Message posted by gary on December 01, 2001 at 15:47:05 PST:

Note that for situations where the target is much closer than 26 miles away, film is the way to go. Certainly for the TTR from Diablo or even Brainwash. The smaller field of view means more images to paste together.

Now for some situations where you want to spy on a small area, such as the camera on Bald Mountain or hopefully a plane on the Groom Runway, CCD imaging would probably be better provided you have enough magnification to fill the video screen.

CCDs are typically on a 10um pitch, or 1e-5 meter. Film is characterized in lines per milimeter (lpmm), i.e. lines per 1e-3 meter. Doing the math, you have 100 pixels in a mm, but to produce a line, you need two pixels, i.e. one bright and one dim. Thus a CCD can produce 50 lpmm, while good film is easily 160 lpmm, though less as the constrast is reduced. Anyway, the bottom line is if you want to see something with a CCD, make sure you have the right magnification. It's not like film where you can zoom in later.

In Reply to: video tips added to photo tips page at desertsecrets posted by Steve Hauser on December 01, 2001 at 14:23:10 PST:

Replies: