At 9:22 PM -0800 1/1/00, Phillip Franklin wrote:
>Certainly as we see improvements is wafer manufacturing we will see more
>dense and powerful chips, not bigger chips. Larger & faster data buses
>along with lowered power requirements due to the smaller more dense
>chips will be the solution for newer ccd cameras. Bigger sized chips
>would be going backwards. So waiting for a chip size that would be equal
>in physical size to a 35 mm image area may not be the future of hand
>help ccd cameras. Some experts feel that lens design will eventually
>change to take on this new format. So who knows? Olympus may redesign
>a series of lenses to accommodate a standard sized ccd array when a
>standard becomes a reality. Right now I think the industry is at a
>cross roads where the analog standards are starting to give way to
>digital standards ( which basically says smaller is better and less
>power requirements equal faster performance). Performance is Everything
>not old standards. Why use a new modern tool if it can't perform as
>good as the older tool?
I think that you're ignoring part of the reason (in addition to grain)
that modern film cameras stopped getting smaller: you can't put as good
an image on the smaller sensor. Think how 50mm and shorter lenses start
to lose sharpness above about f11 because of diffraction effects, and
consider that the standard in a digicam today is a 6-19mm zoom. From my
(limited) experience with the C2000 you really can see the diffraction at
f11. With smaller CCD pixels the problem would only get worse.
CCD's have been around long enough that the minimum pixel size is also not
going to get that much smaller while maintaining ASA rating and noise margins,
so if you want bigger (pixel count) arrays they're going to have to be
bigger physically.
Btw, CCD's are not where the power consumption goes in in modern digicams --
it's all the backlighting for the LCD. And similarly, data transfer speed
really isn't the problem either. The Kodak high-end design is expensive because
it's stupid, er, not optimized. It has to shove all the CCD pixels directly
across a data link. More modern designs (the nikon/Oly/etc prosumer models)
store the image in fast RAM and then trickle it out to permanent storage over
the course of several seconds. A 100-200 MB buffer would not add a whole lot
of cost to your hypothetical 6-megapixel dream digicam.
paul
Paul Wallich pw@xxxxxxxxx
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|