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The Future of Digital Camera Technology
An anonymous reader writes "CNet News has an interesting look at where digital camera technology is headed now that the megapixel buzzword can be put to rest. From the article: 'In compact cameras, I think that the megapixel race is pretty much over,' says Chuck Westfall, director of media for Canon's camera marketing group. 'Seven- and eight-megapixel cameras seem to be more than adequate. We can easily go up to a 13-by-19 print and see very, very clear detail.'"
Now that we have cameras of a decent MP maybe we could stop saving as jpeg and instead use a lossless format? That combined with a decent optical zoom and something like a 13MP camera would be good. That leaves us with the primary worry of storage. I'd suggest making cameras able to wirelessly connect to another portable device you could carry in a pocket of purse that acts like a hard disk and could store 100GB of files or more. That and improved batteries would be great.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Why all the big attachment to JPEGs?
Isn't it better to be taking lossless pictures with digital cameras anyway?
(My digital camera only writes in jpg format. I'm not sure if this is rare amongst digital cameras nowdays, but it doesn't seem ideal.)
So what, technology should just stop because consumers don't need anything better? Technically most people don't need more than 1ghz of processing power, but thankfully that hasn't stalled the IT industry. Personally I think we should continue on until we hit a technological wall, or at least until the consumer models would be way too pricy. I see no reason I shouldn't have a 100 megapixel camera if someone can deliver me one for a few hundred dollars.
...for all but the most discriminating consumers. The only difference with 8MP cameras is that now people are posting 4MB images on their Web pages, or emailing them to Grandma who's still stuck on dialup.
Better quality CCD sensors with very low "noise" even at high ISO settings (ISO 1000-1600). This will likely require either larger size sensors or improved semiconductor design for the CCD sensor itself.
Amended quote: 8 megapixels of resolution should be enough for anybody.
I personally carry my phone around far more than I do my camera, and consequently I find myself taking photos where I'd normally be wishing I had my camera with me. Integration can be disastrous if the usability of any of the devices is affected, but if done properly, it can be excellent. Bring on the iPod Camcorder Phone!
"In compact cameras, I think that the megapixel race is pretty much over," says Chuck Westfall, director of media for Canon's camera marketing group. "Seven- and eight-megapixel cameras seem to be more than adequate."
Anyone care to guess how long it will be before this quote supplants "640K should be enough for anybody" as the Worst Technology Prediction Ever?
There are two other things that can make or break a camera
What seems to slip by the average digital camera buyer, is that megapixels are only relevant in relation to the size of the CCD/CMOS.
SIZE does matter.
BIGGER is BETTER.
Here's a great website that does a basic talk about sensor sizes
If you follow the links you'll learn a lot more about why the sensor & pixel size are possibly more important than just the megapixels offered.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
7 or 8 megapixel may be adequate for consumer cameras but even the highest pixel count availible doesn't match the needs of a lot of professionals. They've finally hit pro level but for high res work many still need to use film. The mass market race is over but pro cameras will keep increasing for years to come. A 4'x5' still has far more resolution than the best camera on the market today.
Image Stabilisation. Low-light performance improvement. Battery Life.
There's a lot of people out there who have no concept of the Golden Mean or Rule of Thirds. If I get ahold of one of their pictures and have to edit it, I like being able to crop and have the extra resolution to zoom in. For those people, 16MP isn' even enough.
As a professional graphic designer and artist, I feel that we'll still need a bit more in order to say "we've got enough pixels." For instance, I do a lot of texture photography - shots of various objects, capturing as much of a surface as I can. I want my stock textures to be as high-res as possible, because there are times where I need to isolate very small areas and blow them up to an extreme. Same goes for regular stock photography; I need to be able to isolate and blow up certain parts to an extreme, and I can't always set up a nice macro shot (with a random occuring event, such as a drop of water).
In short? No, 8mp isn't enough for me.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
I have a suggestion: VIDEO.
However many megapixels, but I can still only capture 640x480 video. theres no reason this couldn't be full PAL/NTSC or even HD - add a weight to it and you have a extremely good quality video camera for very cheap.
Let me edit the camera OS and I'll implement it myself, including time lapse or variable frame rate. I'll connect it to my laptop so i don't run out of space.
They keep wanting to milk us for every new "HD" format video camera.
The other thing they can implement is HDR photography. I know RAW is good, but if they can master true HDR that would be awesome.
Rich Gentlemen Hide - The Existential Comic
I realize the article is aimed mostly at consumer compact cameras rather than SLRs, but this is a big discussion among SLR users, a rapidly growing part of the market as prices continue to drop.
Canon appears more dedicated to the full frame format. The new 5D and the lack of true "pro" lenses in the EF-S format seem to demonstrate this.
Nikon looks more dedicated to its DX format, especially given its new D200 and selection of "pro" lenses (its 17-55mm f2.8, for example).
Both companies and some third-parties have released wide angle lenses for their smaller sensor formats that are, by most accounts, good performers. With these lenses, I'm pretty satisfied as far as wide angle coverage goes (although they may be insufficient for many users, I realize), and I appreciate the "crop-factor" on telephoto lenses which uses the generally better center part of the lens and gives more "reach" while letting me use smaller lenses.
I'm between SLRs at the moment (was a Canon user), but think I'll go Nikon once the time comes to buy my next camera due to this full-frame issue - the DX format better suits my needs as someone who uses telephoto more often than wide angle. What are other users thinking?
A little less than a year ago, a graduate student at Stanford gave a talk on light field photography at the University of Washington. The results were extremely impressive. Basically, by inserting an array of microlenses in front of the CCD, you can determine the direction of every ray coming into the camera. You lose resolution, but who needs 8 megapixels anyway? What you DO get is the ability to refocus the image in software, and take photos in low light and still retain a high depth of field.
I highly encourage you to check out his light field photography site, including his galleries, tech reports, and papers. It'll blow you away.
I was looking at an ad in the New York Times just last week. It was a full-page photo for a major telecom and all I saw was pixels. It was something and art director would never have stood for even a couple of years ago but will accept today in exchange for the digital workflow and instant gratification. I'm not sure a lot of people who state how much resolution is enough have ever seen a good print made from a piece of large format film. But then again this isn't so different from what large format photographers were saying when 35mm came on the scene and it turns out the world was big enough for both.
My relatively old camera has exposure bracketing, which has proved useful a few times for me. But focus bracketing would save MANY more of my photos. I'm imagining that the camera would take a photo at whatever the current focus system does, then focus out a bit, and focus in a bit (Ok, I don't know the terminology). It's far too often that my particular camera doesn't quite focus right. Either I aim it wrong, or the lighting throws it off, or maybe in hindsight, I just wish that I had focused on something else. Plus, editing the photos later would be much more interesting.
Who the fuck modded this +5?
What he's asking for already exists. You can use RAW mode or some cameras will even save as TIFFs if you don't want jpegs. Same for wireless - that stuff is already available (although not mainstream -- yet). Current batteries aren't bad either (heck, I can fill a 2GB card on a single battery). Also, for pros who do a lot of shooting, there has been specialized battery packs for years [for the camera AND flashes] and such solutions...
There are plenty of things that suck with cameras nowadays, and these things aren't it.
The interface/menus on most cameras suck (especially P&S cameras - those menus are like a fucking maze, and what about the impossible to remember button combinations for anything non-trivial?)
Dynamic Range. I don't want more megapixels, and current noise levels are about as good as they'll ever get (compromises). But I *WANT* more dynamic range already - even better, a film-like "shoulder" in the response curve (in the highlights) - without having to combine pictures. It's annoying to have to combine shots all the time (even if one uses ND grads). This is perhaps the biggest issue with regards to digital photography right now.
What about that four thirds "universal" system they used to talk so much about? I don't want to sell all my Nikon glass (several thousand $'s worth) to be able to use a Canon camera, or what if I wanted to use a Canon lens on my Nikon? This was supposed to let you do it by swapping a mount/adapter. Absolute freedom! No more system lock-in!
The lighting system on most cameras is quickly becoming a mess. Forget about tried and working "real" TTL (matrix, color matrix or whatever). Now you need special oddball not-quite-TTL (dTTL/eTTL/iTTL) flashes for every new camera they put out... It's getting more complicated as you try to use things like plain TTL strobes and such... CCDs made this harder, and they try to make you believe it's better now, but it isn't.
There are tons of things that could really improve...
There are many things which have improved a lot on recent cameras: things like startup times and shutter lag, orientation sensors are pretty much standard, etc.
People worry too much about megapixels. You also need the [expensive] glass with sufficient resolving power to make use of it. And for 99% of the population, it's already overkill. How many megapixels one needs to make bullseye snapshots of their dogs? Give 'em a million megapixels and their photos will still suck. And resolution isn't "linear". To have a picture twice the size in each direction, you need 4x the resolution i.e. the difference between a 5 and a 6MP camera is nearly non-existant. If you need more megapixels than the current cameras, most likely you'll need to switch to a medium format camrea with a digital back (mainly because even the most expensive 35mm lenses only have so much resolving power), which will cost tens of thousands.
The other comments in this thread seem to only talk about the file size issue of the picture you snap. But there are actually three other factors you need to keep in mind. And since the parent mentioned that he would be OK with a 100 MB image, these factors would become readily apparent:
1. Battery life. If you snap pictures with lossless formatting, and thus increase the storage space used per picture, your battery life will plummet. Simply because the camera will be expending much more energy, either transmitting the picture via the wireless link or writing to an internal flash card.
2. Rapid pictures. The larger your images are, the longer it will take to save them. The internals of the camera can only buffer so much data. If you are saving large files, the cameras will take a long time to save them, so you will get much more of a delay between pictures.
3. Save speed. The larger the files, the longer it will take to save them to internal flash or via a wireless link.
3a. Good flash cards will transfer data at up to 20 MB/sec (http://www.kingston.com/digitalmedia/x/). Average cards will do up to 8 MB/sec, if that. So a 100 MB file will take 5 seconds to save on the best flash media.
3b. At full 11 Mb/sec (1.375 MB/sec), a 100 MB file would take 72.727 seconds to save. At full 54 Mb/sec (6.75 MB/sec), it would take 14.814 seconds to save. At full 108 Mb/sec (13.5 MB/sec), it would take 7.407 seconds to save. Those numbers are using the full bandwidth for data transfer, so double those times for real-world scenarios with not-perfect signal quality and wireless overhead.
In other words, the biggest obstacle I can foresee is the time to get the picture from the lens to the disk. After that is the battery life.
First and foremost, the camera must be small and light enough that I can always carry it with me - and yet have a useful optical zoom. ... in fact they don't have flash!) :-)
Concord seem to have that problem solved.
More than the 3 MPxl resolution would be nice, but is not the top priority for me.
Reducing the latency to near-zero is my next request - cheap camera-phones almost manage it; why not "proper" compact cameras.
Good low-light performance, and a flash that can be set to a default of "off" would also be good.
(Again, those camera phones seem to do pretty well in this
Now you've solved these I'll happily push up to 6-8 Mpxl if this does not lose the low-latency low-light performance.
I might even pay £100 for such
Andy
I am surprised they didn't talk about speed. Latency and shot to shot. Every consumer level dicital camera I have tried so far was incredibly slow compared to a cheap film camera. I would buy new camera every two years if it was significantly faster.
AccountKiller
There's no point in this article that hasn't been discussed in a miriad of other forums.
Please mod it down.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
I'm glad that my digital photos don't all take up 19TB apiece -- but I am puzzled by the idea that I should be complacent with a given MP number as "good enough." I want shots that are infinitely detailed, and (at least in the area of interest) infinitely sharp. Since neither of these is an available option, I've got to settle for for "sharp enough that I can stand it" and "as detailed as the lens and sensor let me get."
...
;)
Doesn't everyone at some point end up cropping their digital photos, and hitting the jaggies? The main reason I'd like more (and more and more) resolution is because I don't *know* how big I want that photo to be shown in the future, and I don't know if cousin Vinny has a hilarious expression on his face that will be lost in the haze at 5MP but might be a treasure at 10MP
The idea that 8 or 10 MP is "enough" and that now everyone can just go home and be happy isn't completely groundless (we've certainly reached a point where "more pixels" isn't the main thing being sought by camera buyers), but it's only true while other things (sensor designs, storage capacity, cheap-yet-bright-and-not-too-heavy lenses) catch up and remind us that data uncaptured is data that can't be restored.
I'm sort of hoping that mid-range DSLRs hit 12MP in the next 2 years, and that Pentax still makes one that runs on AA batteries
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
They tell you the camera has 8MP, but "forget" to mention that in reality it has 4M green pixels and 2M of each red and blue. And there's a blurring filter in front of the sensor to reduce moire. So if you photograph fall foliage, your 8MP camera turns into a 2MP one at best. In the BEST case, it's a 4MP camera really, not 8MP.
The only sensor that takes full RGB readings at each sensor location is Foveon, but it suffers from inferior color reproduction and lower ISO sensitivity. It's also pretty low on "real" pixel count - currently at around 3.5MP (which in Canon/Nikon terminology would be called 10MP, because each pixel takes full RGB readout). Foveon pictures are extremely sharp, though, and render textures very well. If they solved their color reproduction issues and upped the pixel count to "real" 5MP - I'd RUN to the store with my credit card in hand to buy a camera based on this sensor.
I thought we were pushing the theoretical limit for that - there are only so many photons impacting the sensor surface, and it's not possible to catch many more with much more accuracy than we already are.
Actually, even if you had a theoretically "perfect" CCD or CMOS, you can catch about two-to-four times as many photons.
The problem lies in the way the photosites capture light. Most designs are variants of the every other location is green with red and blue alternating the others. Something like:
RG
GB
Green gets twice the representation as human eyes are more sensitive to green and thus more detail in that part of the spectrum is considered desirable.
A recent trick to squeeze out more is to turn the photosites at 45 degrees to the grid you actually capture. You're then forced to interpolate more but the theory is that you get a smoother response.
Regardless though, any given location can catch red OR green OR blue parts of the spectrum. If green falls, 50% of it is lost. If red falls, 75% is lost - same with blue. You're always throwing away half to three quarters of your photons simply by having photosites dedicated to individual colors.
With Foveon they try tackling things differently. By exploiting the fact that different wavelengths can penetrate silicon to different depths, they figured you can have a three layer deep photosite that captures red AND green AND blue - none of this ignoring chunks of the spectrum and throwing away data.
Of course, for all it's a cool idea, it's proprietary, has only made it in to a few cameras and doesn't seem to be hitting its full potential yet. My guess is there's still quite a bit left that can be squeezed out of CMOS (Canon's 10D got noisy at-or-just-after 400 ISO wherease the 20D, 18 months later, could handle 800) and we'll see them follow that technology for a while whilst waiting for Foveon to move out of patent protection.
Still, in the future, I'd imagine we'll see Foveon or something different but exploiting some similar concepts replace individual colored photosites. Until that point, no matter how good things get, there's always a full stop of light's worth of extra quality sitting and waiting.
Olympus E-system cameras have this feature.
Though I used to work in DSP (digital signal processing) I don't want any of it in my camera, still nor motion. Give me a high resolution, decent optics and preferably a RAW output format. I'll do the buying of memory cards and a tripod for my shaky hands. But NO digital mumbo-jumbo for me.
now that the megapixel buzzword can be put to rest. From the article: 'In compact cameras, I think that the megapixel race is pretty much over,' says Chuck Westfall,
... the gigapixel wars has
Begun
In terms of LCD framing - it has been done - check out the Olympus E330 - they're marketting it as the World's first digital SLR with continuous live view:e 330evolt.asp
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0601/06012606olympus
Personally I prefer to use the viewfinder everytime - but put that down to what I'm used to. I'll bet Olympus will sell alot of these cameras to those like you upgrading from a digital compact who demand the lcd viewpoint. The real sales point for this particular DSLR though is the ultrasonic CCD dust cleaner - I'm really hoping Olympus licences this technology out to other manufacturers... cleaning the CCD every couple of months with a swab and alcohol is something I'd like to lay rest to history - and something that most DSLR manufacturers choose to keep quiet about when selling their cameras...
I'd be quite happy with a digicam that took photos at 1920x1080 or even a multiple of that, say 3840x2160, in the aspect ratio of all future TVs and monitors (ok, 16:10 seems to be the monitor ratio thanks to stupid Microsoft and their idea of having HD res PLUS room for taskbar.... but close enough).
Anyone else notice how digicams all take 4:3 pictures these days no matter how high end they are, just as the public is moving to 16:9 as the default ratio?
So....
any digicams out there ahead of the pack and already implementing widescreen resolutions by default?
I would think that a 1920x1080 camera phone would be quite the sweet spot for storage and speed while preserving good quality pictures for viewing on TVs direct from the camera....
Anyone?
Visceral Psyche Films
"They tell you the camera has 8MP, but "forget" to mention that in reality it has 4M green pixels and 2M of each red and blue. And there's a blurring filter in front of the sensor to reduce moire. So if you photograph fall foliage, your 8MP camera turns into a 2MP one at best. In the BEST case, it's a 4MP camera really, not 8MP.
The only sensor that takes full RGB readings at each sensor location is Foveon, but it suffers from inferior color reproduction and lower ISO sensitivity. It's also pretty low on "real" pixel count - currently at around 3.5MP (which in Canon/Nikon terminology would be called 10MP, because each pixel takes full RGB readout). Foveon pictures are extremely sharp, though, and render textures very well."
This utterly fails to take into account how the human visual system works. It also fails to take into account the necessity of filtering when sampling. It also fails to take into account the sophistication of current interpolation algorithms.
The Bayer pattern is actually just about the most efficient layout for capturing images for human perception. I have done dozens of camparison of images capture using the 6Million Bayer arrayed sensors, versus 10.2 Million layered sensors. In the end they are essentially equivalent. The bayer layout allows you to do more with less by taking into account the human image processing system that is heavily organized to toward luminance/green information.
It is utter fanboy nonsense to say a bayer 8MP camera turns into a 2MP when taking fall foliage shots. In any real world situation including fall foliage, an 8MP bayer camera like the Canon 350D will capture more detail than the Foveon sensored SD10 NEW 10.2 Million Pixels (3.4 Mp Red + 3.4 MP Green + 3.4 Mp Blue) (description from Sigma USA page).
As technical bunch we should be able to understand that optimization is sometimes better than brute force. By tilting the sensor toward green, it is tilted toward luminance capture and tilted toward the way humans view details.
In thousand of empirical comparison online, parity is reached when there is an approximately equal number of green sensors. So 6MP bayer (3MP green) where approximate equal to 10.2MP foveon chip with ~3MP green. Actual 10MP bayer (5MP green) cameras like Nikon D200 easily capture much more detail than Sigmas 10.2MP chip.
The sampling issue. The Sigma has no filter to prevent undersampling artifacts. It doesn't suffer from colour moire artifacts, but it has plenty of luminance moire. See here for an ancient comparison of the 6MP Canon D60 and the 10.2MP Sigma SD9:
http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/DigPhotog/alias/
Scroll to the photo comparison at the end. The only extra detail in the Foveon based image is Aliasing errors. These are extremely prevalent in Sigma images with sharp diagnals, or repeating patterns beyond the Nyquist frequency of the sensor.
In the end, bayer is an excellent engineering optimization to do more with less. The real comparison that counts is how does it compare with film. A 6mp Bayer sensor in an DSLR is already better than 35mm film. By 10MP it is significantly better.
The other important factor is how the bayer DPI translates in the printed image. I have found that around 240 DPI is close to optimal image quality. So a Canon 350D with a 3456 pixel image width can produce a superb quality image about 14 inches wide. Be aware this is not to say you can't print larger. This is highly subjective depending on source material, but with detailed material this is the point where I consider that you would be hard pressed to notice any improvement from more pixels.
So even if you only want to print 13"x19" I think you could still see improvement from more pixels if printing detailed subjects like landscapes.
You can argue the quandry of subject, material and view distance till the cows come when considering viable prints size. I mere wish to express what I consider the
You can also mess up your images if you're using an inferior RAW converter. Check out some comparisons vs dcraw here and here.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The Canon PowerShot S2 IS has this feature. It will take three shots at different focus points, and you can adjust how far apart the focus is. I own one, it's fantastic. To see some examples of what it can do, visit my Pacific Northwest picture page.
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A 8MP camera is equivalent to a 4MB camera plus a x2 zoom.
Not quite. An 8MP sensor has sqrt(2) = 1.4 times as many pixels in each direction to get twice as many pixels overall. So it's only equivalent to a 1.4x zoom.
You actually need to go to 16MP to get the equivalent of a 2x zoom on 4MP, which is quite a different proposition.
The other problem of more pixels is the one you mentioned yourself - more noise. A low noise 800MP sensor would be far too big to fit in a normal sized camera.
I have a 20 x 30 from my 6 mp SLR sitting next to a 35mm 20 x 30 in my living room. The Digital print simply looks better. While 35 mm film is potentially sharper than a 6 mp digital in practice that doesn't play out. The optical enlargement process loses a lot of sharpness.
I have a number of 35mm cameras - I love the feel of film cameras - but the digital SLR also works well.
And no, I'm not blind. The digital print was done at 300 PPI (54 MP after interpolation and sharpened in the GIMP). It looks very good, and I've gotten a lot of complements on it.
The DSLRs are mostly 3:2. That's the same as 15:10, 16:10.666, or 14.333:9.
(the same as film)
or leica digilux 2. They're both the same, one just sports the red dot and a copy of photoshop elements with it. I own the LX1. It's 8mp and native 16x9 and saves RAW files if you want.
A given piece of film can only have one sensitivity, but digital cameras now let you choose the ISO you want for your photo. Is there a technology yet that will use multiple ISOs in the same shot in order to get everything properly lit, or at least closer to it?
I don't know whether that would look good or not, but it would probably produce more usable pictures for things like security cameras.
If it does look good, and you could combine it with the "multiple focus" technology liked to by supersat here, you could basically point and shoot at random, then sit down later to crop and refocus the picture until it's perfect.
The KM 5D is definitely a nice option. The others don't have the image stabilization which of course gives you the extra 2-3 stops. If your subject is moving image stabilization won't help much, unfortunately. In that case the more important thing would be high ISO capability, which would probably put the D50 out in front for you. If you can keep the camera perfectly still the images stabilization is pretty useless.
You say you don't like dSLRs, but you don't say what you're trying to shoot, so I don't know if a compact digicam would suit your needs at all, but just in case I will second the above recommendation of the Fujifilm Finepix F10, which is the first consumer digicam capable of giving clean images at higher ISOs up to 1600. If you can find the F11 it is a slightly improved version with a higher resolution LCD screen and a couple of other things. It seems to only be available in Japan right now, but quite a few people on the DPReview forums have had good luck buying one from a seller on eBay called time2envy. Those are 6MP cameras, like the KM 7D/5D. Unfortunately they don't have a RAW option, or they would really be incredible cameras.
Another option is a compromise between digicam and dSLR. The Fujifilm Finepix S9000 (S9500 in EU) is one of those SLR-style digicams. It's got a 9MP chip with the same technology as the F10/F11, and a 10.7x optical zoom lense that I think starts at a nice wide 28mm. I've been looking at that one myself. The Finepix E900 is a compact counterpart with the same 9MP sensor. Both can do RAW but their high ISO images are slightly less clean than the F10/F11.
If you're willing to go ultra-compact there is also the Finepix Z1/Z2. Same technology, good high ISO performance but again not quite as clean as the F10/F11, and of course no RAW, but what do you expect from an ultra-compact under $300? The Z2 is of course a better version of the Z1 but you'll have to get it from that guy on eBay.
If you were willing to go with a dSLR and spend more than $1,000, the best option for low-light photography would probably be the Canon 20D which can give fairly clean images even at ISO 3200.
But, after saying all this I would also say that if you don't need it right now you might want to wait until after PMA 2006 to see what new wonders will be announced. Keep an eye on dpreview.com at the end of February. There have been quite a few announcements already but those Finepix models I mentioned above still seem to be the only good low-light contenders short of a real dSLR. You never know though.
Oh, and since you'll probably be working with a high ISO no matter which camera you get, you'll probably want to invest in NeatImage or NoiseNinja. They do a great job cleaning up moderate ISO noise.
Good luck.