[jeryst]

I've been having a blast with my K20d. Today, I took a portrait shot of my youngest daughter, and was playing around with it. I cropped just her eye, and the resulting image was a very respectable photo of an eye, so it got me to thinking.

If resolution, memory card capacity, etc. all continues to increase, do you think that at some point in time, photographs will become almost infinitely croppable? Like taking a photo of someone, and then being able to increase magnification to a point where you can see pores, skin structure, etc, like in a microscope? Or maybe taking a wide angle photo of a forest and being able to zoom down to the veins on one particular leaf?

Could it go even further, and allow you to actually magnify to the molecular level?

I know its just science fiction right now, but I wonder how and when it will ever end. Is there some wall that we will eventually run into?

Any physicists out there?

[Ash]

A fanciful thought. But not without merit.
2D imagery of 3D objects is limited significantly to how much magnification can be achieved whilst retaining detail.

I'm definitely no physicist, but light and electron microscopy are totally different realms of imagery.

Microscopy requires basically the thinnest layers of material to be examined to make out structures such as cell groups, cells, subcellular elements, compounds and finally atoms. So 2D images from an almost 2D structure - like a slice of tissue one cell thick or a compound one molecule thick.

The future is limitless but I can't see that kind of analysis happening from a life-size photograph.

[KungPOW]

The wavelength of visable light is too large to be used to "see" atoms.

At one point in my life I knew what the smallest thing that could be resolved with visable light. I think it is along the lines of bacteria.

Past that electrons are used. To "see" molecules they use x-rays.

Maybe Falconeye will chime in.

[Ash]

The wavelength of visable light is too large to be used to "see" atoms.

At one point in my life I knew what the smallest thing that could be resolved with visable light. I think it is along the lines of bacteria.

Past that electrons are used. To "see" molecules they use x-rays.

Maybe Falconeye will chime in.

No, it's not x-rays, it'e electron beams.

But light microscopy can visualise detail much better than just the outline of bacteria. They can easily resolve subcellular components like mitochondria, nucleoli and even chromosomes - and that's standard light microscopy at 100-200x magnification. I'm sure the technology's available to expand on that before proceeding to electron microscopy...

[TValand]

I would think the limiting factor would be the "resolution" of the lens. I don't think regular glass is clear enough for cropping to bacteria-level. Not sure if there are any materials today that are that clear..?

[TValand]

I would think the hardest bit technology wise would be finding a material for the lens that would be clear enough to capture all that detail.

[reeftool]

There is a lot of discussion right now claiming that many of the newer sensors out resolve the lenses. I believe there was a thread running a year or so back with a link to a tech journal that claimed that anything more than 15 megapixels was beyond the ability of a lens. A good subject for the engineering types as much of it went over my head.

[Nachodog]

I would think the hardest bit technology wise would be finding a material for the lens that would be clear enough to capture all that detail.

+1 agree.

10 char.

[KungPOW]

No, it's not x-rays, it'e electron beams.

But light microscopy can visualise detail much better than just the outline of bacteria. They can easily resolve subcellular components like mitochondria, nucleoli and even chromosomes - and that's standard light microscopy at 100-200x magnification. I'm sure the technology's available to expand on that before proceeding to electron microscopy...

Actually it is x-rays they use. I am talking about molecule level stuf.

Read this: X-ray crystallography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't think you can see much in the way of subcellular structure with light microscopy. In large cells (plant cells) you can see the area that is the nucleus, it looks like a dark smudge. Chomosomes nope. too small.

All subcellular stuff is done with electron microscopes.

They do some cellular invitro work with flouescent tags on chromosomes. This allows them to follow live the movements in cell division etc. But this is more like being able to see a car with its headlights on, while not being able to see the car.

[Ash]

Actually it is x-rays they use. I am talking about molecule level stuf.

Read this: X-ray crystallography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't think you can see much in the way of subcellular structure with light microscopy. In large cells (plant cells) you can see the area that is the nucleus, it looks like a dark smudge. Chomosomes nope. too small.

All subcellular stuff is done with electron microscopes.

They do some cellular invitro work with flouescent tags on chromosomes. This allows them to follow live the movements in cell division etc. But this is more like being able to see a car with its headlights on, while not being able to see the car.

I wasn't referring to the analysis of crystals, but point taken about Xray diffraction techniques. It's another method of analysing particulate matter.

Light microscopy has been used for years in the clinical applications of genetic analysis: Fluorescent in situ Hybridization (FISH), Multicolour-FISH, Quantitative-FISH (Q-FISH), Karyotyping (fluorescent and brightfield), and Comparative Genomic Hybridization.

For light microscopy the wavelength of the light limits the resolution to around 0.2 micrometers, which is smaller than any chromosome (in the order of 2-7 micrometers), mitochondria (about 0.5-0.8 micrometers), lysosomes (0.9 micrometers) and common Gram -ve bacteria like E.coli (0.5-1.2 micrometers) .

In order to gain higher resolution, the use of an electron beam with a far smaller wavelength is used in electron microscopes. They have much greater resolving power than light microscopes that use electromagnetic radiation and can obtain magnifications of up to 1 million times, while the best light microscopes are limited to magnifications of 1000 times, because the wavelength of an electron is much smaller than that of a photon of visible light. The electron microscope uses electrostatic and electromagnetic lenses in forming the image by controlling the electron beam to focus it at a specific plane relative to the specimen.

Transmission electron microscopy is principally quite similar to the compound light microscope, by sending an electron beam through a very thin slice of the specimen. The resolution limit in 2005 was around 0.05 nanometers and has not increased appreciably since that time.

Scanning electron microscopy visualizes details on the surfaces of cells and particles and gives a detailed and textured 3D view with much more improved contrast to light microscopy.

Other microscopic technologies are available - these are just the common examples.

[Ash]

There is a lot of discussion right now claiming that many of the newer sensors out resolve the lenses. I believe there was a thread running a year or so back with a link to a tech journal that claimed that anything more than 15 megapixels was beyond the ability of a lens. A good subject for the engineering types as much of it went over my head.

That would be FF and APS-C lenses, no?
So even film captures (not the film itself) have no more resolution as a result of this limiting factor...

What about MF lenses?

[Ben_Edict]

I would think the limiting factor would be the "resolution" of the lens. I don't think regular glass is clear enough for cropping to bacteria-level. Not sure if there are any materials today that are that clear..?

Lens resolution is not determined by the materials, but by something very simple:

SIZE.

The larger the lens diameter, the higher the theoretical resolution (let's take manufacturing limitations out of the equation and just stick with visible light wavelengthes). To reach high resolution, your lens needs to get bigger and bigger (if shooting from any distance). So there are some very practical limits to resolution: size and accordingly weight and especially cost!

Ben

[Ben_Edict]

That would be FF and APS-C lenses, no?
So even film captures (not the film itself) have no more resolution as a result of this limiting factor...

What about MF lenses?

Basically MF lenses need even less resolutio (or resolving power) than 35mm lenses, because resolution in photography always is determined by the final output, aka the print. So for a print of a given size, you need less resolution in a MF negative as in a 35mm neg, because the magnification factor can be much lower.

Nevertheless there are high res MF lenses, which are en par with lenses for smaller formats, but certainly MF or LF are not meant to be high res.

Ben

[TValand]

Lens resolution is not determined by the materials, but by something very simple:

SIZE.

The larger the lens diameter, the higher the theoretical resolution (let's take manufacturing limitations out of the equation and just stick with visible light wavelengthes). To reach high resolution, your lens needs to get bigger and bigger (if shooting from any distance). So there are some very practical limits to resolution: size and accordingly weight and especially cost!

Ben

Lens resolution is determined by size, but with better materials, you'd get better resolution in a smaller size, or am I way off on this..?

[Ben_Edict]

Lens resolution is determined by size, but with better materials, you'd get better resolution in a smaller size, or am I way off on this..?

Unfortunately you are off. Better materials are not a problem today. The resolution is only limited by diameter, nothing else. Ofcourse there are still inferior lenses on the market, which do not perform to the theoretical limits, but that's rarely a problem of materials, but one of manufacturing or lens design (rought surfaces, due to poor polishing, bad centering etc.)

Resolution is limited by the maximum diameter of the exit pupil of the lens. Usually you would talk about resolving power, which is:

RP = 1/1.22 Lambda K; where Lambda is the wavelength of light and K the relative aperture

You can see from this formula immediately, that resolution increases with shorter wavelengthes (bluer light) and larger apertures. This is the determining factor.

Ben