What… Pixels are not it?

[mike weeks]

The issue is a simple one, there is the real terminology which then gets used by marketing men as whatever they want and then men marketing themselves by inventing new words or repurposing old words, it was always so and I doubt it will ever stop

 

[sk66]

The sensel is just a photo diode that converts photons into electrons... at 1:1 output a pixel represents a photo diode, but that is fairly irrelevant (it only matters in terms of digital display which is highly variable). In all other aspects what matters is the physical size of the recording medium (sensor), how much light is captured, and the physical size it will be reproduced at (enlarged/reduced).

 

[Bollygum]

It all makes sense to me as a computer person, but none as a photographer. I remember when (probably 20 years ago) the standards organisation decreed that kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte etc (or kilobit or whatever) were really decimal terms and kilo meant 1,000 and not 1024. The disk sales people jumped on board as decimal gave bigger numbers but computer engineers kept reporting things in binary. This is why when you buy an 2TB disk it is reported as having a capacity of 1.8TB. The salesmen use Terrabytes and the engineers use Tebybytes (teby or meby or kiby for binary numbers). What is clearer for some is more confusing for others.

 

[Nod]

I don't really care about the 2.4% difference between a Kiby/Meby/Teby and their decimal equivalents as long as people use the correct prefix. For some reason (probably the several orders of magnitude of error...) it really annoys me when people write/type mB/s or similar when they mean Mb/s. I can accept that typos happen (hell, I make them all the time!) but I try very hard to correct mine before hitting the post reply button (or Alt + S).

 

[chuckles]

when they mean Mb/s.

And there's the rub!

Once upon a time (not so long ago), the "S" was capitalised to indicate a second - 1/60th of a minute.... now that capital "S" denotes a Siemens - an altogether different beast! That in itself is a conundrum - being that it was once called a mho

 

[Kodiak Qc]

were really decimal terms and kilo meant 1,000 and not 1024.

Among other confusing things like…

They are selling optical fibre internet connections service at speed
said at 2MB/s instead of Mb/s! … big difference!

 

[Kodiak Qc]

I try very hard to correct mine before hitting the post reply button (or Alt + S).

Did you try … " ⌘ + s " ?

 

[Nod]

No, because I use a computer rather than a Malus.

Indeed, Barry. The joys of the SI system!