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Thread: Will the world ever have the Digital Equivalent of the Analog LF Camera??

  1. #41

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    Re: Will the world ever have the Digital Equivalent of the Analog LF Camera??

    Quote Originally Posted by jetcode View Post
    I am not convinced a technology has expired until a new technology appears.
    That statement makes no sense. It doesn't fit the context, and it implies that you choose to ignore reality until it smacks you in the face.

    How do you think they measure RGB out a single monochrome pixel?
    They don't.

    Do you think they use some form of programmable color filter to isolate a particular color spectra and then sample the energy in that band?
    Look up Bayer filters.

    That's the way I would do it provided I could manipulate the color filter accurately and fast enough to scan 'n' mega-pixels.
    Such technology doesn't exist at the moment.

    Of course that's why the high end cameras have proprietary digital imaging processors.
    Those proprietary processors are there to implement custom interpolation and noise-reduction algorithms, as well as compression, white balance calculations, and that sort of thing. They do a lot of work to hide the fact that the sensor is monochromatic from the user.

  2. #42
    JoeV's Avatar
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    Re: Will the world ever have the Digital Equivalent of the Analog LF Camera??

    Actually, a number of broadcast video cameras have used monochrome sensors with rotating color wheels for years.

    I'm not sure if you need a 4"x5" electronic sensor for it to be classified as "large format digital". As I stated earlier, I believe we need to rethink how we define large format; it's really the amount of information content, and the level of control at all phases of the process, rather than the size of the digital sensor.

    As for the discussion about semiconductor manufacturing, there are definite economies of scale that give advantages to 300mm wafers - at a high price. You've gotta be able to sell the products at a price that will pay for the overhead, in terms of silicon real estate. But I don't see so-called 'large format' digital sensors encompassing the real estate of an entire wafer anytime in the near future. Certainly not marketted to folks like us. Not unless you wanted to pay tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of dollars for it. And I haven't gotten into the issue of die yield. It's one thing to make chips the size of your thumb nail on a 300mm wafer; you expect so many are non-functional, or fail out at test for various issues, and the rest of them pay for that loss. But a chip the size of, say, 4"X5" would have extemely low yields; virtually every sample would have defects of various kinds. You'd need, at the very least, a 'masking ROM' shipped with each device to interpolate for the dead pixels.

    So why won't we be able to afford wafer-sized image sensors? Primarily because you can get maybe 300-400 or more functional thumbnail sized chips from a single 300mm wafer; each one can be sold for hundreds of dollars, if it's a premium product. So one 4"X5" sensor would take up the real estate of, say, 40-50 or more such thumbnail sized chips. Do the math. The manufacturer wants to make the same money on each wafer shipped. So the cost for such large chips goes up with the square of the area. And this doesn't count yield issues from such large chip sizes.

    I think we will see smaller sensor cell sizes, as ways are figured out to make each cell more light sensitive without increasing the noise level. This will make higher resolution chips smaller in size. Meaning more can be made per wafer, meaning more profit per wafer. That's the economic model that has driven the semiconductor market for the last 30 years.

    I'm almost certain that there are military applications of image sensors that use almost the entire wafer for one sensor - if I were designing a spy satellite, for instance, that's what I would put in it. But these are most certainly beyond the price range of the most successful professional photographer, and cost is no object.

  3. #43
    jetcode
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    Re: Will the world ever have the Digital Equivalent of the Analog LF Camera??

    Rakesh,
    What is your field of expertise? I am an embedded systems engineer/ systems integrator. I have little background in imaging outside of some integration work on wafer inspection systems. Thanks for the pointer to Bayer filters. This is why there is need for interpolation. The picture now becomes more clear.

    JoeV,
    Didn't know that about broadcast video cameras. It sounds like you are an engineer as well. I agree that density and image quality is where the future is in sensors.

    Joe

  4. #44

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    Re: Will the world ever have the Digital Equivalent of the Analog LF Camera??

    Quote Originally Posted by jetcode View Post
    Rakesh,
    What is your field of expertise? I am an embedded systems engineer/ systems integrator. I have little background in imaging outside of some integration work on wafer inspection systems. Thanks for the pointer to Bayer filters. This is why there is need for interpolation. The picture now becomes more clear.
    Software development. I studied a lot of physics and took some semiconductor classes in college (my degree is biophysics).

    I also spend a lot of my free time reading about technology and how it works, which is how I keep up with it

  5. #45
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    Re: Will the world ever have the Digital Equivalent of the Analog LF Camera??

    Quote Originally Posted by audioexcels View Post
    Will the digital world ever have the analog equivalent for a large format system?
    I think that it is inevitable that digital paper will take off in the next few years. From there it is just a minor step to digital "film" (literally). IMHO the likelihood of an affordable 4x5 silicon chip ever is close to zero.

    However, since the likelihood of 8x10 (and larger) digital paper is 100% (in fact, it is already here today) it is reasonable to assume that the possibility of 8x10 (and larger) digital "film" arriving within 10-20 years, while remote, is not out of the question. Just a matter of someone finding a market for such technology. Personally, I can think of quite a few useful reasons for someone to develop 8x10 and larger digital film. The perfect candidate would be Ilford. I can see it now: Ilfochrome-D paper for your ULF!

  6. #46

    Re: Will the world ever have the Digital Equivalent of the Analog LF Camera??

    Quote Originally Posted by sog1927 View Post
    You might see digital backs with arrays of sensors. This would require re-arranging the sensor electronics a bit. You'd have to handle the "blind spots" (well, blind grids) at the sensor boundaries, but that would be trivial to do in software (vertebrate eyes have been doing this for hundreds of millions of years, after all). None of this is impossible, but what you'd end up with is a very expensive specialty item - simply because the usual economies of scale that make consumer electronic devices so cheap really don't apply. You're not going to sell millions of them, just hundreds or thousands, so you'd have to recover your costs by charging proportionately more.

    Steve
    Actually in Astronomy we are seeing just such things. In short the tile the back of the telescope with CCD chips. Cool with liquid nitrogen etc. Of course if you are building a $100 million dollar telescope this becomes much more practical. And some of the new sky survey scopes put out terabytes per night.

    That being said I don't see this as being something that will be in use in portable cameras, or as a replacement for film

  7. #47

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    Re: Will the world ever have the Digital Equivalent of the Analog LF Camera??

    Quote Originally Posted by Van Camper View Post
    We already have 617 chips by Red and Seitz. Pricey though.

    http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/scarlet.shtml

    http://www.luminous-landscape.com/re...seitz-d3.shtml

    It's also interesting that only our regular large format lenses (for film) are used. Only they have the coverage right now.
    I don't believe RED has actually manufactured their 6x17 sensor yet, its just vaporware. As for the seitz its just a scanning back, nothing too special there

  8. #48

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    Re: Will the world ever have the Digital Equivalent of the Analog LF Camera??

    quanta , quantum is a tv show

  9. #49

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    Re: Will the world ever have the Digital Equivalent of the Analog LF Camera??

    Just a note that this post is about 3-years old :-(

    Will just throw in that the ability to make huge digital backs should be doable in fairly short order given "Moore's Law." Harkens back to the days when I thought a 66 mHz machine was incredibly fast and nobody would ever have a need for a 200 mHz machine.

  10. #50

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    Re: Will the world ever have the Digital Equivalent of the Analog LF Camera??

    Moores Law concept would give you greater pixel density, not larger chips.

    bob

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