[HUG] Re: Digi-Blads Beware!

Well... pixel size for a high quality image has not changed in over a decade. Foveon has attempted to beat this by using vertical layers. All this did is make wide angle lens use more difficult. Yes, like with microscopes, optical to electron, digital sensors with much smaller pixel sites, with low noise, and high dynamic range will be invented (they are working on it right now) but the technology will be different than the current technology. I too am an engineer in the electronic/semiconductor/imaging industry. Pixels, pixel size/depth, Bayer, PRNU, etc, haven't changed in over a decade. Reading out the data has become much faster, but the system still requires the ability to capture a certain number of electrons to give a dynamic range that can be interpolated somewhere near what film can produce. The storage of electrons takes space. That's why pixels are still 7 to 9 square microns in size, in the better digital cameras. MF digital backs will go up to 12 sq microns in order to increase their dynamic recording capability.
Yes, Moore's law and the fact that no technology wall has ever been left standing is a reality. But in most cases, some walls take a quantum leap to get through. My personal belief is that making extremely high quality images from a sensor that has the equivalent of one micron or sub micron pixel sites, is a quantum leap into a new technology. Like from the optical microscope to the SEM.
All of the image quality advances that we have been seeing over the past decade are pretty much in the domain of firmware and software advances. Hardware advances have been in getting the big pixels closer together, making better lenses at each pixel site so to better handle WA lenses, better low pass and aliasing filters, automatic dirt removal systems, fab improvements, etc. But the electron count (light intensity recording capability) is still the measure of image quality capability. The difference between a 5.2 micron site (Canon Rebel) and a 8.2 micron site (Canon 5D) in dynamic recording capability is an order of magnitude. The Canon 5D can record an outstanding amount of light information at each of its 12.8 mega-sites.
Here's a couple of snaps I took, the other morning from my kitchen, with my Canon 5D and Leica 350/4.8 lens, wide open, hand held, ISO 400. 

http://tinyurl.com/2e8nbs

http://tinyurl.com/2n9dof
And a snap taken with the 5D and the lens that comes with it, 24-105/4 IS USM at 24mm. Bob Adler and I took a road trip down the CA coast last Friday (we do it at least once a month). It's a Hasselblad/Rollei 6x6 trip but I took some snaps with my 5D. 

http://tinyurl.com/2zngrw

And Bob Adler and his 203FE in action...

http://tinyurl.com/2gr5em

:-)

Jim





:-)

Jim




At 10:38 AM 8/22/2007 -0500, Barry Kleider wrote:


Jim,
Your statement "Pixels cannot be made any smaller than they currently are being made." was meant to be challenged. It may be true of current technology (as you state.) But walls like this were meant to be hacked down. (Otherwise we would still be living in caves eating cold meat.)
To wit: I got my first PC in about 1985. It was a Turbo XT running at a sizzling 12 MHZ and had a 40 KB hard drive. (Who needed more power than that?) Ooh, I was so hot! Been cooling off ever since.... 

Barry




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