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Beyond Megapixels - Part II
TheTechLounge writes "This is Part II of a series of three editorial articles examining current digital photography hardware, as well as my views of what is to come. In this segment I will be focusing on build, size, weight and ergonomics of camera bodies, as well as the size, weight, function and versatility of the glass strapped to the front of it. If you haven't already, you may want to read Part I first."
It would be great to have the same bodies for film or digital and just swap the back off if you feel like changing and have it all interface with the body correctly. I know you can sort of do this with medium format, but then you getting into real $$. I guess customers not really caring is why APS film hasn't disapeared yet (oh look honey, it's such a cute camera), though hopefully digital will kill it off. One thing I'd like to see move up from APS is the magnetic media film. I don't know how badly it affects the image quality, but it would be really great to have the focus distance/lens, zoom, f-stop, shutter speed etc record when I take a picture. I always forget what lense I used by the time i come to develop the film... Of course if you're using a filter this still wouldn't let you know which filter you used.
It would be really neat if you could drop in an electronic sensor to replace your film in exciting cameras. Have the exact form factor of current 35mm barrel film with only added electronics. The data could be stored in the film barrel and a sensor could be drawn out like you do with current 35mm strip. The mechanical film advance would "tell" the electronics that a picture was taken and save what it just saw. That would be the best of both worlds - able to have electronic pictures and able to use 35mm regular film plus all the camera hardware is already built.
Actually he highlights the real world compromise of using the existing lenses with smaller sensors. But this is a comopromise.
He is actually correct. F/2.8 is essentially light gathering ability over area. Not total light gather ability. No matter what size sensor you put there within the image circle it is effectively F/2.8.
But it ends up being a waste of lens with smaller sensor. You can use a much smaller lens and deliver the equivalent light to the smaller image circle.
I think you need to go back and look at how a lense works. The reason that a typical SLR lense has so many elements is that so the light that is received does hit the element at more or less perpendicular to the sensor. Otherwise how do you explain a lense that has a 120 degree FOV being able to print with minimal distortion on a flat surface?
Or the fact that perspective correcting lenses are able to tilt an image to bring it more in plane with the sensor. If the light was hitting a high angle then the image would be distorted.
This is even less of a problem on the SLR/sub APS sensor world where there is a cropping factor and the sensor is only exposed to a portion of the light available from the lense. Typically the cropping factor is 1.5, this means that the lense is receiving only a small portion (the straightest portion) of light available coming from the lense.
Yes, the 1Ds is 11MP and the quality is beyond amazing. Even my D60 when coupled with L lenses gives fantastic quality.
We will see this happen though. CMOS sensors are manufactured using essentially the same technology that is used to make RAM. Yields will increase. Costs will come down.
If this is not driven by Canon or Nikon in the high end, it will be driven by Panasonic, Sony, Casio, etc in the P&S market. As the P&S quality increases, the 10D-level DSLR quality will have to increase to justify their higher prices. As the 10D quality level goes up, the 1Ds level cameras will have to improve too.
You are right that most consumers do not need a 10+megapixel camera. But they also do not need 3GHz PCs, 200+HP cars, 50" Plasma TVs... Because the technology is going to become available, the cameras are going to advance.
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
one of my friends once made a digital pinhole camera. yes, you heard me right. it was really cool. and since there is not really any concept of depth of field (everything is in focus) you can get some pretty cool pictures. did it for a undergrad honors project in photography
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I agree that at the top end of the range there is not much to challenge Canon or Nikon, especially Canon.
At the P&S and prosumer levels though, there is a lot of competition, especially here in Japan.
Casio, Panasonic, Sony, Kyocera, Konica, Ricoh and others are all selling P&S digital cameras, but not DSLR. They want as much of the market as they can get, and will drive the lower end of the market up. This will in turn force the Kiss/300D/Rebel-level market up. Which will force the 10D market up... Which will... I think you see what I am saying!
Canon and Nikon were able to control the level of the SLR market in the past because it just was not possible to pressure them from below. That has changed with digital though.
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
But rather X3.
CCDs can only recognize one color per pixel, whereas X3 can recognize each color per pixel, producing much better pictures.
The CCD will be dead in 10 years and replaced by X3.
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The RAM transfer speeds are so poor that it takes around a second to snap a picture with many of these 5 Megapixel cameras - by that time you can easily miss the shot.
I recently had the pleasure of attending a talk by a guy that worked on the focal plane of GAIA, a spacecraft to be launched by ESA around 2010. It is not designed for imaging, but for very accurately determining the position of stars (astrometry).
Their specs for the focal plane of the telescopes: size of around 0.6*0.8 meter, 180 CCD chips packed together for a total of 1.2 Gigapixels! I believe handling the thermal power alone (~100 Watt), without moving the location of the pixels a bit already was a typical case of rocket science.
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Yes, lots more players in the digicam market (which is much, much larger than the DSLR market). Interestingly, Canon and Nikon have quite similar market share in DSLR's, though Canon clearly has a lead in sensor development. The 1D2 looks very impressive. I personally think it caused the D2x to be withdrawn but who knows.