Selecting smaller image sizes

when selecting smaller image size other than the maximum resolution, does the camera perform an additional step of downconverting from the max resolution to the required resolution? or simply the image sensor uses a smaller image area to capture shots (much like the D2X)?

It converts the image to the smaller resolution, keeping the full frame.

Best regards,
Andy

if that's the case, burst shots using lowered resolution will be slower than that of "full" frame, since additional steps are required by the image processor to downconvert and save to the media?

That would be something, stepping down to a smaller size causes the sensor to further crop the image making your 300mm lens appear like a 1500mm lens. How cool would that be? jk

smasraum wrote:
That would be something, stepping down to a smaller size causes the sensor to further crop the image making your 300mm lens appear like a 1500mm lens. How cool would that be? jk

That's what Noink does (D2X) to get from 5-8 FPS (and that's starting with a 1.5x crop at "full frame"). Be careful what you ask for . . .

Burst shots will be the same speed, but you can actually get more images in the burst with lower resolution, as the critical part is buffer size and the speed of writing the images to the CF card.

Best regards,
Andy

smasraum wrote:
That would be something, stepping down to a smaller size causes the sensor to further crop the image making your 300mm lens appear like a 1500mm lens. How cool would that be? jk

No. You'd end up with a very tiny recorded image. You wouldn't end up with an image that look like it was taken with a huge zoom.

The conversion of the varying voltages produced by the CMOS sensor to a computer file format like JPEG is a fairly major task. There are a lot of steps involved and the EOS digicams have pretty powerful internal computers to accomplish this.

I doubt the extra step of downsampling the image during this proces would make any difference at all in the time it took to create the JPEG.