Digital sensors obsolesed by digital film!

[Drew Wiley]

Sandy - holy cow! Does this mean that the next thing to be invented will be a slide
projector?? On a more sober note (and partly off-topic) I did look at a number of interesting prints today digitally remastered from negs taken with a Devin 5X7 tricolor in the 30's. Due to uneven neg dev in the first place, acetate film shrinkage, and long-term damage, it was very difficult to print them before. But in the set there was also an old 5X7 Kodachrome too, still crisp and unfaded. Perhaps in our
lifetime we will indeed see a "digital film" in analogous usage; but it's 50/50 that one of the big boys will buy out the company and table the patent before it's practical to anyone.

[sensy]

Sigh... some digital upstart's marketing department has decided to steal the word "film"?
Figures...
I see imbeciles calling digital prints turned blue "cyanotypes".
I see an ebayer upselling an epson print as a "contact print".
Now some creative jerks are going to market a new digital sensor as "film"
Just great. Moan.

Yes, how dare they take a word that means a thin layer or coating and apply it to their new product which is a thin layer they put on something.

[Ivan J. Eberle]

Alright, yes, it could be yet another ridiculous vaporware claim.

Or, if someone's finally come up with the capture equivalent to the "digital paper" (paper thin, roll up displays that have been in the works for some years), this could really be revolutionary-- especially if it's dirt cheap.

Imagine, if you will, a a 4x5 sheet that fits in a holder that instantly produces a gigapixel of digital information from it without having to wet drum scan it-- that costs $99.

That's what they're potentially describing here.

Heck, I'd pay also willingly twice or three times that much ;-) for a cassette that takes on the form factor of film but is a digital sensor that fits in any old 35mm or MF camera (Leica M3, Pentax LX or Mamiya 7, anyone?)

[Eric Leppanen]

Thom Hogan has quite a bit to say about this announcement (see his March 22 commentary):

http://www.bythom.com/

[Steven Barall]

Large format is a life style choice.

[Jim Michael]

Sounds similar to my prediction a few months ago.

[theBDT]

Large format is a life style choice.

Actually, no. I think we were born that way...

[Nathan Potter]

The Tom Hogan comments are spot on. Such a nanoparticle coating will need to be integrated into a CMOS process flow and I can assure you that having nanoparticles mixed in with CMOS fabrication facilities will cause apoplexy within the operation.

We're still talking about a digital device that rides on existing CMOS signal processing.

When considering lead sulfide as the active quantum efficient device, the material properties are paramount. Used as a hole/electron pair generator as suggested, one can harvest electrons for depositing charge on a capacitor as vaguely described, but to harvest electrons efficiently one needs to recombine the holes formed using some kind of a junction. Lead sulfide junctions are notoriously crappy, especially when laid down at low temperature as described. Of particular concern would be the lifetime of the photogenerated carriers, both holes and electrons, due to early recombination from energy traps in the material as well as grain boundary scattering. This all adds up to a severe materials problem, not unlike the Cu/In/Ga/Se photoconductor being utilised for solar power panels, still struggling to be brought to market some 30 years after being proposed.

To really evaluate this photosensitive material requires detailed existing data on its electrical properties.

Finally there is a claim that higher quantum efficiency can result in measurably smaller pixel size hence higher resolution. Even if this tradeoff is made, current lens technology can't keep up, since we're talking about sub 5um airy disk size. Additionally a higher pixel density requires higher wiring density on chip with attendant increase in crosstalk and worse, thinner address lines with higher resistance.

Unlike the standard CMOS technology development engine where enormous amounts of money are spent, this technology will have a devil of a time overtaking the current sensor market.

Hey it's interesting, but that's all, so far.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[JJCNER]

Its just another type of digital sensor. Has nothing to do with what we know as "film."

I will wait to proclaim a successor to the current sensor technology until there is one. Remember how Foveon was going to change the sensor world?

[Brian Ellis]

Looking at the promos for Photoshop CS5, it doesn't look like we'll need a camera for much longer. Along about CS10 there will just be a bunch of Adobe codes for every possible photograpah you could want. Punch in the right code number and Photoshop will spit it out. And if you get the Pro version it will make a frame too.