Dots to Resolution

[rs-eos]

One very odd practice that the industry does with screens on both photgraphy and videography gear is to use dots as a unit.

So you'll see specifications such as 460,000 dots.  That may seem like a decent amount, but it's very misleading.  Dots are actually individual components of pixels.  One dot will thus be either a single red, single green, or single blue component.  Each pixel is made up of three dots (components).

So to get the total number of pixels, you have to divide by three.  Then, based upon the screen's aspect ratio, you can finally compute the resolution.

Here's a quick chart I made for various equipment:

Note: I believe Canon and other manufacturers are rounding the values to the closest 10,000 value.  I believe an EOS C70's screen would really be 1280 x 720 which would yield 2,764,800 dots.  Thus, the resolution in the above chart may be slightly off from reality.

Also, I'm assuming that both the viewfinder and rear screen of the R5 using a 3:2 aspect ratio.

The equations used in the spreasheet:

width = square-root((dots / 3) / aspect) x aspect

height = square-root((dots / 3) / aspect)

So the next time you see specs close to 6 million dots, know that it's nothing more than approxiately full HD (1080p).

Here's hoping that manufacturers one day avoid this strange practice of using dots.