Highway MPG rating as to Megapixels, City MPG as to Lens Quality.

phucheneh

Diamond Member
Jun 30, 2012
7,306
5
0
I can see the analogy:

A high megapixel CCD is very common. Pretty much every modern camera is capable of being 'high megapixel.' It doesn't always (or rather, rarely does) make it a high-quality device. Taking truly good pictures requires a quality (versus megapixel quantity) CCD and a good lens.

Given a car with decent enough aerodynamics, good highway mileage is merely a function of proper gearing. Engine displacement means increasingly little, since the bigger engines are under a lot less stress and can cruise comfortably at lower RPM's. To get above par (...shouldn't better be 'below par'? never got that) city mileage takes a lot more effort, with higher quality, more complex parts and smart design.

There's a...rough analogy there. But I do think a BIT abstractly...
 

Kroze

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2001
4,052
1
0
I can see the analogy:

A high megapixel CCD is very common. Pretty much every modern camera is capable of being 'high megapixel.' It doesn't always (or rather, rarely does) make it a high-quality device. Taking truly good pictures requires a quality (versus megapixel quantity) CCD and a good lens.

Given a car with decent enough aerodynamics, good highway mileage is merely a function of proper gearing. Engine displacement means increasingly little, since the bigger engines are under a lot less stress and can cruise comfortably at lower RPM's. To get above par (...shouldn't better be 'below par'? never got that) city mileage takes a lot more effort, with higher quality, more complex parts and smart design.

There's a...rough analogy there. But I do think a BIT abstractly...
Can you write my research paper? :p
 

Railgun

Golden Member
Mar 27, 2010
1,289
2
81
You're comparing two sides of the same coin to two different currencies. The analogy doesn't work.
 

Eureka

Diamond Member
Sep 6, 2005
3,822
1
81
Your topic title was the first thing on the internet in a long time that made me verbally go "what".
 

Pulsar

Diamond Member
Mar 3, 2003
5,224
306
126
No, Op, you're not.

City driving is the harshest test of a vehicle's fuel economy. If you want a good economical car, you look at the city economy because if it's good, the highway is too.

People buying a camera look at the megapixels, because it's been the mostly over-riding factor in a camera's image quality: or at least it has been until just very recently. NO one walks in and says "I want a camera with really high lense quality". The people who worry about lense quality buy a dslr and buy seperate lenses.

Megapixels = City economy.

You've got it completely backwards.
 

phucheneh

Diamond Member
Jun 30, 2012
7,306
5
0
No, Op, you're not.

City driving is the harshest test of a vehicle's fuel economy. If you want a good economical car, you look at the city economy because if it's good, the highway is too.

People buying a camera look at the megapixels, because it's been the mostly over-riding factor in a camera's image quality: or at least it has been until just very recently. NO one walks in and says "I want a camera with really high lense quality". The people who worry about lense quality buy a dslr and buy seperate lenses.

Megapixels = City economy.

You've got it completely backwards.

...do you take pictures with a 10MP (or whatever) iPhone and think the quality is not, uh...need a proper adjective...ass-tastic?

My 5MP Canon is at least 7-8 years old and makes 95% of newer point-and-shoots its bitch. He didn't get it backwards (not that it's a fabulous analogy, but it's less-fabulous the other way around). Cameras plateaued at 5-6MP and everything since then has just been cheaper crap with bigger numbers on it.

You're comparing two sides of the same coin to two different currencies. The analogy doesn't work.

I can't tell is this was serious or a sarcastic attempt to make even less sense.
 

Kroze

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2001
4,052
1
0
Well I wouldn't expect the general sheeple to understand the logic anyway. They feed and swallow every bit of the industry's cool aid. Move along sheeple, nothing to see here.
 

KIAman

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2001
3,342
23
81
I would say the following

Highway MPG = Megapixels
City MPG = Sensor size (CCD, CMOS)
Your driving habits = Lens quality
 

Itchrelief

Golden Member
Dec 20, 2005
1,398
0
71
If you have to result to calling people sheeple, you didn't have much of an argument to begin with.
 

Throckmorton

Lifer
Aug 23, 2007
16,829
3
0
Not a good analogy.

For one thing, it's a myth that megapixels don't matter. It depends on the quality of the lens. I have a 16 megapixel sensor and with a sharp 50mm f1.8 prime lens, I've been able to get shots that would normally require a telephoto lens, by cropping. If I had only 10 megapixels, much less 5, I wouldn't have enough pixels to do that.
 

Howard

Lifer
Oct 14, 1999
47,982
11
81
Well I wouldn't expect the general sheeple to understand the logic anyway. They feed and swallow every bit of the industry's cool aid. Move along sheeple, nothing to see here.
Wow, you're stupid.
 

Zenmervolt

Elite member
Oct 22, 2000
24,514
44
91
I would say the following

Highway MPG = Megapixels
City MPG = Sensor size (CCD, CMOS)
Your driving habits = Lens quality

This. The analogy is fairly crappy no matter how you look at it, but this is as accurate is it's going to get.

ZV
 

DominionSeraph

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2009
8,386
32
91
Given a car with decent enough aerodynamics, good highway mileage is merely a function of proper gearing. Engine displacement means increasingly little, since the bigger engines are under a lot less stress and can cruise comfortably at lower RPM's.

No, that's just an artifact of current market forces driving for thermodynamic efficiency. Put a 1960's big block, a gas turbine, or a single-expansion steam engine into a car and you're going to have bad gas mileage no matter what the gearing.
 

Zenmervolt

Elite member
Oct 22, 2000
24,514
44
91
No, that's just an artifact of current market forces driving for thermodynamic efficiency. Put a 1960's big block, a gas turbine, or a single-expansion steam engine into a car and you're going to have bad gas mileage no matter what the gearing.

You'll have worse mileage than a new engine, but it won't be horrible. One of the biggest reasons that the old V8 engines did poorly was that they were lugging around cars with the aerodynamics of a blimp hangar and 3-speed automatics with a top ratio of 1:1 and no lockup clutch on the torque converter. The actual changes in thermodynamic efficiency for an otto-cycle gasoline engine are relatively small players in the overall increase in highway fuel efficiency.

As far as comparing turbines or steam engines to otto-cycle gasoline engines, that's just ridiculous. It was abundantly clear that phucheneh was not talking about a 1905 Stanley Steamer nor about a turbine car that never saw mass production.

ZV