I don't think the image sensor is the problem.
I'm talking about a die that is the same size as the current one used in the
Canon D30, namely 22.7mm horizontal only made with pixels the size currently
used in the Olympus 3030, Nikon 990, etc. or about 3.0x smaller in each
direction. This makes for an array of "conventional" pixels in a
"conventionally" sized die totaling 30 million. Why couldn't this be done
today? I suspect the answer is market strategy - not technology. Furthermore
today's camera electronics could handle an image of this size provided
customers were willing to wait 9 times longer for the data to be written to
an on-camera 1GB microdrive or 10 seconds perhaps for a high quality jpg.
I know the small pixels in the <$1000 3Mpixel digicams are nosier than the
D30's and are awful when shot an iso greater than 100 but I believe the
market has proven that they're clean enough for a good, well exposed image.
And 30 million of them would make one awesome image. Finally, you could
always resample it down to 3.3 Mega pixels and get (I predict) a much better
shot than the current D30 can produce.
Why can't this be doe today?
--Bob
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Clark Guy [SMTP:guy.clark@sbt.siemens.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 4:23 PM
> To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
> Subject: RE: Future of Photography (was RE: filmscanners: real
> value?)
>
> HI, Bob!
>
> That's one of the points I feel most secure about.
>
> There is that lower limit to how small the CCD elements (photon buckets)
> can
> be. Too small and they get noisy, smaller than that and they are too
> small
> to respond to visible light!
>
> Then there is the upper limit dictated by how well we can make
> semiconductor
> devices without flaws. The larger they are, the more likely to include a
> flaw. Thus, the larger they are, the more expensive (exponentially with
> die
> area, I've been told) they are! (This partially explains the horrific
> cost
> of medium format digital backs, and the "astronomical" cost of
> astronomical
> "large" CCD arrays (up to $25000 as advertised in Sky and Telescope
> magazine!!!))
>
> So, you see, there is an upper boundary to size and a lower boundary to
> size, and we are pushing at both of them!
>
> I, therefore, am somewhat skeptical about seeing any 30Mpixel devices
> anytime soon. Possibly if there is a major breakthrough in manufacturing
> of
> imaging arrays allowing for larger cheaper arrays, but physics dictates
> that
> lower limit to element size. Just because there has been an explosion of
> newer and better digital cameras over the last five years doesn't mean
> that
> that rate of improvement can continue!
>
> There also needs to be a market for these 30Mpixel devices to make them
> and
> make them affordable! Joe Pointenshoot won't be pushing for that kind of
> quality unless it is cheap (by cheap I mean costs less than a 1.5Mpixel
> camera does now), which kind of defeats the market drive.
>
> Really, I hope you are right!!! I just am a little too close to the
> engineering side of this to be this optomistic!
>
> Guy Clark
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Murphy, Bob H [mailto:bob.h.murphy@lmco.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 11:24 AM
> To: 'filmscanners@halftone.co.uk'
> Subject: RE: Future of Photography (was RE: filmscanners: real value?)
>
>
> I'm not too sure about the pixel and array size statement. The CCD's in
> current 3.3Mpixel CCD cameras like the Olympus 3030 have a diagonal
> dimension about a third that of the Canon D30 SLR digicam's sensor. As
> signal processing and memory get faster and lower power (which happens at
> a
> steady factor of 2 about every 18-24months) it will be reasonable to have
> a
> 30megapixel device in a camera like the D30 with pixels the same size as
> the
> current Olympus 3030. Given Moore's Law (see:
> ) this could
> happen
> within the next 6 to 10 years.
>
> --Bob
