[HUG] Re: Digi-Blads Beware!
- From: Barry Kleider <bkleider@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: hasselblad@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:38:44 -0500
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
Jim Brick wrote:
Pixels cannot be made any smaller than they currently are being made.
The smaller the pixel, the more noise. five square microns is about
the limit for a quality photograph. P&S cameras have smaller pixels in
order to pack in the consumer hyped 'magapixels'. But as you know, P&S
cameras are noisy at higher ISOs. The best sensors have from seven to
nine square microns per pixel. Each pixel requires a capacitance
(electron bucket) in order to capture the electrons that the light
intensity has allowed through the photo diode junction. The smaller
the pixel, the smaller the electron bucket. The smaller the bucket,
the less dynamic range the pixel has. This is why ALL professional
level digital cameras and backs typically use pixels around nine
microns square. This gives them large enough electron buckets to
capture an extended dynamic range which has the side effect of greatly
reducing noise, which has the side effect of allowing superb
photographs to be taken at ISO 1600 and higher.
ALL of the visualized increase in digital camera image quality has
been provided by software/firmware engineers. Just look at what
Genuine Fractals can do. You don't need a 39mp digital back to produce
30x40 prints. A good DSLR, properly used, and the resulting file
pumped up via CS3 or Genuine Fractals, will give you a result that
looks as good as the o/p of a H3D. Of course H3D O/P could be pumped
up to mural size. But it's all 'software', NOT hardware. To increase
the megapixel output, think interpolation.
The five to nine micron pixel size is a wall that probably will not be
torn down with current technology. Just as optical microscopes hit the
wall decades ago, a new technology had to be invented, the SEM, in
order to be able to look at smaller stuff. The same with digital
sensors. A new technology will have to be invented in order for an
image sensor to ever approach the physical data capabilities of film.
With millions of software engineers working on image data, the need
may never come. Just look at what software produces with MRI data.
Creating an image out of random oscillating atoms.
:-)
Jim
PS... they make sensors with one square micron pixels. They basically
are graphic devices. Black or white. Nothing in between.
At 11:49 PM 8/21/2007 -0700, Richard Schiff wrote:
In theory, as technology gets better and better it should be possible
to get the resolving power of an 8X10 into a 24X36 inch detector...
the problem is that optical science has a long way to go to get
optics to match the detectors....
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