Quote Originally Posted by StapledPhoto


I don't know much about the subject, but read the other thread that clemmb linked because the topic was discussed at length there.


The basic idea that I got from reading there is that yes diffraction occurs equally regardless of pixel size or recording method, but the idea of DLA is that as your pixels size gets smaller / density gets higher, the camera can resolve more detail and that detail becomes noticeably diffracted earlier. Thus the higher the pixel density the sooner the diffraction can be noticed. That is DLA. No? At f/11 big pixels won't notice the diffraction because they couldn't have resolved the detail that is being lost via diffraction anyway, but smaller pixels would have been able to and therefore the loss is noticed. This isn't to say that the diffraction is worse with greater pixel density.


To me an analogy that makes sense is lens quality. Viewing images at 100% from a low pixel density camera can and does look sharper than the same setup (lens, sensor size, etc) with higher pixel density, because you are resolving more detail and can notice more problems. However if you take that higher pixel density image and lower the resolution or view it at the same size as the other image, it will look the same or better, not worse.


Basically if your sensor is better, it more quickly stops being the bottleneck on image quality as diffraction sets in or when using a lower quality lens. This is true of almost anything, it's just a matter of finding the weakest link in a chain of making high quality images in this case.


Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here.






<div style="CLEAR: both"]</div>
ye, I somehow agree with you.


but in my opinion, diffraction shows not only as on dot becomes a airy disk, or on single line became wider these kind of details, but the change of contrast in every single detail among the image. And alse, airy disk is only 84%energy aera (i don't know how to strict define it in english), the actual diffraction spread far larger.


As diffraction influence all the details, how could the size of pixel matter.


Actual the <span class="trans"]sensitivity to the contrast ofeach pixel would influence the visiblilty of the diffraction.