Return of the Foveon - well, Fuji's version, anyway...

bmattock

bmattock

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Sadly, the last line kinda ruins it for me...3 to 4 years to a commercial product.

Interesting, because from what I'm reading, this resembles both the basic Foveon concept plus the idea of organic pigments to sense the colors received - not unlike how color film works.

Well, one can always hope that technology like this might make it to the shelves - and faster than 3-4 years.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

http://www.steves-digicams.com/diginews.html#fuji_sensor

Fujifilm Develops New Image Sensor Technology for Digicams
Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, has developed a new basic technology for a new type of image sensor that ensures 3x higher sensitivity and richer color depth than conventional image sensors, reports PhotoImaging Enterprises Association International's PEN News Weekly.
In today's digital cameras, images are captured and converted into digital signals by triplets of CCDs placed side by side -- one each for red, green, and blue. It is difficult for ordinary photographers to realize that a digital image captured with a digital camera has less depth than pictures taken with film in which the photosensitive pigments for the three primary colors of red, green, and blue are layered above one another, but pro photographers can recognize this.

Adopting the same concept of layering, the new image sensor developed by Fujifilm uses organic pigments reacting to red, green and blue light. The pigments are sandwiched between transparent electrodes and stacked above one another. When light enters each pigment layer, electric current flows between the electrodes, and the electric current is then converted into digital signals.

Fujifilm has made a prototype image sensor containing a green-reacting pigment. It yields monochrome pictures having the same depth as photo film, and is now making prototype elements for red and blue light as well. The company has filed a patent application on the basic technology and hopes to commercialize new image sensors in three to four years, says PEN News Weekly.
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I think it's cool that anyone is even trying this sort of thing. It would be easy to say that the vast majority of the market is happy with the current direction of the technology...and just leave it at that.
 
I'm all for foveon, but this is neat news. I wonder what the life is for a sensor like this, it being made of organic compounds?
 
Fuji has emerged as an interesting camera/imaging company in the last few years. Far more with it in many areas than Kodak in my opinion. Film, MF and Digi cameras all are more interesting to me than Kodak's similar products. Not that I don't buy Kodak but it's only their film.

Fuji is probably the dominant company worldwide now.
 
jan normandale said:
Fuji has emerged as an interesting camera/imaging company in the last few years. Far more with it in many areas than Kodak in my opinion. Film, MF and Digi cameras all are more interesting to me than Kodak's similar products. Not that I don't buy Kodak but it's only their film.

Fuji is probably the dominant company worldwide now.
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I won't argue with you, Fuji is doing some interesting things, no doubt. And they may be making smarter & faster moves than Kodak, who seriously missed the boat when they let their early lead in digital technology slip away. But Kodak is working hard to catch up, and they have a nice niche in the big sensors - not much competition there at the moment. The biggest MF digital at the moment, the 33mp Fuji-made Hasselblad, uses the Kodak sensor.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
 
dazedgonebye said:
I think it's cool that anyone is even trying this sort of thing. It would be easy to say that the vast majority of the market is happy with the current direction of the technology...and just leave it at that.
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Yes, you're right - it would be easy to just use the established technology that has the market pretty well satisfied (the consumer market, that is). Nice to see them trying to take it in new directions.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
 
Interesting item, Bill. I hope this turns out well -- a sensor with the characteristics of film would be exciting.

Gene
 
Fuji seems to be all about green. At least to me, its seems like fuji films render green superbly.

My initial reaction was, why not relese a digital rangefinder that does only monochrome (grayscale) images.

I know- I'm odd.
 
Bill, many moons ago, at least in the 70s, people and the photo magazines sometimes commented on the fact there seemed to be a relationship between the color of the film box and the bias of the slide film; yellow for Kodachrome, blue for Ektachrome, and green for Fujichrome. That is what I was alluding to.

EDIT: I see Fedzilla_Bob jumped in while I was typing. In fact, their color negative films always seemed to bias towards brilliant greens too. It seems many people like that.
 
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Fedzilla_Bob said:
My initial reaction was, why not relese a digital rangefinder that does only monochrome (grayscale) images.

I know- I'm odd.
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Huw Finney is retrofitting a 10mp sensor into a Leica M body - no bayer filter, so should be all monochrome. Should have higher resolution as well, since it doesn't need interpolation.

Once he gets it done, you can get in line to buy one from him! :)
 
Whoops, my mistake, its a 14 megapixel, full frame sensor. But still mono. It should be a pretty cool camera once he gets it working. 14MP of non-interpolated resolution is going to be way into the medium format zone for usable enlargement. Not bad dynamic range as well, especially since its all in RAW.
 
Very interesting development. I agree with the above statements that Fuji is the company to watch at the moment. I think this is funny, though.

bmattock said:
Sadly, the last line kinda ruins it for me...3 to 4 years to a commercial product.
(snip)
Well, one can always hope that technology like this might make it to the shelves - and faster than 3-4 years.
Click to expand...

I don't mind waiting 10 or 20 years for a digital camera. If, in the meantime, I buy into another system, I'm sure the new developments will end up there as well over time. Pentax is a good example: they've just added shake reduction. New sensor types will trickle into other systems as well. In the meantime, there's still my Zorki. For me, there is no hurry.


Peter.
 
I don't understand (and this is not a metaphor for something else, I *really* don't understand in the technical sense) what the press release means when it talks about depth in photos, about how some photographers can see that it's missing in digital cameras. What depth are they talking about? The sensitive layers in film are a couple of microns thick -- is that what they're talkling about? And if so, what difference could it possibly make? This is a genuine question, not a complaint or attack.
 
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