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Sony Shoots For 4-Filter CCD, 8 Megapixel Camera

Posted by simoniker on from the color-filter-volume-goes-to-four dept.

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."

7 of 405 comments (clear)

  1. It is a single CCD! by pbox · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  2. What is 35mm equal to? by tevenson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:What is 35mm equal to? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not necessarily. A photograph taken with a 35 MM can be blown up quite easily to 16x20 using a high end drum scanner (DS for example) It would not be as good as a 4x5 transaprency, but I have sen it done. At that size, for commercial uses, you would want at least a 4800x6000 resolution which is nearly 29 Mega-pixels.

      What your printer at home produces and what commercial printing produce are 2 very different things. The screening technologies are very different and require different source data

    2. Re:What is 35mm equal to? by Brahmastra · · Score: 5, Informative

      It depends on how big you want to print the images. "Photo-quality" prints are typically 300 DPI. If you want to print a 4 x 6 image, that means you need and image that is 1200x1800 pixels to print at 300 DPI. If you want to print larger pictures, you need more mega-pixels. Also, the images in almost all digital cameras (except the Canon EOS1DS) is not 35mm. 35mm Film has an aspect ratio of 3:2. Digital cameras have the same aspect ratio as a normal computer monitor which is 4:3. When you are printing an image on 4x6 paper from a digitial camera, a small portion of the top and bottom is usually chopped off (unless you flattened the image). Digital cameras haven't yet passed 35mm film quality when it comes to how many pixels are captured. The closest is the Canon EOS-1DS(11 Megapixels) which rivals some consumer 400 speed films. But digital cameras still have a long way to go to rival 100 speed(or slower) film. But, the amount of detail captured in fine-grain 35mm film is almost never used by the typical consumer anyway. To make 4x6 prints, a 2 megapixel camera is about as good as a film camera.

    3. Re:What is 35mm equal to? by ausoleil · · Score: 5, Informative

      I did some Googling and found this guy has done some math:
      http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film .vs.dig ital.1.html

      Example:
      Fujichrome Velvia has an lpm1.6 = 80 lpm. Equation 1 gives 10 megapixels for intensity detail, but

      16 Megapixels is not that far away from the consumer market.

      Me, I'll stick with my view camera. You'd need a few gigapixels to even approach an 8X10 contact print.

  3. Cyan by mopslik · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  4. Re:Forget it by SheldonYoung · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, not 'nuff said. The tradeoff with the Foveon sensor is the stacked detectors for each color component create much more noise in the bottom component. In the end it will mostly come down to which sensor type can be produced more practically.