digital cameras and quality of detail

The first digital camera I purchased was cutting edge. I was the very first person I knew that owned one and strutted around with it like I was the queen of photography! It was a small, rectangular little box that had no zoom capability but sported a whopping 1.3 megapixel sensor. I can’t find one photo that was taken with that first POS (that I thought at the time was amazing!), to share, but I DO have a perfect example of a photo taken with one of its predecessors — it’s on the left, and YES, it’s displayed at 100% in size.

I look at that photo today — 10 years later — and it seems to be about the size of a postage stamp with such poor quality that some of the people are barely distinguishable — even if you know who they are. But at the time, it was… again… amazing. And to remind you, in 2002, we didn’t have blazing cable speeds or 30″ computer monitors. We had craptastic dial-up and monitors that didn’t display a bajillion colors. Even with today’s iPhone, you’re walking around with instant access to a camera with 8-megapixel resolution, a custom lens with f/2.4 aperture, auto white balance, advanced color accuracy, and reduced motion blur.

I took the photo above with my phone out the windshield of the car because I thought all those birds up there were posing just for me — and, I had to reduce the image size so it fits within the layout here. So I wonder… and I hope you’re wondering too… what will digital photography be like 10 years from now? It’s said the human eye can “see” 576 megapixels of available image data, but can’t distinguish between 300 dpi and 150 dpi. How much better can it really get?