Independence of irrelevant alternatives

“joke”

If the sensor on the D40x has twice the area of the old sensor, you’d have some cause to be upset. Otherwise, [insert rude noise].

Richard (12:58), Canon would be the better choice … Nikon sensors have a tendency to be noisy, prone to dust (static electricity), energy hoggish.

Why would one need a 10mp sensor; isn’t this kind of resolution necessary only if you’re planning to print wall-posters? Shouldn’t a 6mp sensor be enough for almost everything else?

Abb1 is right on. I’ve printed posters from of my Nikon D50 (6mp but uncropped photos) w/out any resolution problem.

Nikon is, intelligently, charging a huge mark-up for a feature lots of folks want but almost no one will ever use.

I’ll second the person who suggested taking your savings and expanding your collection of lenses, they’ll expand your range of photo options (and improve your quality) in a way extra mps can’t.

say = take… it’s been a long day.

There’s another little paradox here: if you wait for a newer better model about to be announced, you’ll never have any camera at all.

12: But eudoxis is right at #6: if you had already chosen the Nikon for the price, the existence of a high-priced Nikon shouldn’t change anything.

I think this is wrong.

To restate the problem, the choice is between N and the £100-more-expensive C+ (where the “+” reflects the feature that N doesn’t have). The buyer is uncertain about how to evaluate the value of the feature. (By way of comparison, if he were a professional who knew that he could get X additional jobs that would bring in Y amount of money if he bought the camera with the additional feature, he could place a value on it. But he’s not.)

The buyer could reason as follows: “The C company thinks that buyers like me will value the feature at £100. Accordingly, if I would place less value on the feature than the average buyer, I shouldn’t pay £100 for the feature; if I would place more value on the feature than the average buyer, then I am getting consumer surplus by buying for £100.”

If the buyer were to learn that a new camera N+ is priced at (say) £200 more than N, that might suggest that the feature ought to be worth more than £100 to the average buyer, and the buyer might alter his calculus accordingly.

I don’t know anything about cameras, but… “Digital Rebel XTi” is the lamest name I’ve heard in a very long time.

What do people think about the Olympus digital SLRs? I have used an OM-1 (film) SLR for nearly 30 years with no complaints, but I’m thinking of taking the digital plunge.

Why would one need a 10mp sensor; isn’t this kind of resolution necessary only if you’re planning to print wall-posters? Shouldn’t a 6mp sensor be enough for almost everything else?

Shoot wide, then crop. This is the hallmark amateurs who take candids.

The image is made up of three things –

(1)lens quality -> controls input to the sensor
(2)sensor fidelity->controls what is output from the sensor
(3)compression algorithm -> controls how accurately sensor output is stored

For (1), Nikon is better than Canon. Nikon lenses are superb.

(2) is determined by MP and quality of sensor. The MP controls only resolution – how much of detail is stored. There are only a few manufactures of CCDs.
(3) how lossy is the compression has much more of an influence than MP.

Given the same quality of sensor, lens and compression algorithm has more to do with picture quality than MP.
(3) is

As I pass into my second year with my D70s, I feel like someone should point out that all the lenses and megapixels in the world don’t matter the slightest w/r/t good pictures, on two accounts:

1) There’s the obvious matter of usual ideas of composition, understanding of technical details (aperture settings, etc.), and so on–these all go under bundle of “it’s the photographer, stupid.”

2) More importantly–never underestimate the difficulty of getting a good, clear shot. Even with the VR (vibration reduction) lenses, it’s all-too-easy to move just that tiny, tiny little bit while clicking the shutter and thus introduce an element of blur that dwarfs by far anything you’d get by, say, enlarging the photo in Photoshop (or another way: more megapixels just means bigger, not clearer, picture in many cases).

eudoxis (#22) writes: No, that’s not a restatement of the problem. The difference between the Nikon D40 and the Canon 400D are multiple.

I appreciate that I simplified the facts. The idea is that the price of a new camera is new information that a buyer could use to infer something about the value of another camera’s features.

To put it in terms of the apple/cherry/blueberry pie joke, suppose you prefer fresh apple pie to any kind of blueberry pie, and you prefer any kind of blueberry pie to apple pie that’s been sitting around. If you know that the restaurant serves only apple and blueberry, you might infer that the pie turns over pretty quickly and so you’ll take a chance on the apple. If you learn that the restaurant also serves cherry, you might decide that the apple pie is less likely to turn over (no pun intended) and choose the blueberry.

The point is that new information can be put to use in surprising and counterintuitive ways.

Re 13 and 28. Actually it can be set up as a well defined optimal waiting period problem if some conditions are met. Basically there needs to be restrictions on growth rate of quality and the path of prices and the discount rate. It’s sort of like in the Ramsey model the discount rate has to be high enough relative to the growth rate of income (times that stinkin’ eta) or else you want to consume everything at infinity.

Chris – it is amusing that you found a real-life Morgenbesser-like example. But did you buy the camera to keep up with Ezster’s Flickr challenge? How will your new camera affect your posts here – illustrations? fewer, since you’ll have a new hobby? A change in the music/visual art ratio?

fwiw, I love the D50 nowadays – it has remarkably little noise, almost no shutter lag, enormous battery life and such. Does anyone know whether Morgenbesser actually had an antecedent prefered flavor of pie? (economists would just poll the patrons and choose the (a la) mode, but philosophers have to be more principled, right?)

You get more megapixels to let you crop. You don’t have to worry about composition when shooting, and you can mostly get away without a bulky long lens.

But yeah, most buyers overestimate the importance of bulk MPs compared with other things.

More megapixels don’t necessarily “let you crop”. If the resolution of the sensor is greater than that of the lens, cropping is like using that useless “digital zoom” feature. It just increases the relative size of the blur.

If you read a lot of photography sites you’ll find people arguing that 10 megapixel sensors don’t give any better resolution than 6 megapixels if you have consumer-quality lenses.

35 mm film has more resolution than any current digital sensor, but the results you get with film will still vary according to the quality of the optics in your camera.

Digital gives you the advantage that it doesn’t cost anything to take a lot of different shots, so you can try a lot of things like framing, depth of field and exposure at the time when you shoot, and pick the best result when you get home. You don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of time adjusting the picture later, although you still can.

I bought a Pentax digital SLR because I already had Pentax lenses from my film camera, and I’ve been very happy with it. But I imagine that all of the well-known companies probably have pretty decent products.

I disagree that violation of the IIA Assumption is evidence of irrationality. Surely, it is rational to consider context when making decisions, yet the IIA Assumption asserts that context is ignored — like so much of western thought since Descartes.

Aw crap. I was gonna make some joke about needing the Nikon on the red bus and the Canon on the blue bus. Oh well.

The only area where I would give Nikon the edge is with the lenses, but IMHO, it’s not a great enough difference not to get the Canon.

I have a Canon Digital Rebel XT and the fact that I had some Canon lenses (22-55mm zoom; 75-300 mm zoom) sealed the deal for me. I also have a Canon APS SLR (though I don’t really use it any more) and I took some terrific photos with it.

I just got back from 2 weeks in Italy, took some 600 photos and was very impressed with how it hheld up. I only had to recharge the battery once in two weeks.

Another point in favour of Canon is the fact that Canon auotofocus motor is inside the lens and not the body.

As lenses develop the motors become ever more fast ( even the ultrasonic lenses are becoming faster ) so when you upgrade you may be buying a lot quicker focusing lens than the one with which you started.
Because Nikon put their motor inside the body no matter what lens you buy you will be stuck with the same auto focus performance unless you upgrade the body too.

Yes I forgot we were talking about D40. But notice still on this subject , none of the fantastic older Nikon lenses that could otherwise be used with your D40 body — say the fantastic 80-200 F2.8 — ( fast and not expensive ) cannot be used because your camera will not focus with them ( no internal AF motor ).
This is quite a draw back I think.