At 8:55 AM +0000 9/21/02, olympus-digest wrote:
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2002 17:42:32 -0400
From: Rick <R.Adshead@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [OM] Silicon film-email them!!
I just went to the Silicon film site
http://www.siliconfilm.com
This is almost totally content-free. Just some promo photos of mockups. I
wonder if there are any engineers working there.
The thickness of the "film" is not stated, but it looks like a few millimeters,
which most camera backs can accomodate. But, see below.
and they request that you email to them if you are interested in this
product. We should ALL do this and mention that we need this product to
support the Oly OM cameras. How will their marketing folks know what cameras
to support if we don't tell them. This is our only chance cause if they use
camera sales data to decide this, we are a lost cause. My guess is that they
have no idea how many of us are out there. Over a hundred emails asking for
OM support should impress the hell out of them.
We are foolish if we don't give this a shot since it costs us only a few
minutes time.
I think their purpose is to gather a case for continued venture capital
funding; OM is neither here nor there. There is no reason to believe such a
thing would not work in OMs.
I can imagine how to build such a device, and working with existing camera backs is not
hard if one mounts the CCD chips directly on the "film". It need not be the
thickness of a standard IC package. The problem will be cost and perhaps fragility. And
storage capacity and transfer speed.
Cost. At present, the CCDs would cost so much one could just buy an entire
digital camera and be done with it. And a real digital camera would not need
to be so compromised.
Fragility. The "film" is long and thin, and will bend easily, cracking the
chips. It will have to be made of a very strong, stiff material, and yet be thermally
matched to the CCD chips (made of silicon). If not thermally matched, the chips will
just pop off after a few thermal cycles. Cameras *are* thermally cycled as they are
brought from heated buildings to arctic cold, etc. This is a very hard problem.
Cleaning. How do we get the dust and inevitable thumbprint off the faces of the CCD
chips? One assumes that there will be a full-frame glass coverslip protecting the chips
and their wiring. This coverslip will be easily broken if the "film" is bent.
Storage capacity. A 35mm cassette isn't that big, and most of it's volume will
be taken up with the battery.
Transfer speed. It takes fast (power-hungry) electronics to handle the
resulting digital files, so one may need to wait a long time before taking the
next photo. Unloading the cassette could be faster, because external power
could be supplied during the transfer.
Other issues: Induction through metal can work, but only for *very* low datarates, a few
bits per second, too low to be practical for image transfer, and would require a lot of
power from the battery. IR transmission through the film-speed window can work, but will
be fairly slow or will run the battery down pretty fast. I would guess that the intent
is that one opens the camera and plugs a cable in to "change the film", and
that this cable also powers the unit during transfer.
I guess my bottom-line reaction is that silicon film, while possible, isn't likely to be economically practical, and one would be better off buying a real digital camera.
The great white hope would be for somebody to make a digital back for elderly
cameras. I don't know that the market for OM digital backs will be large
enough to make it practical for somebody to manufacture such a thing, unless it
can be made as a minor mechanical mod to something intended for some other
camera, or the product is pitched to multiple camera brands at once, with
suitable adapters (or instructions on modification of existing backs). Given
the price of full-frame 35mm CCDs, it won't be for some time.
Joe Gwinn
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