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Higher Res Digital Cameras
cyberdude
wrote in to link us to an EETimes story that talks about a new
digital camera
coming out that claims to be able to capture 4000x4000 pixel
images. There are lots of comments about existing digital
camera technology and why this is different. All I know is
we're getting closer to ending the need for film. Thats cool
by me.
There's considerable picture loss, but nowhere near as much as going from 35 mm to digital. Probably the best photo site on the net, Philip Greenspun's photo.net says that there's about 56% as much information in an APS film as in a 35 mm. He also says that for printing snapshot type photos or maybe even 8x10 you're doing ok. If you're satisfied with the results then you made an excellent purchase (this goes for anything, including digital cameras or computers or operating systems or...)
> I would never get rid of my SLR unless they
> make a digital camera that you could...
> a) change the lenses
There's a manufacturer working on a "digital camera" drop-in film canister for standard 35mm cameras. Check out: www.imagek.com (actually, it seems to be down this moment). Last I heard, they were hoping for 1280x1024 resolution (or something close).
I hope they haven't folded--that was (and still is) the best hope for digital cameras, I think--retrofitting all our existing cameras. Best of both worlds.
david.
And with CompactFlash, you get even more storage per card (but the cards themselves are bigger and they aren't as easy to change).
For that kind of money, you can already get excellent digital cameras (including the Nikon D-100). Foveon may have resolution that's a little better and a slightly better dynamic range, but at those prices, that will be pretty academic for most camera users.
... because they don't last long enough.
Currently, they only last a few hours at most on one set of batteries. Which is rather inconvenient, even trying to extend the life by turning it on/off repeatedly.
While they're great for shots directly to the computer, they need to last a lot longer before I could consider one to replace my 35mm camera.
Hmm. Go on a tour, and bring lots and lots of batteries (or a few sets of rechargables and a charger...). Or just bring a 35mm camera and some film.
Right now, digicams won't replace 35mm's until this one little flaw in an otherwise great product is fixed.
High-end digital video cameras use 3CCDs with a similar beam-splitting system to what's described in the article. As far as I know, no mid-end digital still cameras (i.e. ones selling for less than $ 15k) do this, and I wonder why. This current practice would appear to invalidate their patent unless it's using a more sophisticated variant of the process.
Interestingly enough, my Canon XL1 MiniDV camcorder has the moire pattern problem despite the use of separate red, green and blue sensors. This is because it performs a process similar to that described in the article so that it can use larger CCDs to improve light sensitivity. It happens that the NTSC video standard, on which the XL1 is based, disguises such effects by providing a relatively high-resolution monochrome image and then overlaying low-resolution colour over it. This is why you often see reds distorted and blurred when you watch a video (especially one that's been through a few generations).
The biggest tradeoff between this lower effective resolution and competing cameras is significantly higher low-light performance and more vivid colours. The Sony VX-1000 has a more conservative design and would probably be the right camera to use for a direct comparison between the old and new technologies. (I have a review of the XL1 and the VX-1000 at the link above).
I find the XL1 to be the ideal digital camera for the web, since you can take video and pick the best individual frames from it. That way, you always get the picture. You can see some examples at my portfolio of XL1 pictures.
That being said, I wish they had shown a picture and given pricing for the new camera. Cool as the technology is, it seems like it would be even more difficult to carry around than my six point XL1.
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But while we're on the subject of digital cameras, does anyone know of one that works under linux?
You'll want to check out gPhoto for a list of cameras.
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Midgard Project - Open Source CMS
You ever notice in the kodak photo CD commercials the fact that photo CD's get higher resolution than any desktop scanner is completely ignored? You don't see anyone mass selling HDTV on the basis of its resolution either for that matter. Unless high resolution becomes a factor in the minds of consumers don't expect the cost of 4000x3000 cameras to drop.
I have an Olympus Camedia C-840L that uses SmartMedia... it's a little plastic (8MB) card that slides into a PCMCIA (PC Card) card. Linux treats it as a IDE device, so it works perfectly. If you don't have a laptop, Olympus sells a floppy adapter (!), presumably allowing you to mount the floppy disk as normal.
I still use traditional film. I've got an Nikon N90s and on my last trip shot 9 rolls of film. I've looked at digital cameras with each new generation and there still isn't enough resolution compared to even a 35 mm negative. They're fine if you're going to post something on the web or make a small print, but they're not so fine once you want to print something larger.
For price/performance digital cameras probably do win, my trip cost me >$200 for prints and another >$100 to get everything on PhotoCD. In two more similarily photogenic trips I'll have put out a cost equal to my camera body. I couldn't however have blown up a half dozen of my favourite images and put them on my office walls and have them still look sharp with a consumer digital camera.
I've never developed my own film, I'd like to learn how though.
All I know is we're getting closer to ending the need for film. Thats cool by me.
Cool by you?! For shame. The desire to quickly abandon a technology that's been around for as long as film has in exchange for a technology as new as digital is foolish. Digital formats are constantly changing, as are video formats. I'm no Luddite, but I've gone through three video formats in the last five years already. I have data on disks from old computers (my Apple ][, my Atari 800, my C64) that I can't extract any more without going through a lot of trouble -- and I won't even bother to mention the mountains of SSI data the government can't even access because of dead formats.
One other nice thing about having a film negative, is that you don't need electricity to look at it. To me it's the difference between an optical telescope and a radio telescope. The optical may not have the viewing latitude of the radio, but when I rest my eye against the eyepiece -- I know I'm looking at the universe with MY OWN EYES.
Simple film is elegant and nonvirtual. I for one will mourn the day when film vanishes.
I'm all for new technology, Rob, but when I see you carelessly dismiss a tradition of artistry rooted in the process of filmmaking, I can only shake my head in pity at you. You obviously have no understanding of what you're losing in your quest to look forward to the future.
However, going by Super35 (the latest film format with digital soundtracks and whatnot), here's a little math I did which would give my best guesstimate as to bandwidth usage for a near-film-quality digital stream.
35mm * 120 dots/mm = 4200 dots (horizontally). Super35 uses a 4/3 ratio frame (sometimes anamorphed out to 16:9, sometimes cropped, but lets assume the whole frame WANTS to be saved). 120 dots/mm is a scanning resolution of 3000dpi, which is achievable by even present day consumer grade products.
So, Frame size = 4200 x 3150
This would produce a 7dpi image horizontally if projected to a 50' foot wide screen, which I think would look pretty good if you were 20/30 feet away from it. In fact, it may look better than necessary from a resolution standpoint.
4200x3150x6 (16 bit RGB) = 76mb/frame. 16bit color may not be necessary, but I'd daresay it'd look nice. Consumer grade devices can scan at 12bits/color.
76mb/frame * 24 frame/sec = 1.77GB/second.
So, 1.8GB/second for raw, 16 bit per channel frames at 3000dpi. Lop off 50% if run through a lossless entropy encoder, so around 900MB/s. Take off half if you think 16 bit color is unnecessary and 8bit would be fine to 450MB/s, take off another 75% if 1500dpi will do (say, if destined for a wide screen monitor 2000 dots wide) to around 110MB/s, or just below 1Gbps.
Bandwidth requirements: Theatre: 7.2Gbps
Home: 0.9Gbps
The transport mechanisms are already available in such technologies as gigabit ethernet for consumer use. Storage is the only issue. At consumer grades, we'd need about 600GB for a 90 minute movie... approximately 1000 times that of a current CD. A theatre sized version would take just shy of 5TB.
Storage requirements:
Theatre: 3.25TB/hr
Home: 400GB/hr
Given the explosion in media storage size (an increase of 1000 times or more per dollar in the last 10 years), it's reasonable to assume that systems like the above would both be feasable and cheap within our lifetimes. Keep in mind though that lossy compression algos are in use that reduce the video size by a factor of 10, 100, or more. Old films could easily be so compressed with no apparent loss of quality.
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rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Well, I don't know about this thing, but the file format for older versions of Photoshop essentially were just TIFF files.
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Silver is the light sensitive element used in black and white film, while color film uses organic compounds.
Its messy with all these caustic chemicals and I prefer the recycling electrons with a a digital camera. Well, there is the problem of very nasty chemicals required to make the silicon chips at first...
For consumers, it's amazing how far both digital cameras and low cost printers have come in the last few years. I had an old DC20, which was worthless for anything larger than a thumbnail. Now 1-2 megapixel cameras take pictures so good you need a magnifying glass or a trained eye to see any limitations on a typical sized print.
Film still has advantages that will keep it around for a long time. Motion picture film cameras are relatively cheap and light, and the effective resolution is about 4K pixels for a motion picture frame (which is smaller than a 35mm still frame), and film has a much wider exposure latitude than any digital sensor I'm aware of, but consumer photo printing is so awful that I think it has already been surpassed by the current generation of digital cameras.
I've compared a traditional photo print side-by-side with the same image printed by a $250 ink jet printer, and while the inkjet image isn't perfect, it's better than the photo because the photo processing was so bad, as is typical of consumer quality prints (incorrect exposure; out of focus). And this print was made at a high-end photo store in Rochester, NY, where they should know what they're doing!
Before too long, I think we might see traditional film cameras relegated to motion picture and high-end applications where medium format cameras are today, and when was the last time you actually saw someone using a medium format camera?