Kodak digital breakthrough

[anselwannab]

How about this sports fans, the SD14 has it so that you can remove the filter and make it IR capable.

What if you could remove the Bayer or this filter and make it just black and white? Wouldn't that improve the resolution?

I think that would be a cool way for Zeiss to get around the 'The sensor must be good enough for our lenses" arguement. Assuming that Zeiss is actually not just hiding behind that as they take time to develop their camera.

Make it so that you can use it as a color camera, but can also use it as an ultra-high resolution B&W camera; maybe with less vignetting issues.

To me for camera phones and such, the less noise is the big issue.

Seems to me the killer would be to take this new technology and mate it with the Fuji big/little site sensor.

Mark

 

[Trius]

Bill: I appreciate the good words about Kodak. Yes, absolutely they do innovate; those who don't think so are just plain ignorant of the facts or choose to ignore the facts out of some personal, emotional position.

The fact that they failed to immediately capitalize on the digital technology they invented was a result of corporate culture, not the lack of intelligence and effort of their scientists and engineers.

Another Rochester company invented the GUI, the mouse, the foundation of Ethernet, an integrated office application ... and also failed to capitalize on it.

 

[bmattock]

I know, Trius. I had an AT&T 3b2 computer running Unix System 7 and a (Xerox) GUI interface pre Windows, pre Mac. It had a mouse and 20 serial ports for dumb CRT workstations. It was cool.

 

[bmattock]

Seems to me the killer would be to take this new technology and mate it with the Fuji big/little site sensor.

Mark

To me, this is what is getting cool and interesting about digital camera technology. Up until very recently, digicams have tried hard to mimic what film cameras can do - and failed. Oh, they're more than close enough in many ways, I'm far from anti-digital, but they don't have (for example) the latitude that color print film does. They're not appreciably better at lower or higher ISO than film can be had at (say ISO 25 to 3200 more or less). And with the smaller sensors, a lot of creative control (selective focus) is given up that could be had with larger recording media (medium format and large format film, especially).

But when we get to an era where we can have digital sensors do things that film never could - ah, then it starts to get fun. When we have a digital sensor that can do ISO 100,000 and have it look like Tri-X with tight grain - ugga bugga. Me for that. Then we can start taking photography to a new level, not just trying to swap one axe for another and noticing that it is not quite as good, despite other conveniences it may have.

 

[bmattock]

I am a trifle confused as well, but it replaces the bayer filter, as I understand it, and it is coupled with a more sensitive sensor. Not sure how the two work together. Waiting for more details.

 

[Trius]

I'm not sure about ISO 100K ... 6400 or 12800 seem fast enough for me.

But I do think digital sensor technology is in its infancy.

Oh, and yeah, I remember the 3b2 ... never owned one, but played with one and was enthralled.

 

[bmattock]

You have to think outside the 'box' so to speak. ISO 100K would let us shoot stopped down in near darkness. And I'd love to see a digital sensor with latitude greater than that of the human eye. One that could internally filter IR as well as UV in or out as requested - no filters required.

Imagine a sensor that allowed you to selectively set sensitivity for different parts of the scene. ISO 50 here, ISO 100K there. The human eye does that - with help from the brain. No film or sensor can do that so far.

When liquid lenses become reality in production models, we may see some really interesting experiments in selective focus. Lens babies will die of envy, and imagine being able to mutate into any lens characteristic there ever was, including those which can be designed but cannot be built because glass won't do that?

 

[anselwannab]

I am a trifle confused as well, but it replaces the bayer filter, as I understand it, and it is coupled with a more sensitive sensor. Not sure how the two work together. Waiting for more details.

My understanding is that with out a colored lens, the sensor gets all the light that strikes it, not just the Red, green or blue.

Seems to me you could have big and small sensors like the FUJi and get better Dynamic range.

I wonder if that is why they say that this is for small sensors? Do they have another technology for larger sensors?

Mark

 

[JoeV]

Equally likely is the possibility that this new transistor/filter technology will be used to make image sensors that are only incrementally better than those being manufactured today, but with reduced die size; meaning that the manufacturer gets to build more of them on the same sized silicon real estate, effectively reducing the per unit die cost. Translation: $$$.

How this could benefit small sensors is that for the same die size as current products they will have better performance, and thus can be sold for more $$$.

 

[bmattock]

Hence, the reason 110 film took over from 35mm.

Oh wait, you mean it didn't. Dang. I guess sometimes superior formats win even if they cost more.

 

[Trius]

Headlines are written either by marketing hacks whose job it is to pump up the company, or by newspaper hacks whose job it is to pump up circulation. Combine that with both groups not really understanding the technology, and you get headlines galore. Even Toyota does it. 😉

 

[bmattock]

You discuss the **possible** pros and cons, not facts.

True, we're speculating. However, there is one thing that Kodak has stated as a fact - this new technology replaces the Bayer Filter. That may end up being useful or not, but it is certainly a change, and a big one.

The headline had the buzz word: breakthrough. This is not a breakthrough at all, this is just a tiny step into another direction.

I'd say that since all CCD and CMOS sensors except for the Foveon use a Bayer Filter, this is a breakthrough. Semantics aside, one can call it what one wishes, of course.

A real breakthrough would be a storage medium you can hold up to the sun to see the images (like a slide) without any power supply. 😀

Well, of course if only you are allowed to define what a breakthrough is, then anything you don't like isn't. Gee.

Anything else is a marketing hype, hot air, fraud.

Marketing hype is endemic, puffery is part and parcel of capitalism, like it or not (and I don't, actually), but it is far from fraud unless there is no such chip.

Are you suggesting that Kodak has not invented a new type of sensor that does not use the Bayer Filter? That everything they announced was a lie? Then, yes, that would be fraud.

Funny how much emotion is generated around the work "Kodak."

 

[Trius]

Sure. Maybe I should mention that I'm not affiliated with Toyota. I'm just driving a 20 year old 'bush taxi light' (=Toyota Landcruiser LJ70), and being a designer and photographer I chose 'toyotadesigner' as my alias. Sorry if this was misleading. :angel:

I knew that ... I was just playing on your ID to make my point. :angel:

 

[clintock]

Could a similar result be achieved by doubling the size of the sensor assembly for a given site count? Why the push for such density?

 

[bmattock]

> I'd say that since all CCD and CMOS sensors except for the Foveon use a Bayer Filter

The Bayer Filter is a specific pattern for the Mosaic filter used over the CCD/CMOS. It was patented. It uses twice as many green filters as red and blue, and the interleaving of the filters. The pattern used optimized the interpolation scheme for computing red-green-blue values for each pixel.

The Kodak DCS100, Nikon Coolpix 900 and 950 (and some others), and some others use different patterns in their Mosaic filters.

Beg pardon, I didn't know that. However, none of those are current cameras, so I would still guess that replacing the Beyer Filter is a reasonable 'big deal', yes? I mean, it is all down to semantics, but I'd call that a breakthrough.

 

[Avotius]

come now people, lets be reasonable here. Take a 8 megapixle digital photo then print it at 12 inches, then take the same photo, resize it to 1/3rd its size then print it 12 inches. The simple fact is even 8 megapixles isnt enough to do a decent 300dpi magazine spread, which is why most places dont accept them. I know the foveon people will get on me for this but their so called 14 megapixle pixles just are not the same thing. Yes its 14 megapixle if you count total number of pixels, but if you print big one of the fuji or sigma sensors wont cut it against the sensor in my 8 mp canon.

Its not a who has the most layers of sensors game folks, if you have any experience printing digitally you know that.

Lets change the idea, I take a a film photo but I want maximum choice in everything so I stack bw, color slide, and infrared on top of each other, that doesn't mean my image is a 645 sized image, just means there is more data (if you could shoot through three pieces of film like that) which is one of the reason why 4x5 film gives you such clean fidelity, less enlarging, more over all data.

 

[bmattock]

This isn't about Foveon sensors, it is about Kodak's announcement that they have come up with a new replacement sensor that is more light sensitive and uses a different filter than the Bayer Filter used in traditional sensors. Foveon was mentioned just as to the fact that it is currently the only alternative to Bayer Filters.

But let's not have another Foveon-bashing session. You're wrong about Foveon technology, but that's for another thread. Like we haven't had that one about a dozen times.