Is this transition normal?

[biggerben]

I recently bought a Nikon D90 and went to photograph some planes with it. Zooming in very far I noticed this transition (which *should* be white painted on red and therefore one pixel red, the next white). Is this normal for such a camera, or am I doing something wrong?

Other objects nearby are not out of focus or blurred. The image itsself is at http://www.phys.ethz.ch/~kingb/DSC_1461.JPG. You are free to C&C the image, but the main reason I'm posting is because of those worrying pixels!

 

[DeadEye]

Dont worry such small stuff, I say its normal.

How it look at normal size?

 

[biggerben]

I guess that's what the unsharp mask is for :/
(I'm having real trouble with that by the way: if anyone using gimp could give me an estimate of what settings I should be using I'd be grateful!)


What do you mean, how does it look at normal size? for the full picture, check out the link!
The inline picture of the transition is pixel-by-pixel, just blown up so you can see it.

 

[Jaszek]

Yea, stop pixel peeping. And it is normal.

OT: AIR Berlin has good food , but is always delayed.

 

[DeadEye]

Its a normal transition. Man that must be about 3000% LOL Thats a pixel peep. If you blow anything up enough its ragged. A razor edge looks like a jagged mess under a microscope.

Your camera is fine.

Welcome to TPF

Best Dan

 

[biggerben]

thanks guys. I guess it blatently obvious I'm a noob now

 

[Big Mike]

How to test a photo: Print it out at 8x10 inches and hold it at arms length. If it looks good from there, you're OK.

 

[Garbz]

When looking that close, lack of sharpness you see is often the result of the interpolation of the sensor. Your 10 or so megapixels are actually laid out into a grid of red green blue and green:

RGBGRGBG
GBGRGBGR
BGRGBGRG

In order to create one single pixel the RAW converter in the camera or on the computer must interpolate the colour from the surrounding pixels and then apply sharpening. In theory the most perfect pixel changing in colour (without any influence from the lens) is a "hot" pixels which fails in a longer exposure. These are rendered as perfect crosses 3x3 pixels by most raw converters. Thus you will never get a 100% pixel to pixel transition even with a perfect lens.