Fundus drawings versus photography.

Under adverse optical conditions (turbidity of the media) a well-trained observer/artist, using slit-lamp stereomicroscopy, is able to display in a drawing considerably more correct information about a fundus than what a fundus camera records. To a lesser degree this holds under favorable conditions too. General advocation of photography for being more objective is questioned; even if true, meme objectivity, i.e. no false information, would not make up for loss of important details. This paper intends to prove these points experimentally on an object (a nummulite shell) unfamiliar to the artist charged to do the drawing. The latter and photographs taken under varying conditions were compared inter se and with a high resolution scanning electron micrograph.