10 Megapixel Nikon D1X

This may be old news - I'm rarely first to such info. But i was just reading a month old issue of the British Journal of Photography which states that Nikon D1X can have a 10megapixel output when Raw converted through Capture 4 (after a firmware upgrade). It does this by using previously redundant pixels.

I doubt that this is really a hardware issue - more to do with an advance in interpolation? Anyone know more? Plus when my D100 finally comes back from it service will I suddenly find I can have much bigger files?

Alex

p.s. I was at the Image 2003 awards yesterday and John Bantin of Diver magazine was the MC for the ceremony. Anyway JB earlier this year gave the D100 and digital in general a really hard time in Diver - for being, well, just not good enough for serious photography. So I took great pleasure in watching him congratulate Alan James, in particular, for his awards for his best British Prints (35*45cm) taken with, you guessed it, a D100! Wish I had entered some digital prints too!

I wonder if this has to do with the non-square nature of the D1X imager.

Yeah, supposedly it increases the resolution in the x but not the y direction...

Supposed to be WELL worth the upgrade for NC though...

Cheers

James

I meant to post this link too:

Link

Although it is in Australia - the land of torrential rain - so the computers may be underwater soon.

Alex - When I use the same Nikon Capture software, images from my D1X come out to 60MB/16-bit or 30MB/8-bit images. Sufficient size (barely) for my stock photo work. They can go larger when using Adobe RAW converter, but I happen to like the Nikon Capture conversion better.

The D100 files are much smaller. I seem to remember them being about 18MB at 8-bit, but someone can correct me if in error.

Anyway, the point is that I doubt your D100 will offer larger files when it returns as this seems to be a software enhancement to D1X only. I haven't heard otherwise anyway.

Steve

Alex says: [but i was just reading a month old issue of the British Journal of Photography which states that Nikon D1X can have a 10megapixel output when Raw converted through Capture 4 (after a firmware upgrade).]

BTW ... I don't have the firmware upgrade. The 10 megapixel came with Nikon Capture 3.5 as I recall.

Steve

Sorry, Alex. Just the D1X. Just a modest interpolation of the vertical pixels.

No one knows how well it works, since Capture 4 isn't released yet.

Thanks for the info, guys.

p.s. I was at the Image 2003 awards yesterday and John Bantin of Diver magazine was the MC for the ceremony.

Hi Alex, just wanted to say that we were there as well on Sunday and fully intended to say hello - but then got really sidetracked. Nice to put faces to names etc. Sorry about that and congrats on your win

Andy