Re: [Leica] an order of magnitude

[Michael Chmilar <chmilar@mminternet.com>]

Just to be completely pedantic about such a pedantic
subject: all of the answers are only half correct.

What is considered to be "an order of magnitude"
in a system depends on the magnitude of the
system.

In number systems, it depends completely on the
base of the number system: In a binary number
system, and order of magnitude is 2x; in octal numbers,
it is 8x, in hexadecimal it is 16x.

For numbers, an order of magnitude is whenever
you add a new "place" (ie. another zero), to a number.
In other words, you are incrementing the exponent
by one (the exponent is the magnitude).

All of the previous answers assumed a base 10
system, which is only part of the answer.

To ask how you apply the notion of "order of magnitude"
to something other than a number system is when you
invite debate. For instance, is an f1.4 lens an order
of magnitude faster than f2.0?

In music, an octave could be thought of as one order
of magnitude in terms of pitch. 3dB (what we would
perceive as twice as loud) might be a natural candidate
for an order of magnitude louder.

I am not sure what would constitute an order of
magnitude of "betterness" for filmstocks.

I will leave the debates on "order of magnitude" as
it applies to scotch and cigars to those who like to
fill my mailbox with their off-topic bickering....

later,
Mike

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