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Sony Shoots For 4-Filter CCD, 8 Megapixel Camera
Artifex writes "If you're looking to spend about $1200 on a new digital camera, check out this Digital Photography Review look at Sony's upcoming 8 MegaPixel Cyber-shot DSC-F828. The most interesting thing isn't the number of pixels in this prosumer-grade camera, but its 4-color filter CCD system. ['Instead of the traditional RGB color filter array, the new CFA is made up of Red, Green, Blue and Emerald (like Cyan) color filters.'] I've always been a strict Canon fan, but this is making me think twice."
is this like in response to the article about those people born with extra cones and see that odd shade of green that no one else can see?
So, my first question is.....How is color management done with this thing given color profile usage in Colorsync and other approaches in say Adobe software? Are there going to be color profile matching algorithms included so I can manage color with this camera?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
The camera (as almost all other) feature a single CCD. It does however have a 4 color fileter in front of it. BTW, Nikon had that for about 4-5 years now.
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
So, um, why would you need four primaries when your monitor can only display three?
Decisions, decisions.
Forgive my ignorance when it comes to photography, but what resolution do we need to reach to achieve 35mm quality pictures. I know my 2.1 megapixel camera can take pictures at 1600x1200 and when those are printed using my HP Photosmart printer they look 'near' perfect.
I'm assuming we're passed 35mm now then, and that these cameras are just going above and beyond what anyone has seen?
If thats 8 mega pixel at 24 bit color thats gonna be 22.8 mb per picture (non compressed)! I don't think I need my pictures to be THAT high quality (or large)
Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
It has only one CCD, but instead of having the regular RGB pattern on it, it has a four color pattern.
e ccd.asp
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0307/03071601sonyrgb
I thought Emerald was green?
Anyways,
I heard somewhere (probably the discovery channel) that out of all the colors humans can percieve, green was the color we could detect the most amount of shades from.
http://www.foveon.com
'nuff said.
Color filters and staggered pixels? Ringing, moire patterns and color bleeding. No thank you.
Now that there is a proper color CCD technology, why is anybody using the old system (at least, on a $1200 'professional' camera).
j
I personally love my Canon EOS 10D. Pictures from it require the use of profanity to describe their amazing clarity, i.e., fucking great. It uses the EOS lens system and is a true SLR. However, if I had the money, I would get a Canon EOS 1D.(DROOL) It has a full size 35mm sensor where the 10D is about 80% the size of a 35mm sensor.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I avoid Sony products because of their constant attempts to force consumers into proprietary technology. See the Memory Stick and InfoLithium and Beta and Hi8, all of which are proprietary and require expensive licensing for any third party to make.
When I went looking for a digicam a couple of years ago, it came down to Olympus C3000 an some Sony (DCS-550?). The deciding factor was the Olympus uses readily-available, open-standard AA batteries and Multimedia cards, while the Sony uses proprietary, closed-standard Memory Sticks and InfoLithum batteries.
You mileage may violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics...
Fuji color film essentially has this. 4th color layer that renders tones better, especially in non-optimal light. I think Agfa has this as well.
Would be interesting to find out if this becomes widespread enough, if PhotoShop would allow manipulation of this layer someday. Would be interesting.
I also don't like Sony products for your reasons, however I dont like FUD even more.
This Sony model features a compact flash slot (as well as memory bubble gum slot). This is a truly interesting development, as sony memstick have traditionally cost about 4x as much as the same size CF. And even nowadays you can barely find it bigger size than 128MB (sony has vapored out some PR about memstick up to 1GB, however I have never seen one in any store).
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
Ars had this story on 8-15. You guys are falling behind.
--jdan
I refuse to purchase any of Sony's still cameras. I am protesting their annoying practice of crippling their equipment's capabilities in order to introduce a plethora of different versions. Specifically, I can't stand how they take a great video camera, the DCR PC100-120 and cripple its still image capability in order to force consumers to purchase two pieces of equipment instead of one. Just say NO!
For the same $1200, you can get corrective eye surgery so you can see something close to half the resolution offered....
Emerald (like Cyan)
Isn't cyan blue? Reminds me of an old sketch by the Frantics:
"I remember her eyes over the yawning abyss of a week and a half. I remember their brown glow lighting the room like a shock of azure sky...
Azure...
Blue. Right. They were blue. Blue as ocean water, in its deepest emerald hues....
Emerald.... Green.
Right. They were... they were green, kind of a greeny-blue... Sort of aquamarine, with browninsh flecks.....
OK, I remember her tits.
That's what I'd do with the extra money. See old Slashdot article below.
2 22 &mode=thread&tid=152
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/08/180
The center frequencies to which our green and blue cones are sensitive are rather far apart, spectrally -- at least, compared to the G/R cones. Looks like the E sensor on this CCD is between the G/B cones.
(RGB sensors and emitters are generally calibrated to the center frequencies of our cones.)
This is a good idea that I'd never considered. More color information is always good, and we can always just define a transform to reduce it to human optics. If nothing else, this makes more data available for image correction and whatnot. I wonder if you can actually get the RGBE data out of the camera, or if it stores three-channel JPEGs like everyone else?
Well, in any case, tetrachromats rejoice.
FYI, somewhat amazingly, this camera also supports type I/II compactflash in addition to memory stick/memory stick pro. Be chained to proprietary media no more
This has one CCD as someone else said. There are no 3 or 4 CCD regular cameras that I know of. The Foveon ones are like 3CCD except they do it with layers.
http://www.foveon.com/
8 megapixels how many megs is each picture, i mean will it take one 32meg memorystick for 2 picutres, i think 8 megapixels will only be useful when compactflash or other medias start making 1gb cards for 30 bucks
For The Best Jazz/Hip-hop fusion > COlD DUCK
This is just too interesting to be ignored.
CCD is getting kind of old... And the quality is not even close to the CMOS type pickups. A CCD camera has to correct the image using its software before it actually becomes half-ass tolerable, and you still end up with some artifacts when photographing certain textures.
Yes, CMOS cameras are a lot more expensive, but image quality is IMHO better than 35mm film.
Take Canon's EOS DS-1.. Take a look at some of the sample pictures - they are amazing.
http://www.canoneos.com
--- sig moved for great justice.
If you had bothered to look, you would have noticed that this particular sony camera uses standard compact flash cards, in addition to sony's normal memory stick.
There are three and four CCD digital cameras; this one isn't one of them. Instead, it uses four different color filters to get more information about the spectral composition of the incoming light. That lets it correct for color aberrations better than 3 color CCDs. This is an old trick, and you can actually get film that does the same thing.
This camera will go great with my iPod and all the songs I payed a dollar a piece for!
Apple and sony are great!
I hope SCO doesnt sue them!
(Can I have my karma now?)
Oh yeah, Microsoft is STUPID and BAD!
Untioll they ditch that stupid "Prosumer" word.
Marketting people should be kept away from the English language. Hasn't it been through enough!?
Nice troll....
BTW, this camera can use compact flash cards. That's about as standard as it gets.
Hello? It still uses an InfoLithium battery.
The fact that is uses CF cards is an admission that Memory Sticks are inferior and will not meet the capacity needs of this camera.
Sony technology is great. Really, it is. But their computer products are at least as restrictive as Apple's, if not more so. I've read too many reports on Memory Sticks being unreadable in Mac computers to even think about buying their cameras. Same with their CDRW and DVD drives. Their Clie handhelds run the Palm OS, but you need special shareware to sync it with a Mac. And from what I've heard, many non-Sony PCs have similar problems more often than they should.
If I owned a Vaio PC, I'm sure it'd be no contest. But there's no question that if Sony could sell those PCs with their own branded version of Linux or BSD, they would.
Amen! I can do so much more with my 4x5 and 8x10, I don't need to worry about the latest digi-gizmos.
I, for one, welcome our new emerald overlords!
Yeah, but will it do squant?
...that Sony have finally conceded that "Memory Sticks" are a hopeless piece of proprietary crap and have included a Compact Flash slot.
Well, my 2.4 megapixel Canon serves my purposes just fine. Frankly, I don't see how the human eye could even detect the enhanced quality of an 8-megapixel picture, unless it was very heavily blown up after it was taken. So, yeah, I'm not gonna be paying the money for this one.
There's an excellent source of information about what "three primary colors" actually means at of Dave Trapp's Sequim (WA) Schools science department site. There's a relatively simple explanation of how color vision works, then a facinating and highly detailed in-depth discussion of the issue.
Some interesting notes from Mr. Trapp:
* "All three [signals] are equally sensitive to blue light, two have expanded ranges that include green and yellow light, and the third signal includes sensitivity to red light."
* "While these paradigms of primary colors have worked well for human printing and light uses for over a century, it is likely that the three primary colors are not descriptive of the world, but rather an artifact of our eyes, the tools we use to perceive the world."
* "The real world does not have primary colors!"
He also discusses how the world would be perceived differently if we evolved a fourth cone, sensitive in the UV region. Very cool stuff!
Interestingly, though, he's no longer teaching science, and details the reasons on his site. Anyone who's ever been driven crazy in a class taught by a guy named simply "Coach" (and who on this site hasn't?) will sympathize with this good teacher's plight.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Check out this link at the Luminous-landscape. He is a well known pro photographer who stoped using this medium format equipment in favor of the 11megapixel Canon D1s. Very in depth artical with many real life comparisons.
All right! I've been waiting for a Squant-sensitive camera for a while now. Now I can start creating my web pages using the Negativland Squant Plugin!
Now that people can buy cheap (~$30US) 6 or 7-in-1 readers that include 'plain' memory stick functionality, consumers need some real reason to cough up the extra dough for a memory stick pro reader.
When my parents bought their Sony recently, I talked them out of buying the pro sticks and reader, and getting the cheaper plain ones. I still prefer CF, which my Canon digital camera uses, but I haven't compared speeds between these types, or to SD, which my Canon camcorder uses.
Get off my launchpad!
ps -- you're link's broken!
almost forgot... read this link to see his conclusions
I don't know if Nikon has a patent protecting that, but to just make up a plausible reason, I'd guess that the Emerald is close to, but not the same, wavelength as the standard Cyan in a CMY (or CMYK) setup.
I really hope someone does a followup paper (even white papers from one company touting the superiority of its approach to the other's) comparing these. Also, if they could explain whether RGB or CMY is better for sensing light, anyway. My gut instinct is that RGB should be better, because my junior high art teacher and high school physics texts say that light uses RGB and pigments use CMY, but surely Nikon must know something more.
Get off my launchpad!
Sorry.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
RGB sensors and emitters are generally calibrated to the center frequencies of our cones.
:-)
Tetrachromat humans occur VERY rarely, and only as females.
For the rest of us, RGB centered at our own visual peaks makes the most sense of any encoding scheme possible. Not only can we not see another color, but it wastes space in the image (ie, some optimal conversion function can, by physical necessity, reduce those four colors to an RGB triad indistinguishable from the original quartet by a normal human.
Now, if you want to get into machine vision, that counts as another category entirely. But wasting pixels (remember, this uses a mask, reducing the effective resolution by 25% for the sake of having an effectively redundant pixel) for something indended for human viewing just doesn't make sense.
More color information is always good
More information does seem better, agreed. However, due to the physiological limitations of human vision, this scheme does not convey any more information, thus my biggest complaint. It seems everyone else missed this as nothing more than a meaningless marketing ploy. So you all go out and buy this toy so you can brag about having "better" color, and I'll continue taking perceptually identical pics with my boring 'ol RGB cam that cost $800 less.
I suppose, then, that the inverse would have to hold as well - that any man with this sort of colorblindness had a tetrachromatic mother?
What's that like, anyway? Do oranges just appear more brilliant?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
CMOS is still an inferior imaging technology. CCDs are used in most of the more expensive cameras, including teh EOS-1D (but the 1DS does use CMOS). CMOS cameras still suffer from most of the same image artifacts that CCDs suffer from (except for trailing), as they also use color filter arrays. Foveon is the only technology out there that has all three colors for every pixel.
For the "prosumer" range of cameras this is at the top of the heap. You'll be hard pressed to achieve better (8 megapixel range) image quality then with this new camera from Sony.
Sony has also finally realized...admitted that Memory Stick is not competitive and have offered multiple memory format support.
I'd love to see SLR digitals come down in price , until then, this model appears to offer alot of bang for the buck.
For the first time Sony is adding support for compact flash cards. A lot of people (including me) did not consider Sony as a possible purchase because no other digital camera manufacturer uses memory sticks.
The DSC F828 has support for 640x480 movies at 30 fps and the size of the movie is only limited by the available memory in your card. For the first time, you have a product that is good as both a digital still and a movie camera.
Wait, you mean that people who actually work hard make that kind of money? HAHA! Good one! ;-)
Read a review
That sucks, man. I want to read comic books, watch star trek and anime, write trivial Perl scripts, spell things incorrectly, propose to a chick on slashdot, then, finally, tired but not forgotten, accept millions of well deserved dollars from M$ killer VA Linux.
- and I'd rather they used the extra pixels for more resolution rather than an additional color channel. Foveon has a much better way.
I can't believe I'm replying to this, but it needs to all be layed out straight. This was supposed to be informative, not argumentative. SO..... here's the whole deal:
1. In a welcome break from their normal policy, Sony is actually including a CF slot. There are some features limited-- you can't record 32fps video at 640x480 on a Memory Stick or a CF card. For that, you need the faster "Memory Stick Pro". I'm having a hard time finding a CF card that will match the MS Pro spec of 15Mbps minimum write speed/160Mbps read speed, so it may simply be an innocent "CF cards aren't fast enough" problem. On the other hand, it very well could be Sony dicking us over, and it would be par for the course. As to meeting the capacity needs, there are 1GB memory sticks available. Pricey, but available.
2. The camera requires infoLithium batteries. The "infoLithium" brand belongs to sony, but a battery is a battery is a battery-- it's not like Sony has some sort of proprietary standard for moving electrons in and out of the camera. Generic replacements for infoLithium batteries are widely available (here for example, right off the top of google). You can get some big-assed NiMH AAs (2200mAh, from what I could dig up) but they will be larger, and they will not last as many charge cycles or perform as well as a Li-Ion battery. Is there a non-proprietary Li-Ion battery for consumer stuff?
Ah well. All i intended to do was point out that Sony had actually taken a step in the right direction for a change. I have a Canon, and no particular interest in Sony gear.
Forgot it was recessive - wasn't the logic, just a brain cramp. ;)
I suppose trying to describe it to us with only three colors would be much like trying to describe any kind of color to somebody completely color blind. It's a futile exercise. Try explaining vision to somebody who was born blind.
Not quite that bad - we do at least have vision. Particularly, what I was wondering is if Orange-Red,O-G,and O-B combos produce hideous glaring colors like cyan (B-G), magenta (B-R), and yellow (R-G). I'm sure the O-X combos look fine to us, but I was wondering if it behaved in a similar way as cyan etc do for a tetrachromatic. That would certainly be explainable, and I think interesting.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Even higher res pr()n! :P
It's the sensitivity of the CCD and the translation of that information to a useable image. And, all of this hinges on rendition on the output device.
If your printer is RGB, emerald does no good, but since the image file is not a RGB+emerald color scheme, it may not matter. It is all in the translation. It is kind of like three axis defining a point in geometry - you are defining how the eye sees it by describing the amount of each constituent needed for reproduction.
If you were using a CCD array calibrated to capture six colors, the real benefit comes if the printer/display uses those six colors. That said, more data is better, if it is used to create a better image description file. And lest we forget, even full size image files are lossy, since you always lose information about how the thing really looks unless we use individual filters for each of millions (read infinite spectrum) of colors.
Emerald is not cyan, not even close, but that is irrelevant.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
It will take a week for the thing to save an image , so don't count on grabbing that sports image or paparazzi exclusive with it
all these megapixels are all well and good but until flashram/memory technology can write images of 8MP at a reasonable rate real photographers will use film
you think the cover of Vogue/Maxim/Elle is digital ? there is a reason why they use film and no amount of pixels will replace it
You claim that film is so superior, and that digital can't touch it. The problem is, you are just repeating an old catchphrase. While the statement may have been true in the early 90s, it is not true anymore.
Many magazines, newspapers, publications, etc use digital and I dare you all to open up your favorite magazine and distinguish digital from film.
Witold
Fuji S2 Pro. (6MP)
witold.org
For their first experiment, they want to give a third color receptor to monkeys. Then, it's our turn:
There aren't any guarantees of what will happen, or if our brains will even accept the presence of another color, but a quick Google found that tetrachromatic vision is not at all uncommon in the animal kingdom... there's no reason to think we can't adapt.
I wonder if I'd have the guts to try it. I think so, especially after I'm retired and don't have to worry about it affecting my income-generating potential. But why stop at four colors? Give me IR, UV... heck, give me the real high-end and I'll contract myself out to NASA!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
WTF? $1200 and no interchangable lenses.... riiiiight.
moox. for a new generation.
Yeah, if I were a strict Canon fan, it wouldn't take much to make me think twice either.
From What is the difference between CCD and CMOS image sensors in a digital camera?:
I have been shooting digital and slide for years now. I have owned Canon (S20, 10D), Olympus (D-610), Minolta (Dimage7) and Sony (DSC-F717). All of these cameras had little quirks Olympus/Minolta had slow focus issues (though minolta resolved theirs via a wonderful firmware upgrade) none of these cameras made me more upset than waiting for the sony to write images to it's crap memory stick. With the Minolta (my last camera) I could run circles around it at 5mp high qual jpg shooting a full 1.5-2 frames per second. The F717 took a full 4 to 5 seconds to write the same sized image. At first I thought it was just mine but a friend owned the same camera and had exactly the same results. This spring I went full circle back to canon with the 10D. Of all of these cameras none produced the same quality image that the little S20 Point and shoot did.
Whether it is drinks at the bar, or a mortgage on the house, it all costs!
nick
At that price point, why not invest in superior technology?
/ page14.as pe s/Q ualityRes/IMG01248.jpg
g masd9/page24.as p
http://www.foveon.com/
The Sigma SD 9 uses the Foveon chip.
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmasd9/
Sample photos:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmasd9
http://img.dpreview.com/reviews/SigmaSD9/Sampl
Conclusion:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/si
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
A long damn time ago. Sadly, I read for quite a while before bothering with registering-- I had that stereotypical slashdot fear of actually signing up for things. Oh, to have a 4-digit account.
I'd guess '97 or '98-- I'm not entirely sure.
> For the rest of us, RGB centered at our own visual peaks makes the most sense of any encoding scheme possible.
Only if you can replicate the adaptive signal processing of the brain (and other unique charactistics of the retina.)
Sensors in the eye are not laid out in the grid or uniformly distributed. The lens in the eye is not corrected for chromatic abberations. The brain can do much better noise suppression of the overlapping spectral sensitivities.
> However, due to the physiological limitations of human vision,
You miss the point. It's optical dyes and electronics that are the limitating factors. 4 colors (if they are the right 4) will help model human color vision within those limitations.
But when are consumer-level cameras using X3 going to be ready?
I went on a trip to with a buddy a year ago, I had a $300 1-year old 2.1 MP Canon Powershot s110, he brought a brand-new $1200 5MP Sony.
Every picture I took was better than his. We even swapped cameras and matched the settings after the first day reviewing the pictures to eliminate those variables, and the little Canon Elph outperformed in every shot - most noticeably in color quality. In fact, the only advantages the Sony had was a faster shutter response and better optical zoom.
I've now taken over 1300 pictures with the Canon s110, and it's tip-top. Every time I go to pick up some prints at Wolf / Ritz, the guys behind the counter ask me what camera I use.
As far as the friend's Sony? He sold it on eBay and bought a Canon s400.
If it does use an IR filter, then it just whacks a plain IR filter infront of the CCD. it doesn't change the small colour filters on each pixel on the CCD. It's completely different. Infact, I'm wondering why Sony would bother to add an IR filter. Sure, remove the IR blocking filter, but the idea here is to let in the most light, not take IR shots.
Many system integrators have evaluated the Foveon CMOS sensor and they are all still using CCDs. Dynamic range is as important as resolution in producing film like qually. CMOS sensors are still too noisy in general to be used in systems that are expected to make very good images. Although many of the leaders are actively developing the technology, especially Canon.
Penguins are so sensitive to my needs - Lyle Lovett
More samples.
s /
http://www.dpreview.com/gallery/sigmasd9_sample
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Rats I see the New York croud is coming back on line time to do something else. A prosumer camera post is the kind of digitally dysfunctional new speak that no New York yank wanker can resist. The Zeiss lens is all fluff and will mean nothing if the firm ware sucks like most other Sony low grade consumer stuff nowadays. Unfortunatly Sony, a once stellar brand, has been reduced to putting out low end junk to make quick bucks. They sure as hell should have stayed out of the memory and computer market. Now only respected brand naming keeps them afloat. Then again so does the much touted Electrohome brand for junktronics in Canada. If you can coin crap like prosumer I can coin the word JUNKTRONICS!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
I have the Sigma SD-9, and I've seen no evidence so far that the dynamic range differs much from other CCD SLR's. In fact, I seem to recall one study that suggested it was a bit higher...
Do you have links to anything showing limitations of dynamic range in X3 chips?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have the SD9, and it really is a great camera. It does have limitations with ISO (only going to 400) but some of the problems (like noise) have been reduced with software and firmware upgrades. The review is starting to look a bit dated.
The color clipping occurs on other cameras too (just not quite as soon), just look at the example images from other cameras in the same review (like the D60) - they have the same issue! I have not seen that come up much in practice, as some others have noted on the Sigma forum the key is to shoot the SD9 like you would slide film - expose for the highlights, and develop for the shadows. In other words, try and set exposure so that highlight do not go out of range. The software itself gives you enough leeway in increasing/reducing exposure that you can bring the exposure back up again.
People have done some great things with the camera, take a look at the Sigma SD9 gallery on PBase. The nice thing is, most people post full size images instead of crops so you can really see the details.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The 11 megapixel Canon 1Ds seem to be much better than 35mm and almost as good as medium-format; here's a review. I don't think Nikon has an equivalent camera out yet, but I have all Canon gear (a D60 at the moment) so I haven't been paying much attention.
That for once, Sony will make a digital camera with colour balance that doesn't look like it was calibrated by a colour blind monkey with a penchant for blue?
i think that it is interesting that they are trying to change the industry standerd, but speaking from experiance - most of everything sony puts out is absolute crap. it seem to me this is just another one of their ploys to take hold of a corner of the multimedia market with entraping people in to poritarty hardware. not to mention their customer serviace is even worst then the products they put out. i once reviced a T.V. from them it came smashed in the mail. it had no package stuffing in it even protecting the glass or anything. it is for this reason that i boycot the playstation. they may put out products that "look cool" but its is a pile of crap if it does nothing but sit on a shelf, dead.
Actually, instead the 3.5MP camera basically equals the output from a 6MP CCD, and in fact even appears a bit sharper... it really shows when you are printing images (which is pretty much just what the review says, not sure where you got the idea the real res was 1/3 less!!). Plus you have Zero (as in no) color moire with the X3 sensor, the thing I hated most about the CCD cameras and what led me to purchase an SD-9.
The only real limitation of the SD9 is a lack of ISO above 400 and more noise there than in other cameras. But they have addressed that with firmware and software upgrades, and also people have learned how to use the camera effectively even in low light. I've shot indoor skating before and gotten come good shots.
Take a look at the sample images at the SD-9 user gallery on PBase. Note that just about everyone there posts full size images, unlike the cropped images you usually get from other cameras so you can't quite make out how blurry they really are. With a good lens and good light, almost nothing can come close to the sharpness you get with an SD-9.
Canon does have some nice sensors and good cameras (like the 1Ds) but I greatly prefer the images from my SD-9 over the 10-D (which I was also considering along with the Fuji S2).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
are here.
Note that really the best thing about the camera is that you can try out the software for free (see Sigma web site for download)!! The software is about the best software around for working with Raw images, and really shows what the camera can do. The smartest thing Sigma did was make the user work with raw images, as you have a lot more felxibility than if you were just shooting JPG and throwing away a lot of image detail.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Several of the Nikon Coolpix cameras, like my 995, have been using CCDs with 4-color CYGM filter mosaics for some time now. In fact, the CP995 uses a Sony chip, the ICX252AK (pdf). This is a 3-year old chip design.
So what's the big deal?
Edith Keeler Must Die
So will Geeks needs this camera to see how horribly color uncoordinated they're dressed?
Or the Geeks will just be color-blind to the horrible colors of the resulting pictures too?
You've nearly got me convinced to switch from Nikon. The specs look really good and the price is not too bad.
Now let's see the photographs.
$1200 is the amount I've spent on batteries for my sony cybershot. 2-AA Last about 8 minutes.
Anyone know what's going on with affordable cameras using the Foveon chip? I heard (from seriously reliable sources) about a year and a half ago that it was stupid to buy any traditional one-color-per-pixel camera because the coming Foveon was going to be a million times better and would render everything else obsolete. The technology does seriously look awesome and legitimate. I know there's a $3000 camera which is supposed to be awesome that uses the Foveon X3, but anyone know when something more like $1000 will be available?
You call a color whatever you are told you are seeing. We cannot compare if the colors we see in your eyes match the ones other people see! If light red and green look the same, or dark red and green, then maybe both colors or all colors you see are different than what the non-color blind people see. Who knows!
I've seen the 1GB sticks in Best Buy, and I've seen 256 sticks in Staples. That would idicate a fairly common supply of them. The cost of the sticks is very high, so maybe you would find the larger sizes locked away behind the counter.
I decided on buying a returned sony camera for the price. Good enough to use, cheap enough to lose.
I don't understand the need for a 1GB stick myself as I'm not often that far away from a computer with cheap storage.
Cheers Andrew
you insensitive clod!
A. From DealRAM.com:
128MB 256MB
CF $33 $46
MS $46 $70
MSPro - $93
B. On a recent vacation (7 days) I have used up about 0.9 GB with my 3Mpx Nikon 995. With 8 Mpx, it would baloon to 2.4 GB. Yes, I do take a lot of pics, but not Japanese lot. I use HQ JPG with highest res.
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
Beware of Geeks bearing .gif's.
Is that people become better photographers without really realiizing it.
The instant feedback you get causes you to automatically start taking better pictures, and you may not even realize it. With film, you have to wait for your photos to develop.. and then you ahve to think back about how you took the picture, settings, the lighting, etc... with instant feedback, you make those associations automatically.
so what if digital can equal 35mm film? when I want to take a good picture, I use 120 film with a 6x6 camera (that's medium format for those who don't know). and if digital manages to equal 120 film one day, I'll use an 8x10 large format camera. who needs an enlarger with that, huh? just need a dark room, and voila, 1:1 8x10 contact prints! (and for those interested, I remember that it is possible to rent a darkroom with an 8x10 enlarger at Toronto Image Works. I used to rent darkrooms there all the time when I lived in T.O. Great business.)
The blurb mentions the camera will supply a Sony RAW format, with software to manipulate it. Will this format be the data straight from the four types of pixels, or will it be preprocessed into RGB?
The blurb also says a linear transformation is used to transform the four input colors into RGB. I believe you can get a lot of gain in accuracy from doing a nonlinear transformation, possibly more than you can get from having a fourth color. The camera's sensors will just have different sensitivities than human eyes, and a curve is likely to describe the mapping from camera sensor to eye better than a straight line. If Sony's RAW format gives you the original four colors, you could do the nonlinear transform yourself. Otherwise you can't.
Doing things their own way, while ignoring a previously created technology. My analogy: Memory Sticks vs. CF, and now this 4-color layered process vs. Foveon.
The end result is each pixel on the Sony is only 1/8 the area of the pixel on one of the $1500 advanced amateur digital cameras (Canon EOS 10D, Nikon D100, Fuji S2, Pentax *ist D).
This means each pixel will receive very little light (and thus a low signal to noise ratio) and have images with a lot of electronic noise even at ISO 100. Noise manifests itself as colored dots that pepper smooth areas like skies.
If this camera had used one of the ICX413AQ 6MP APS-size sensors Sony sells Nikon and Pentax rather than the ICX456 used on this camera, it could have been a winner.
Be prepared to spend cash on lenses. I've tried quite a few, and all I can say crop factor really makes very good lenses mandatory with this camera. I've bought 24-70L and I'm going to buy 70-200L f/2.8 IS. That makes it about $2600 for the lenses alone. The body cost me $1500. Nice big chunk of cash.
I love the Foveon idea and the much better resolution it provides. What keeps me from buying a camera with the Foveon sensor is the review I saw that showed it providing poor color reproduction: pure green is reproduced as olive drab.
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1. Jack off more; use escort services less.
2. Save the money under your mattress til november, buy the camera.
3. Post nude pix of the girls from the escort service on your XXX website.
4. profit.
Sounds like the perfect plan.
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
I wish I hadn't lurked so long without getting an account.
You would still need a tetrachromatic monitor and printer in order to see the extra color anyway. The only place you'd be able to 'enjoy' sony's camera is right on it's own display screen (assuming they put orange lights on it). Otherwise you would need a special monitor/printer combo.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Maybe emerald is the pantone name for the color?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Isn't it something like... Cyan would (500nm) light gets detected by both the blue and green sensors in your eye? I suppose the ideal 'filter' for a digital camera would be three filters that approximate the frequency response of the cones and rods in your eyes.
Maybe what this filter lets the camera do is pickup extra 'emerald' light that would otherwise be dropped by standard Blue and green filters.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I've heard that 11 megapixles is the maximum that you can have with a 35mm sensor, after that the individual pixels would be smaller then the wavelength of light hitting the filter, and so each wave would end up hitting more then one sensor anyway.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
--Cuz, you see, scanners suck for color. (That blue-white neon bulb plays HELL with all color. Images which may have been, say, painted beneath nice warm yellow incadescent bulbs turn into entirely different images when subjected to Borg lighting.)
With this in mind, I dragged a painting down with me and waited around for half an hour for one of the sales people to get free. Business is booming in the digital camera trade. I watched two stalwart pro-camera guys barter on the edge of $10,000 each, all in order to get themselves out of film and finally into the new digital technology. The change-over is hot on, and there aren't enough sales guys to go around! So I waited my turn.
When I was finally able to get some face time with one of the guys, I slapped the illustration down on the counter and told him what I was all about. So ten minutes later, there were three cameras set up for me to try out. I'd brought my own flash card with me so I could take the results home to test. That was my brilliant plan.
Here's where it all went awry. .
First off, the Sigma camera, the Fovon chip notwithstanding, is a poorly designed piece of junk. It wouldn't work. The guy complained that it burned through its batteries like wildfire, (it took at least two different sets of batteries; one for the camera body and one for something else. And still another set for the flash. If one set wasn't up to snuff, the whole thing would do nothing. He said it was a piece of shit. So I never actually got try out the thing.
Furthermore, when you go to buy one of these high-end jobs, the $2000 bucks quoted in the add does not include a lens. Just the camera body. Yikes! --For my needs, I was looking at blowing, at least another $1-2000; probably more. If you are shooting artwork, you can't be screwing around with curving lines and such at the top and bottom of an illustration. Plus, if you want something which is can achieve a 300dpi print quality at a reasonable size. . , well 6 megapixels in the hardware just won't do. --Especially since you can't use all of the image area sighted by the camera. Straight lines go curvey the closer to the edge of the lense you get.
Now I did test a Canon, and an Olympus. Both worked and were designed much more effectively. Plus, both Canon and Olympus offered slightly more affordable lens solutions. The color problem, of course, was gone. The camera would take in whatever color light you bounced off the subject. That wasn't even an issue; color correctors would be looking for new jobs when these kinds of cameras became workable. But this particular camera store didn't have anything which shot in the kind of size range a print illustrator would need.
Now, this problem might go away with the Fovon technology. Supposedly, you get higher resolution for your buck, simply because of how it understands color. But I've yet to test a camera which has the chip.
One way or another, I went home again, convinced that color correction was a task I could handle with a smile simply because of all the money I wouldn't have to spend on a half-assed answer.
-FL
Color Physics FAQ - good read, I havent figured out why a fourth filter yet, but it does a good job describing how color works in general.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
n/t
Memory Sticks don't exist over 128MB. The cameras were never designed to address more than that. (This is also why SmartMedia is on its way out in favor of xD.) Sony has come out with "Memory Stick Pro" which is up to 2 or 4 GB now, but only the newest cameras with the "Pro" logo can use them.
One of the problem when talking about this is that a 35mm camera is using an analog technology so it's really apples and oranges. In ideal circumstances with good lighting, good focus, the camera on a tripod, etc. the resolution of a 35mm camera can be spectacularly high which is why you always hear photo people lamenting the low resolutions of digital and how they haven't "caught up" with the lowly 35mm (never mind 4x5 or better). But for most uses, for anyone other than professionals, the practical resolution of the 35mm isn't anything near it's theoretical maximum, the lighting isn't that great, the focus isn't that great, your hand was shaking and the resulting loss of detail brings the 35mm picture way back down to where the digital camera's are. Even among professionals the 35mm photo is usually going to end up digitized to a resolution that could have been produced by a digital camera.
The key is that people take a whole lot more pictures with digital cameras, thus taking pictures they never would with a film camera, and any picture you take is MUCH better than the picture you didn't. And, the more pictures you take, the higher your chances of snapping a gem by sheer luck (I know skill plays no part in my photography).
This is so true and to some extant simply taking A LOT of pictures is one of the essential "secrets" of professional photographers. When I took photography courses at art school I would use one or maybe two shots per roll, sure I'd be paying attention to things like composition in every shot I took but simply taking a LOT of pictures is how you get that ONE picture that is really good. Using digital cameras gets any consumer to take pictures with that same attitude since there is no film cost, the camera can take hundreds of pictures per "roll" and you can delete the obvious duds right then and there.
You are basing the quality of the entire line of Sony products on a TV you got in the mail? Perhaps you should have talked to the SHIPPER? INSURANCE?
:)
Sony doesn't get everything right, but they have a ton of experience with CCD sensors and I've had a great time with my DSC F707 camera.
I also really liked the BVP-5 with the BVV-5 dockable recorder. A fine professional BetacamSP recorder.
It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
If you add up all the Red, Blue and Green elements in a digital camera's CCD, you end up with the number advertised... 5 or 6 megapixels or whatever. (In this example I will refer to a 5 megapixel camera.)
However this does not REALLY equate to that many pixels as we would normally think of pixels with other devices.
If your LCD monitor can support a maximum of 1280 x 1024 resolution, that multiplies out to be 1.31 megapixels.
But if we were to do the math the way digital camera manufacturers' marketing departments do their math, that same screen would be 3.93 megapixels... which is basically a lie.
What happens inside digital cameras is a certain bit of deception. They use the luminance factor from each of the 5+ million CCD sensors to achieve a semblance of the resolution advertised. However the color value for each of those so-called "pixels" is not independant, but rather is derived from the values of the surrounding pixels.
Therefore we have the baffling paradox of saving a RAW file at full resolution on a 5 MP camera and getting a 7.5 megabyte file; but strangely a TIFF file of the same resolution saves out at 15 megabytes in size. How can this be possible, you rightly ask? Just what is the camera adding to the raw sensor data to create a full resolution file which is somehow twice the size of the raw data? Here's what happens...
In the RAW file there may be 5 million 12-bit samples, half of which are green elements, with the other half evenly split between red and blue elements. Or, there may be 2.5 million 8-bit red, blue and green values each, with not all of them corrresponding to actual CCD elements.
In producing a 15 megabyte TIFF file from 7.5 megabytes of RAW sensor data, the camera's firmware defines a virtual 5 million simulated pixels, each of which has its 24-bit color values derived from the other adjacent physical "pixels." Then once 8 bits each of Red, Green and Blue data are derived for each virtual pixel om the memory array, the whole simulated thing saves out at 15 megabytes.
The ONLY cameras available which do not deceive you in this way are those new ones incorporating the Foveon CCD sensors, which are novel 3D arrays of elements, each element of which produces its own true RGB color values. With the Foveon CCD, each pixel is a true pixel, and the color definition is superior.
To be fair... the color interpolation firmware in standard CCD cameras has gotten so good, that it probably is worth putting up with the marketing deceptions and these artificially puffed up file sizes (200% of what they should be), at least for now.
The smaller site size means less light is required to fill them up, but that doesn't automatically mean that the SNR is lower or that the images will have lots of electronic noise. It may make the engineering harder, though.
Sony's using 14 bit ADC's. If the inherent SNR of the small site size was so bad they wouldn't bother.
Scanners don't suck for color and they don't use neon bulbs.
Foveon's claim is not "higher resolution for your buck."
Quality lenses don't get curvy when you get close to the edges.
6MP can deliver 300dpi at a reasonable size as long as the size is "reasonable". Their performance in some ways exceeds 35mm film.
Half-assed research produces half-assed answers.
There is no deception here. In a NxM matrix of raw pixels, the combined RGB output produces an (N-1)x(M-1) array. The imager has some extra rows and columns and the ouput image size is legimately what the manufacturer says it is.
People who claim the resolution is lie simply don't understand how it works. There are no marketing deceptions and no "color interpolation". The biggest problem with Bayer pattern sensors is that they require a blur filter in order to work.
Anyone interested in whether or not Foveon is actually superior should read actual reviews. The performance of Foveon is not what you might expect it to be. Its strength is sharpness since it doesn't require a blur filter. It's biggest problem is that it's in a sucky camera.
The SD9's noise performance is similar to the D100. Rumors of its dynamic range problems and red noise are greatly exaggerated.
Compare Foveon's best mode to its competitors best mode. That's all that's important.
Why not reduce each cameras' output to 1 pixel and then compare quality?
The SD9 is a multi-megapixel camera unless you believe "multi-" means at least 4.
Oh really? Your opinion differs from both mine and the dozens of professionals I've worked with and employed in the print graphics industry over the years. Correct shades of Blue are particularly hard to capture properly, because they occupy an unaccomodating end of the shitty scanner light spectrum. --The problem, quite simply, is that contract illustrators often work under incandescent lighting, which is known for its warm and slightly yellow hues, but have their work scanned with light which doesn't bring out these same qualities in their work. So, 'Shitty' is indeed a subjective term, but the fact of the matter is that scanners do not allow for any play in this area. Digital photography, however, allows for whatever lighting best suits the subject.
And perhaps 'neon' was a bit presumptuous. Perhaps I should have said, 'flourescent'. But seeing as the two are virtually the same, I didn't think it would matter. My sincere, appologies.
Foveon's claim is not "higher resolution for your buck."
Yes, thank you for intentionally mis-reading my paraphrasing. I believe the claim was that because Fovon uses one pixel instead of 3 to capture color, they can do the same job with one third the pixels another camera would require. Again, I'm terribly sorry for not being more clear.
Quality lenses don't get curvy when you get close to the edges.
Yes. I KNOW that. That's why I was commenting on the price of lenses as being a big consideration during the buying process.
6MP can deliver 300dpi at a reasonable size as long as the size is "reasonable". Their performance in some ways exceeds 35mm film.
Uh huh. And in my line of work, finished products which press at 8.5" x 11" are considered reasonable. And guess what? Unless one is dealing with live shoots, even 35mm film is not good enough for that. Illustration reproduction requires 3" x 5" film cameras or high-res scanning. But thanks for your insight.
Half-assed research produces half-assed answers.
Ah. At last we agree. --Though given this, I don't quite understand your commenting in the first place.
-FL
You can't catch me in semantics. The only way my statements would be wrong is if the blur filter somehow didn't also affect the concept of resolution.... which of course, it does. Hence the term "blur" filter.
Basically you've got to take your pick semantically. Either you take the camera manufacturers' revisionist definition of resolution and accept that the claimed resolution is BEFORE application of the "blur" filter, or you keep the traditional definition of "pixels" and recognize that camera manufacturers are in fact being extremely deceptive.
Either way, the color resolution is substantially less than what the manufacurers claim.
Now imagine in your mind if you will, a certain thought experiment.
Suppose it were somehow possible to take the 15 megabyte TIFF file containing 5 million 24-bit color virtual "pixels" and for each one of those virtual pixels map its RGB components seperately onto individual 8-bit red, green and blue elements within a hypothetical CCD camera.
The question here is how many megapixels would the camera manufacturer claim for a hypothetical CCD which would be capable of accepting this many individual values?
"Marketing math" would have you believe you are now dealing with a 15 megapixel CCD, when all you did was map on a 1 for 1 basis the RGB values from the 5 megapixel file.
Camera manufacturers deceptively count the R, G and B as seperate pixels when they could only be considered seperate in luminance. Certainly they are not seperate in chrominance.
Do they advertise 5 megapixels as a monochrome resolution or do they imply that this is the full color resolution? Clearly they imply the latter, which is very misleading.
If all camera manufacturers deceive us in the same way, we can use their deceptive figures to compare meaningfully between cameras, which is ultimately the intent. Megapixels in digital cameras are a bit like "horsepower" on boat motors, which does not correspond to the work unit "horsepower" used elsewhere in engineering. It's an example of marketingspeak.
However this is even worse in the case of digital cameras, since the process effectively puffs out the files to be double or triple the effective size of the meaningful information contained therein, and the word "pixel" does not truly correspond to the unit "pixel" used elsewhere in the computer industry... such as with monitors or graphics cards. This is at the very least, a new use of the word "pixel." Imagine lifting up the hood on a 15 horse boat motor and discovering that it contained a tiny little 5 horse boat motor surrounded by lots of air. I would feel deceived. Wouldn't you?
I wouldn't buy a boat motor based on how much space the engine's hood takes up any more than I would buy a digital camera based on how big the data files were. Flash memory is expensive!
If saving the files RAW and uncompressed takes up half the space, what does that tell you? It is proof that the other 50% is mathematically-derived puffery. It is like adding air to soap, and then marketing that soap by volume. The stated resolutions are indeed very deceptive!
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I hope I didn't sound too critical, everthing else was right. CIE xy just uses a restricted definition of color to trim it down to 2D.
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