5 Things Digital Cameras Can Outdo Our Eyes

We are in the era of digital photography from camera to image processing. Technology advancement has come to a stage where the image quality of a photo taken by digital camera and seen on our monitor screen is identical with, if not better than, those shot and developed using 35mm film.

Choosing between digital and film camera system is merely a personal preference kind of thing instead of the difference in image quality. Digital cameras are now capable of doing things that our naked eyes can’t do in imaging. I’ve shortlisted 5 things that digital cameras can outperform our human eyes, as below:

1) Can see things further. Assuming you are attaching a 300mm lens to your camera and take a shot at the Petronas Twin Tower top. Then see or print the photo in 100% pixel or print size and you would be able to see there is a bird flying around the tower, how many windows panels are there, and how the antenna looks like. Our eyes alone can’t really see that far;

2) Can see things closer. Not only far object, our eyes can’t see close objects that close either. And our eyes can’t magnify what we see. But if shot with high resolution digital cameras today attached with reasonable close focus lens, close-up feature of an insect, like dragonfly, can be magnified and revealed clearly;

3) Can produce more striking image. Our eyes could see lights that is exactly reflected through our pupils and falls onto our retina. Our brain can only convert that light info into an image, without modification. However, our digital camera system can modify the image capture to various effect we desire. Combining the camera image processors and post processing software like Photoshop, we can create multiple effect such as monochrome, high key, low key, or HDR images, out of the same image taken. Different artists prefer images to be presented in different mood, but all artists see things the same in human eyes. Our eyes can’t convert what we see in either black and white or more colourful than the actual.

4) Can capture sectional and exclude others in the scene. Some people say photography is an act of hoax. It can be used to ‘trick’ audience by capturing only the wanted section of a scene while discarding the unwanted sections. Look at the photo above. Can you imagine that flower was found beside a rubbish dump site? Cameras are good in hiding the distracting surrounding and emphasize the beautiful object. However, our eyes can only see things in a whole, not sectional…
5) Can be kept as memory and new forever… in computer. No people brain can store the image of a scene forever. I can never recall exactly what I have seen in Europe 13 year ago. When I was there again this year, everything looks new to me again. So this time round I captured every scene with my Nikon D60 DSLR and kept all my images in my 500GB HDD and backed up in my 1TB Western Digital MyBook external drive. In 10 or 20 years time, I could still recall my sweet memories in these beautiful European cities by just a few of mouse clicks.

Though our retina is the most brilliant image sensor in the universe, if understand more, digital camera system can be utilised to capture things or scenes that our eyes can’t capable of. This is the beauty of photography. I’m here to share and more to come. – Cecil Lee Photography.