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."

Comments

Color management?

[BWJones]

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?

What is 35mm equal to?

[tevenson]

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?

Re:What is 35mm equal to?

[Anonymous Coward]

But velvia has higher resolving power than any current color print film. Graininess is not the same as resolving power. (detail)

In fact, to a certain extent, grainier images appear 'sharper' and more detailed due to the edge effects of the film grain. This is one reason why you can enlarge 35mm b&w at large sizes: the sharp grain fools you into seeing more detail than is really there.

However, if you want to get into theoreticals:

kodak technical pan (b&w) has a theoretical resolving power of 320 lpmm... If you have a theoretically perfect camera with a lens that is not limited by diffraction or aberration, then the mp would be 88MP... but that is only in the theoretical realm.

Gonna need some serious memory

[Megor1]

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)

Blue and Emerald (like Cyan)

[t0qer]

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.

Spend $300 more

[toupsie]

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.

Sony = Proprietary

[computersareevil]

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...

Re:Sony = Proprietary

[computersareevil]

You can buy tubes and coal-fired stooves AND THEIR IMPROVED REPLACEMENTS from a myriad of suppliers, all competing on price and quality.

When you have to replace the wonderful InfoLithium battery, you can buy it from any manufacturer you like, as long as it's Sony. Anybody else tries to make it, and they'll have a C&D letter from Sony faster than you can say Aibo!

InfoLithium and Memory Stick are attempts via copyright, patent, and DMCA to exclude others from making replacement parts so they can keep the prices and profit margins artificially high. Think Lexmark ink cartridges.

$th color layer from Fuji?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

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.

Re:sony sucks

[pbox]

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).

Re:It is a single CCD!

[BWJones]

It does however have a 4 color fileter in front of it. BTW, Nikon had that for about 4-5 years now.

So....theoretically, it would be possible to perform multispectral imagery with this camera by including spectral filters of preference....Say, different IR filters or what have you. Processing these data are of course the next problem, but I seem to remember a DARPA proposal recently asking about this very problem for portable use. Hmmmm, so little time, so many questions to ask, so many possible experiements.....

Re:Sony not good for digital cameras

[Barret7SC]

It could be that the video camera's ccd dosent even have to be 1mp to take good looking miniDV video. Why put a 3mp sensor into a camera who's primary purpose is to take lower resolution video. They are not crippling anything, it's just the difference between still and video.

Anyways

Re:woah!

[Gothmolly]

It's in the orange range, and its always women. It's caused by the inverse of the gene deficiency which causes red/green colorblindness in men. Women acquire an extra cone type, they are called 'tetrachromatic'.

Re:woah!

[MBCook]

The unfortunate effect of this is because they only have that gene (since it's obviously recessive), all their male offspring are colorblind. Interesting none the less, though.

thanks for the links

[Artifex]

Also worth noting that Sony named this color emerald, probably some patent is protecting the cyan (maybe Nikon)?

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.

Re:thanks for the links

[Wraithlyn]

It's not just the difference between what colours you use to mix, it's a fundamental difference between how light is produced, and how light is reflected.

RGB is an "additive" model. You start with black (no light), and add light to it. Adding all 3 RGB components creates white light.

CMY is a "subtractive" model. You start with white (normal ambient or source light), then add pigments which ABSORB some of this light. Magenta, for example, absorbs green from the RGB spectrum, leaving you with R+B => Magenta. You add more pigment types, you absorb more colours, and will get black if you mix them all.

Not sure why they'd use a CMY sensor, unless they're trying to keep it in the same colourspace as printers use. All this means is the light is broken down differently... ie blue light would be picked up by both cyan and magenta sensors. But as you say, I'm sure Nikon knows more about it than we do :)

All the nitpicking you want, without bitterness.

[raygundan]

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.

Re:What's the point?

[meta-monkey]

Maybe eventually somebody will come out with a pro camera that uses the same technology, like Sigma with the Foveon sensor in their SD-9, but no pro would use this Sony camera...it's not even an SLR (single-lens reflex). That is, it doesn't have interchangable lenses, and no professional photographer would be caught dead with a camera that doesn't use interchangable lenses.

And an article on gene-therapy tetrachromacy

[RobertB-DC]

Sorry to reply to my own post, but I did a search on "tetrachromatic" and found a very interesting article in Slate, describing three up-and-coming vision-enhancement technologies: surgical correction to 20/10 (available now), CCD implants with direct transmission to the brain (give it 10-20 years), and gene-therapy generation of a fourth type of photoreceptor (pie in the sky, like the Internet was).

For their first experiment, they want to give a third color receptor to monkeys. Then, it's our turn:

There are weirder possibilities, too. In their first four-cone experiment, the Neitzes think they would engineer a photopigment sensitive in the visible light spectrum (probably in the gap between our current blue and green cones). But they could also make a cone receptive in the infrared zone. If the cones were to become too sensitive to infrared light, though, we would start "seeing" our own body heat, and that would blur our vision. But if you could engineer cones that were somewhat sensitive to the infrared spectrum, we might have extraordinary night vision -- without goggles, street lights, or surgery.

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!

Re:No, it doesn't

[William Tanksley]

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,

Not true. We can see colors that monitors can't display -- IIRC, mainly deep purples. Oh, of course, as long as we're using modern monitor technology with RGB additive, storing images in RGB makes perfect sense. However, in general, there are other more general schemes; wavelength+amplitude would be one, and CIE is an internationally accepted standard to describe human vision.

Ah, here we are. A little graph showing how much of the human vision RGB can't cover. Check it out!

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.

And more manipulation could reduce it to TWO numbers, related to wavelength and frequency. And even more could reduce it to two numbers related to the eye's response to wavelength and frequency. I don't think that's been done, but the CIE system reduces to three numbers.

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.

I'm sure it's occurred to you that if you disagree with everyone else, it's sometimes possible that you're missing something.

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. :-)

We'll have to wait to see real reviews to make a judgement on this one -- the previews I've seen look very positive, regardless of filter technology. It looks like it's a substantial improvement on other cameras in the same price range.

-Billy

Another digital upside

[mindstrm]

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.

Fovon comparison test. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

The Sigma installed Fovon technology was my target as I stomped down to the camera district.

--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

Re:No, it doesn't

[Alsee]

And more manipulation could reduce it to TWO numbers, related to wavelength and frequency.

First, wavelength = 1 / frequency. They are effectively only a single number. I'm going to guess the "two numbers" you intended were wavelength and intensity.

Second, normal human visual colorspace is inherently three dimentional and cannot be reduced to just two numbers. Just consider white, you cannot reduce white to a wavelength intensity pair. You always need three axes such as (red, green, blue) or (cyan, magenta, yellow) or (hue, saturation, value).

Using more than 3 values always encodes information which we cannot perceive, but it can often be quite useful to do so for a variety of practical reasons.

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