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Clarkvision.com home is a personal blog at clarkvision.com about science and design. Since 2010, 32 different Hacker News readers have linked it 35 times, most often “If the human eye was a digital camera, it would have 576 megapixels”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
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35mentions?
32HN people?
2010–2025first – last linked?
Most-linked posts?
- If the human eye was a digital camera, it would have 576 megapixels4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-02-13
- /articles/eye-resolution.html4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-07-19
- Resolution of the human eye3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-08-22
- Nightscape and Astro Photography – Clark Vision2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-02-18
- /articles/dynamicrange2/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-01-19
- /articles/eye-resolution.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-08-29
What Hacker News says?
> That said, the criticism above is very scarce on details. What exactly is the nonsense about mathematical concepts that he is objecting to? There are examples in the thread I linked to. > But the strongest argument going for Clark, IMO, is his stunning pictures. I've seen countless amateurs produce far better images with much cheaper equipment. He also misses the point of modding cameras, improving Ha sensitivity…
Comment linking /galleries/gallery.astrophoto-1/web/north-america-nebula.c07.25.2015.0J6A4162-213-c-c1-1181s.html
on “I took 50k images of the night sky to make an 81 Megapixel image of the moon”Submitted Resolution of the human eye as a story · 58 points
HN discussionThis is great; as another pointer, http://clarkvision.com is my go-to source for beautiful astrophotography with technical explanations. Look for astro gallery and tutorials if interested
Comment linking /
on “I took 50k images of the night sky to make an 81 Megapixel image of the moon”Submitted If the human eye was a digital camera, it would have 576 megapixels as a story · 6 points
HN discussionWe're actually approaching, if not have passed, the resolution of standard film with some higher end SLRs [1, 2]; at least in a total-usable-pixels perspective; but of course at the sub-pixel level, we're still very far off with only 14 bits per channel. There's also the question of how the total pixels are arranged, since each bit of the sensor is only absorbing one color, etc; but in time, at least as far as resol…
Comment linking /imagedetail/film.vs.digital.summary1.html
on “Russia in color, a century ago”Submitted Notes on the resolution and other details of the human eye as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThat doesn't sound accurate. The human eye's resolution is in the tens if not hundreds of megapixels [1] with high sensitivity (meaning the compression isn't very lossy so the bits of information remain). Even if you assume only a few frames per second that's far more than 11 megabit/s. [1] https://clarkvision.com/articles/eye-resolution.html
Comment linking /articles/eye-resolution.html
on “Giving GPT-3 a Turing Test”Submitted If the human eye was a digital camera, it would have 576 megapixels as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHumans can distinguish a lot more than that. See: http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html . His calculation gives 530 ppi at 20 inches. Explanation: "The eye is not a single frame snapshot camera. It is more like a video stream. The eye moves rapidly in small angular amounts and continually updates the image in one's brain to "paint" the detail. We also have two eyes, and our brains combine the signal…
Comment linking /imagedetail/eye-resolution.html
on “Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699”Submitted The Color of the Night Sky as a story · 1 points
HN discussionFollow up question I googled. What is the resolution of our Eyes? Ans: 576 Megapixels [1]..... Holy..... And here we are, trying to rely on couple of cameras for autopilot. [1] http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/eye-resolution.html
Comment linking /articles/eye-resolution.html
on “How much bandwidth does the spinal cord have?”Submitted Nightscape and Astro Photography – Clark Vision as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> remember human vision is 570+ megapixels This seems to come from http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/eye-resolution.html But that number is a calculation of the maximum resolving power of the human eye filled across a 120 degree field of view. The fovea is the only portion of the retina that actually attains that acuity and it encompasses roughly 2 degrees in the center of the retina. There are roughly 120 million…
Comment linking /articles/eye-resolution.html
on “Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close””To take many exposures of the same scene and average the pixel values with the corresponding pixels from all the exposures. This increases the SNR and dynamic range, but naturally doesn't work very well if your subject isn't static. It doesn't increase the resolution of the image though. For the 16mm movie cameras in this case, they probably selected frames from rigidly mounted cameras with little subject motion to…
Comment linking /articles/image-stacking-methods/
on “60 years after Gemini, newly processed images reveal details”Author of the article here; I wasn't able to understand how to get that to work, and I talked about that in the post. This demo is doing that: https://jlongster.com/why-chromaticity-shape#block-31f373 The problem is "for each pixel inside the area". I could have done that, and then clipped the output by that shape. The problem is this doesn't answer why the shape is this way at all because you are using the shape it…
Comment linking /articles/color-cie-chromaticity-and-perception/
on “Why does the chromaticity diagram look like that?”About the only camera that I know of that will currently saturate the bitdepth of a 14-bit ADC/RAW with DR at base ISO is a Sony A7S II, so right now, yeah, shooting in JPEG is the real issue. This will change in the next few years. If you're the kind of guy who wants to read the relatively dry writings of someone who spends a whole lot of time figuring this stuff out, the following link might interest you: http://c…
Comment linking /articles/digital.sensor.performance.summary/
on “A method for improving Milky Way exposures in light pollution”Interestingly the figure for "the eye has a resolution of 576 megapixels" comes from this article: https://clarkvision.com/articles/eye-resolution.html
Comment linking /articles/eye-resolution.html
on “My First 80 Days of VR for Exercise”As to question (b): the wavelength is not the same. The red primaries in most color spaces, including wide-ish stuff like DCI-P3 is around 615. Even Rec 2020 is just 630. https://clarkvision.com/articles/color-spaces/ Note that it's fairly common to see chromaticity diagrams labelled with wavelengths around the edges, so you can check multiple sources if you want. I didn't read the original article in sufficient dep…
Comment linking /articles/color-spaces/
on “Declining eyesight improved by looking at deep red light”The ~235 ppi of the Retina display probably isn't there yet. The human eye is really a nifty organ. For example, it increases the spatial resolution of perception above the density of the rods/cones by sampling from slightly different viewpoints and integrating over time. See: http://clarkvision.com/articles/eye-resolution.html . Also, there is the fact that you can move your face closer to the screen to look at som…
Comment linking /articles/eye-resolution.html
on “Living a High-DPI desktop lifestyle can be painful on Windows”This is not entirely accurate. While many people do view their photos at small sizes on pretty poor screens, the dynamic range of the entire analog processing chain was typically much less than what even entry-level digital cameras offer today. See for example: http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/dynamicrange2/ Also, for any print that is intended to fit in an album or a frame, there is little benefit over 3 MP. For…
Comment linking /articles/dynamicrange2/
on “Sony Releases Stacked CMOS Sensor for Smartphones with 48 Effective Megapixels”1. I didn't check your numbers, but I'll assume you're correct. However, in my experience, film does not even come close to approaching those theoretical lp/mm numbers. This test, done with Ektachrome instead of Ektar, reflects my own findings: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/iq180_vs_8... 2. Ok, you're right. Some films will certainly outperform some digital. But, the new MF backs will shoot 13-15…
Comment linking /articles/dynamicrange2/
on “Kodak files for bankruptcy”> Me and a friend were just chatting how annoying it is monitors stalled out at 4K. I think I got my first set of 4k monitors ~15 years ago (!) and there's been no improvements since then apart from high end pro monitors resolution wise. Multiple reasons. The first one being yield - yes you can get 8K screens, but the larger they get, the more difficult it is to cut a panel with an acceptably low rate of dead/stuck…
Comment linking /articles/eye-resolution.html
on “Asus Announces October Availability of ProArt Display 8K PA32KCX”Here's a decent explanation of the phenomenon they're referring to [0]. Marketing departments usually boil it down to "larger pixels = less noise in low light" but that's a really simple explanation. 0. http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/does.pixel.size.matter/#...
Comment linking /articles/does.pixel.size.matter/
on “Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge”>Edit: For those downvoting this I should have probably provided supporting evidence, though oddly no one treated the parent post in the same way. Maybe because they were ALREADY familiar with numerous articles examining the matter. >Feel free to follow the references at the base of this article: http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html* It's funny how you send as "supporting evidence" non-specific to…
Comment linking /imagedetail/eye-resolution.html*
on “WebKit Limit on Retina JPG Image Display”I was referring to studies made by actual doctors not PR campaigns. Edit: For those downvoting this I should have probably provided supporting evidence, though oddly no one treated the parent post in the same way. Feel free to follow the references at the base of this article: http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html
Comment linking /imagedetail/eye-resolution.html
on “WebKit Limit on Retina JPG Image Display”Or you can just buy a mid-range digital mirrorless or DSLR camera with a sufficiently wide FOV lens and then crop the photo. Most decent cameras offer an in-camera aspect ratio crop, or various grids, if you want to have the composition assistance. A current sony mirrorless camera will blow the XPan out of the water in every possible sense unless you're shooting VERY high quality, VERY low ISO film, and the exposure…
Comment linking /imagedetail/digital.signal.to.noise/index.html
on “The Curse of the Hasselblad XPan”I'm highly skeptical of the technical claims you're making here. Quality photography paper has about 10 stops of dynamic range (which is why the zone system for composition and printing goes up to X). While the negatives themselves may have slightly more dynamic range, there's also the clarkvision page[1] indicating they, in fact, have less dynamic range. This makes sense: you have less area to work with, and need t…
Comment linking /articles/dynamicrange2/
on “The contagious visual blandness of Netflix”It all depends on how closely you're viewing them. We have a bunch of photos shot with a 5D (12MP) printed about four feet tall. They look great from a normal viewing distance. Of course, when you put your face six inches away, you can start to see some digital artifacts (stair stepping, etc.) but that's not a problem. The maximum necessary resolution is related to the intended viewing distance. "The standard defini…
Comment linking /imagedetail/eye-resolution.html
on “The megapixel myth”I actually studied photography (technically contemporary art, but photography was my main medium) but chose to not pursue a career in it. You are correct, bit depth matters. It is unlikely 32 bits will ever be needed for RAW files though. Specifically, it matters for source files and intermediate files. With RAW files from the camera, the higher the bit depth of the analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) step, the less…
Comment linking /imagedetail/eye-resolution.html
on “JPEG XL: How It Started, How It’s Going”Some valid points, but much of the article seems very iPhone-biased. I agree that a search button is totally unnecessary, and I never use it, but I've had a use for the menu button on every screen. Keep in mind that most iPhone apps have a button bar on the bottom with items. This is just smart screen management. The back button has a few software design quirks that give it inconsistent result, but again most apps u…
Comment linking /articles/printer-ppi/
on “Nexus One from an iPhone Developer's Perspective”
