RE: Future of Photography (was filmscanners: real value?)

["Austin Franklin" <austin@darkroom.com>]

> One other thing that just occurred to me: aren't there three
> or four pixels
> on the CCD for each actual pixel seen in the image?

Yes.  That is only for color information though, not for edge information.
The edge information exists in each individual pixel.  This arrangement of
RGBG is called a 'Bayer' pattern.  The extra G is for contrast.  There are
algorithms that easily take this information and pretty much give you full
resolution data by extrapolating the color information over all four pixels,
and keeping the edge information pretty much intact.  Color information
isn't near as important as edge information as far as our eyes are concerned
though...

You can see what this looks like in PhotoShop by choosing each individual
color channel and seeing that pretty much all the edge info is there in any
one color.

> The chip manufacturers really want to make the chips as small
> as possible
> for yield issues.

They make them smaller for cost reasons, you can put more dies (chips) on a
single wafer, which makes them cheaper.  That's not quite the same as
yield...

> VERY LARGE ICs have been made in the past, but they are very
> expensive to
> make because the yields are so poor.

Well, not necessarily true.  If you mean large, as in a lot of transistors,
that is true.  If you mean physically large, simply because of process, that
is not true.