Dear OM lovers,
For those interested in technical details of Silicon
film's drop in electronic film cassette replacement product, the July 5th
copy of EDN magazine has an extremely detailed report with lots of technical
details and pictures. EDN usually puts its content online, so you should be
able to get it off their website. Here is a very brief summary.
EDN is an electronic design magazine free to Electronics
proffesionals but expensive to anybody else. It is usually available at most
University libraries also. As others have pointred out before, from what
information has been previously released, the device has some pretty awful
compromises and probably cannot fit an OM model anyway. Even though EDN is a
respectable journal some of the information, is to say the least based on
advertizing hype. I have editorialized in a few places where it got a bit
much.
* Started shipping June 2001
* 2sec between shots
* 1.3Mpixel
* $699
* 24 frames storage
* USB or "PC card"
* Pixel data is processed in your host computer to convert raw Bayer pattern
data to RGB
* Twain interface on PC (like scanners etc)
* 64MB flash on board
* 12bit total per pixel not 24!
* does >not< use JPEG compression on board!
* 1280x1024 CMOS sensor
* 300 pictures per two CR1/3N size batteries
* standby current 15mA . (Huge!)
* 1997 vintage CMOS sensor (STM Microelectronics)
* 1/15sec min shutter speed
* Uses in memory (~"double correlated sampling") subtraction to reduce pixel
noise.
(Probably not nearly as good as doing it on CCD chip,as newer sensors do)
* sensor 2.85 times smaller than film gate: 50mm lens becomes 142mm tele
* they detect the vibration noise of the mirror slap, to trigger the device
on!
* "Most" cameras have a delay of 40mSec from mirror open to shutter open.
(assumed)
* Can use only with auto wind camera because manual wind noise trips mirror
slap detector again!
* Uses Atmel AVR processor and new ultra low power CPLD's ,and BGA chips
* The CPLD devices used have just been obsoleted by Xilinx (my comment)
* Batteries use 750f volume of "cassette", circuits mainly mounted behind
film plane.
* 100ASA equivalent sensitivity
* For TTL flash compatibility 30% reflectance (not the value determined by
Olympus ~23%)
* Infrared OCLI filter between glass cover plte and CMOS sensor
* DSP based not optical antialiasing filter.
(this means cheap lenses will produce better results than high quality
lenses!)
* different cameras need slightly different film plane (Rail?) spacing.
* By year end ("real soon now??") higher pixel count,higher resolution.(track
record not good!)
* Uses Lizard tech GenuineFractal technology "to scale up image resolution"
* Article says vendor recommends that you use silver film when "you need
absolute highest quality"!
Regards,
Tim Hughes
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