972 native).i bought the agfa but dont think its as good as the kodak 210plus i returned and i think im going to return the agfa for the kodak 260.any suggestions???

-- Randy Etengoff (kissdrain@email.com), February 11, 1999

Answers

I would argue that native resolution is *always* much more important than interpolated resolution (which adds no additional information to the image). You can always interpolate on your computer later on anyhow.

There are other items as important, however, such as lens performance (which can vary quite a bit...look at the image comparisons on this site) and performance of the compression and light balance functions. So a high resolution, in itself, is not necessarily the whole story. Close examination of some of the photos in the image comparitor suggests that some lenses don't truly do a good job of resolving down to the resolution of the sensor, especially at the edges.

-- jay holovacs (holovacs@idt.net), February 12, 1999.

Jay put it pretty well. I was pretty impressed by how well Agfa's interpolation worked on the 1680, but I'm still of the camp that more pixels on the sensor are a good thing to have. As Jay said though, raw pixel count is far from the whole story, as there are a LOT of other things that can mess up the image quality. (Which is the whole motivation behind the Comparometer(tm) - accept no hype, let your own eyes be the judge!)

-- Dave Etchells (detchells@imaging-resource.com), February 13, 1999.