111-Megapixel CCD Chip Ships 303
georgewilliamherbert writes "EETimes is reporting that Dalsa has shipped a record-breaking 111-megapixel CCD image sensor to customer Semiconductor Technology Associates. The chip was paid for by a U.S. Navy SBIR project. At four inches across, a bit big for camera phones, but the 10560x10560 format will probably get professional digital camera users drooling."
Film (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Film (Score:5, Insightful)
Please note that I am not calling these devices worthless. Even if the human eye can't detect that much resolution on a poster there could still be applications for enlargements etc. I would think.
Re:Film (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Film (Score:2, Funny)
Oh yeah, right, it's analog. Stupid ancient technology!
Re:Film (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Film (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're doing something for a small print piece you want a high DPI (ie 300). If it's a poster you can use a lower DPI. If it's a Billboard you can use a significantly lower DPI.
I'm a graphic designer and I recently committed the industry's cardinal sin the other day... I had a comp printed at Kinkos. I was printing a fairly large bus shelter poster that was 150dpi. The newb behind the counter had the audacity to bitch about DPI, even though (I would imagine) it was fairly obvious that I did this for a living.
If you're developing something large in Photoshop you do -not- want to play around in 300 DPI. People read those things from a few feet away and, I don't care if you have a new dual-core dual g5, you do -not- want to wait for a 30x40in bitmap to rotate on a multilayered 300 DPI document.
That said, high res photography is important. You may only want to highlight a small piece from a large image, and you can't do that unless you have good source material.
Re:Film (Score:5, Funny)
"Per unit area." I believe, although he didn't express it quite right, that what he's interested in is how many dots per inch at a given viewing distance on the print before the human eye cannot tell the difference.
He wants to know how much camera is actually overkill when all he wants is a picture of his girlfriend for his desk.
The answer, of course, is "it depends." I haven't seen his girlfriend so I don't know what the appropriate resolution would be.
KFG
Re:Film (Score:3, Funny)
I'll bite. This is slashdot. I'd say two bits, and that might be giving him too much credit.
OT: The eyes often see what the brain wants to see (Score:4, Informative)
Some sites [michaelbach.de] have great explainations and demos.
This has nothing to do with image sensors, but does have some bearing on "what can eyes really see".
Re:Film (Score:3, Interesting)
Repeating someone's ignorant statements isn't exactly the most intelligent thing to do.
Someone who does know about eye design is the ophthalmologist Dr George Marshall, who said:
'The idea that the eye is wired backward comes from a lack of knowledge of eye function and anatomy.'
He explained that the nerves
Re:Film (Score:3, Informative)
http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution
I don't know how reliable these data are, though. There seems to be considerable hand waving between what the eye records and what the brain "sees" in that link.
Re:Film (Score:5, Informative)
I found this page [clarkvision.com] interesting. Here's a quote:
Re:Film (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Film (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Film (Score:2)
These are static images. A static image can be printed huge and the viewer can concentrate on small portions of the image by getting up close to it.
Re:Film (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Film (Score:3, Informative)
A high speed head mounted display (sufficiently close to the eyes) with only 2-3 megapixels would probably be sufficient to completely satisfy your eyes.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/eye2.htm [howstuffworks.com]
Re:Film (Score:5, Informative)
In any case, the issue with throwing the brain into the mix is that it does a lot of "post-processing" on the images that stream in from the eye and give us a mental picture much different from what the eye itself is actually able to pick up. Also, the eye has different kinds of vision--in the center of the field of view, in a very narrow range in fact, we see with acuity. Outside that very narrow range, our brain fills in a lot of the details that we think we see from moment to moment, but is actually not being "seen" in the same sense as what's in the center of view. (Of course, this comment will inevitably beget the philosophical discussion: what does it mean to "see," exactly?) If you doubt that your eyes only see with acuity in a fairly tight circle around the direct center of your field of vision, try this experiment: pick up a book, open it to a random page, and fixate your eyes on a word somewhere in the center. Now, see how many words you can read around that word without moving your eyes to look directly at those words. The words you can make out fall in your acute vision field. (You'll find that if you move the book farther away, you can read more words because they fall within the same angle--this works up until it gets so far away the overall level of acuity you enjoy isn't high enough to make out any of the words at all.) The rest of your field of view is in your non-central field (I'm callng it). Your peripheral vision is comprised of the part of your field of view for which your brain does not bother filling in any detail--you're only vaguely aware of it in the visual sense provided it's not moving.
What our non-central vision lacks in acuity it makes up for in motion detection. That's why hunters often say when you first spot prey in the distance that's fairly well camoflauged with its surroundings as it moves about, don't look directly at it, but look slightly to the side. That way, when it starts moving again you'll see it and you can put it in center vision again, but once it stops, look off to the side again. Stargazers often use this trick as well--if you look directly at a faint star, after a couple of seconds you'll question whether it's actually where it was just a moment before. But if you look slightly off to the side, your eyeball moves around and twitches enough that it creates apparent "motion" of the faint star you're trying to see and you can pick it up again. (Incidentally--this is the reason why our eyes in are constant motion...if you've ever tried to make your eyes exactly still you know how difficult it is to keep from twitching them constantly. It's because our brain requires that motion to keep the motion detecting parts of your eyeballs feeding the detail your visual cortex craves. You'll also find that if you are able to keep your eyes at all from twitching for an extended period, 10 or 15 seconds, you'll find that the level of detail in your non-central vision starts to fall off, sometimes even fading to black...this isn't very noticable until you start twitching again and suddenly see color and detail spring back.)
Anyway, the point is, no matter what one says about the eye in relation to a camera, someone will be bound to argue (and, in some sense, almost certainly be right). It's kind of a useless endeavor to try to get a megapixel rating for the eye, or figure out what it's dynamic range is, etc. A more fair comparison would be hooking a camera up to a computer, then periodically having the camera move slightly and snap a shot, then the computer takes it and stitches it into a composite of the entire scene comprised of s
50 lines per degree (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, that's an oversimplification; hence the long answer. The human eye doesn't have a fixed number of "megapixels" that you could easily convert to a measurement of a photo or really even of another camera. First, you have the problem that the eye's "resolution" isn't evenly spread across the field of view: it's concentrated near the center, and thinner out in the periphery. This is why if you concentrate and try to pay attention to something that's not in the center of your field of view (that you're not looking directly at) it won't be as clear as when you look directly at it. (The exception is in very low light: your indirect vision is better at night vision.) However your brain reassembles the image and makes you think that you're seeing one great-big full-res panorama, when in reality at any one time you're only seeing a small part in "full rez" with the rest of your field of vision at something less, but with the full version available on-demand (by looking at it).
If you could actually do a 'screen grab' of the image your eyes were actually feeding into your brain, at any particular time, I think it would be a lot lower-quality than many people suspect. Almost without question, it would be lower quality than many photographs of the same scene. The depth of field is short, the resolution is concentrated in the center, as is the color, and there's a hole in the dead center of the image because of your optic nerve's placement on your retina. Your sense of sight works as well as it does, in large part, because of all the caching and postprocessing that's done transparently by your brain to the incoming information stream.
Really, when we compare a photo to our "sight," what we're really comparing is the photo to our brain's recollection of how it saw a particular scene, which might be very different from what our eyes actually took in, and further still from the 'objective truth' (if you believe in such a thing, that is) of what actually was there at that moment. The easiest example is color saturation: we tend to see and remember things as being far more colorful than they actually are: an "accurate" photo will therefore look dull compared to memory, so we compensate by oversaturating our photos to make them look more 'realistic.'
It's only possible to make comparisons between our eyes and mechanical cameras, and between our overall sense of sight and recording systems, for very limited cases. Even to answer a relatively simple question like "what's the eye's maximum megapixels?" completely would probably stretch the boundaries of currently understood optometry, neuroscience, and psychology.
Re:Film (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Film (Score:2)
Re:Film (Score:3, Interesting)
DSLRs have the advantage, not because their sensors are necessarily larger, but because the pixels aren't packed so tightly together. You could hypothetically use the same processes they use to make those tiny 8MP compact-camera CCDs to make an APS-C sized CCD for a DSLR. You'd have tons of (hypothetical) resolution, but the noise would
Re:Film (Score:2)
no. the size of the sensor has nothing to do with noise. the grandparent poster was correct -- it's the DENSITY of the sensor that affects the amount noise you get.
DSLRs have the advantage, not because their sensors are necessarily larger, but because the pixels aren't packed so tightly together.
Well, 'size of the sensor' is misleading. Size of a single sensor element (pixel) would be better.
But still, he is right. At least for the fundamental limit of CCDs, the photon shot noise. This quantity is inversely
Re:Film (Score:3, Interesting)
I do think it's neat to have this kind of
Re:Film (Score:5, Insightful)
Next note. The are odd color aberations with SLRs that I still see today that do not exist even in the crappiest of color film that I scanned. There's a look that all digitals have that a trained eye can see. I haven't received any shots taken from truly high end professional DSLRs to see if they have solved this problem but even D30s have it.
Final comment is regarding color depth, undersaturation, and over saturation. Since they are all related/same. Film is still by far superior in this regard. DSLRs still undersaturate long before standard color film. Oversaturation is still a problem. Look at the full res pixels of anything shiny. It stands out pretty bad. Skin tones have always been a huge problem. I have no clue why since skin tones are typically in the mid range. Color depth and saturation/undersaturation still has a lot of room for improvement with DSLRs.
So I guess all I really needed to say is that I've observed that grain seems to be mostly solved with DLSRs.. but none of the other issues have yet.
Oh yah.. film speed is another big one. When I crank up my DSLR to 1600ISO it really sucks. Much worse than 1600ISO film. Maybe this is where the film grain comment comes from?
Re:Film (Score:2)
-best,
-avi
Re:Film (Score:2)
A friend just bought the D30. I need to take some comparison shots to see how the performance has changed. Although... I'm fairly certain I do NOT want to see the results.
Re:Film (Score:2)
Re:Film (Score:2)
Re:Film (Score:2)
Re:Film (Score:2)
Re:Film (Score:2)
Re:Film (Score:2)
Re:Film (Score:2)
So your point is that it's not necessarily the CCD to blame, but possibly software. Point well noted.
As another point of merit. I have found that Canon is by far the leader in this area. My wife's now nearing four year old Canon P&S takes better pictures than a lot of brand new P
Re:Film (Score:2)
from my research and asking people who've shot both, Canon is definately the leader in terms of R&D. i think it's because they are the only company that really makes all of the key components from the glass to the sensors. Nikon seems to be fairly good with certain images. from what i understand the Ni
Re:Film (Score:2)
For the record, I would never stear anyone away from a Nikon digital SLR. They are very good. It just is my opinion that Canon is dominant in nearly all aspects of the photo market. Every review and personal comparison I've ever done, it seems Canon is either nearly tied for top, or way ahead. Of course, this is not a good situation for any of us. I hope Niko
Re:Film (Score:3, Informative)
This is because of the difference in how high ISO speeds work in digital vs film. High-ISO film is more sensitive to light because the photosensitive grains are larger -- the digital equivalent would be bigger pixel sensors. Digital cameras implement high-ISO mode by increasing the amplification on the pixel sensors, which makes the
Consumer version already available, kinda (Score:5, Insightful)
I was actually looking for a funny link, but this guy [kenrockwell.com] makes a great point -- a good scanner and a roll of that 4x5 film [kenrockwell.com] -- yes, four inches by five inches, absolutely huge compared to a 35mm roll -- will get you 100 megapixels of resolution for a couple thousand bucks.
It reminds me of a story I saw (on PBS or Discovery Channel) about modern medicine in developing countries. People will pay extra for a "digital X-Ray", even though the cheap equipment produces a digital image that has far less resolution than a plain old film X-Ray. But it's "digital", so it must be better.
And don't even get me started about overpriced digital stereo cable [sears.com]!
Re:Consumer version already available, kinda (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Consumer version already available, kinda (Score:2)
a. Not worshipping the sun for a few days (okay, so you're a geek and don't remember what the sun looks like, so see b. below)
and
b. (if you're a geek outside of work) stop sitting 6" away from your monitor or television for a few days
That should offset any radiation dose of a typical routine dental X-ray. Now, if you had an X-ray done for more serious issues (injuries, etc.) then I would think tha
Re:Consumer version already available, kinda (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Consumer version already available, kinda (Score:2)
Re:Consumer version already available, kinda (Score:3, Informative)
1. Cost - much lower
2. Radiation - much lower
3. Image manipulation - increases diagnostic yield in a variety of ways
4. Transmission - to other specialists, near instantaneously (depending on connection speed - usual rate-limiting factor is getting someone in front of the receiving screen to interpret the images)
5. Can't lose them (not quite true, but easier to
Re:Consumer version already available, kinda (Score:2)
Film X-Rays do that too, since the inside of the film cartridge is coated with a phosphorescent compound that emits visible light upon xray irradiation. Ever wonder why your xrays are all blue? It ain't 'cause of the xrays or your bones.
Re:Consumer version already available, kinda (Score:2)
Hint: Most are not flexible.
You forgot one of the biggest draws to digital xrays: You don't need to keep chemicals around to develop the film.
Re:Consumer version already available, kinda (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Consumer version already available, kinda (Score:4, Interesting)
The owner of a camera shop near where I live once had the opportunity to use a Large Format Polaroid camera [polaroid.com], which exposes Polaroid fim that is 20 by 24 inches. He described it this way: "Take your megapixels and shove them up your ass!"
Re:Consumer version already available, kinda (Score:3, Interesting)
I would dispute that assumption. Due to the limitations of lenses that exist in the physical world, you cannot simply make the pixels on a CCD arbitrarily small so that you can have more of them. Even if you could conquer the noise problems that go along with the small pixels in the consumer grade 6MP and 8MP sensors, which are much smaller than the sensors that you find in the more expensive DSLRs, you would run into
Re:Consumer version already available, kinda (Score:2)
Re:Film (Score:5, Interesting)
ISO100 film has a grain size of approximately 5 microns, which corresponds to a resolution of 36MP. Standard 4k scanning (12.5MP) captures all the detail in anthing short of the pro-est of the pro, and 8k scanning (54MP) all but guarantees that even future advances in scanner technology won't have the ability to extract any further detail from a 35mm negative.
You would need godlike optics, bright light, and a perfectly still subject and camera to come anywhere near that 36MP with ISO100 35mm film, but it represents a sort of upper limit at that speed. 4x5in film therefore has an effective resolution (at something comparable to ISO100) of 500MP.
So, this can effectively replace 35mm film in terms of resolution. It falls a bit short of replacing truly professional-quality film, however. But then, how often do you need to print out your personal pics at literally bilboard size?
Re:Film (Score:2)
Maybe my grinning face is the ONE YOU NEED TO CALL IF YOU'VE BEEN INJURED!
Only takes 39Mpix to match 4x5. (Score:3, Informative)
Great... (Score:5, Funny)
Wow your family is smart... (Score:5, Funny)
At least... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Great... (Score:4, Insightful)
Photographers drooling? (Score:2)
Link to "printable" stories (Score:3, Insightful)
Not for pros (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not for pros (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not for pros (Score:5, Informative)
The CCD cameras [sbig.com] used by astronomers routinely produce 16 bits per pixel. Most of these are monochrome devices: to shoot a colour picture you must shoot pictures through red, green and blue filters, then combine them.
The key advantages for astronomy are zero reciprocity failure (film loses sensitivity in long exposures; CCDs don't), high quantum efficiency (almost all the photons intercepted by the sensor are noticed) and excellent linearity (you can digitally subtract extraneous light, like city lights).
However, even in astronomy, there is a hard core who still do film. There are many reasons: some people just like the look, others enjoy the craft of wet darkroom work, and so on.
My favourite camera is a 4x5 press camera, a Crown Graphic [graflex.org]. It takes perfect 1950s newspaper photographer pictures. And I develop and print them myself.
...laura
Re:Not for pros (Score:2, Informative)
I may be misunderstanding your point, but we currently DO have the ability to capture 12 bits per chanel. Of course, if you are shooting JPEGs then you already limit the bits to 8 per chanel. If shoot RAW the camera stores 12 bits/chanel and if you convert to TIFF it embeds them in 16 bits/chanel for a true 36 bit image (inside 48-bit space).
Going up to 16 would be a nice thing, but as far as I am concerned, 12 is more than enough. Sure, there are situations when I can see posterization or other nasty art
Re:Not for pros (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't expect to see anything remotely close to this in a large format camera any t
Re:Not for pros (Score:2)
previous 120 megapixel CCD cameras were based on multiple sensor array systems, and while i don't know where they were used most, I can think of a number of uses EG: no flash indirect light photogaphic archiving of ancient documents, maps and tapistries. as well as advertising photography for use in billboards and other large posters.
True, you don't need 120 megapixels to take a high school prom photo, but there are probabbly enough prof
Yeah, yeah... (Score:2)
Finally, there are markets for extreme detail - surver
That's a big sensor. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a big sensor (Score:2)
Re:That's a big sensor (Score:2)
Re:That's a big sensor (Score:2)
Re:That's a big sensor (Score:2)
Obligatory tongue twister (Score:5, Funny)
Where's my cray? (Score:2)
pr0n! (Score:2)
There's more than just pixel count . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
And how many bad pixels? (Score:5, Funny)
Capture rate. (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously you'd need a heck of a data transfer rate for motion, but how fast could this pump data out, clear, and capture the next image?
Re:Capture rate. (Score:2)
Yeah, I know. Not funny.
CCD, as opposed to CMOS (Score:2)
Image sensors work by converting light to electric charges. More light in an area makes the pixel hold more charges.
Images captured by CCD are converted to d
my calculations... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's spinal tap all over again.... (Score:5, Funny)
What?? That camera's rubbish.... ours goes up to one-hundred and eleven!!
Resolution ain't everything (Score:5, Insightful)
CCD sensors this size have been around for a while (Score:3, Insightful)
This could create a new market for photoshopers... (Score:2)
what's really exciting about this (Score:5, Informative)
How long to write this to SSD Card? (Score:2)
Bad Link. (Score:3, Informative)
It sounds like the interest for the navy is along the lines of astro-navigation, but I'm not really sure. It's definitely not something general photographers need or even want. It's kind of pointless if your lenses aren't comparably impressive, or if you're not printing it out at a couple feet in size and to be displayed in a way that someone would get close enough to appreciate the quality. Plus once you take all that data, then you have to store it. I'm not sure how RAW images are stored, but if my math serves, a 24 bit BMP at that size would take about 300 MB per image.
Re:Bad Link. (Score:2)
FYI (Score:2)
At 24bpp, a raw image from the CCD without file format overhead would be about 320MB.
In other news, Flickr hires Bram Cohen.
Wow... She has a great set of... (Score:2)
Will we be able to check her blood cell count with this?
Surveillance uses (Score:2)
Re:Surveillance uses (Score:2)
Off the chart costs. (Score:4, Informative)
Limit? (Score:2)
a 100 Megapixel sensor, while an unholy and awsome creature, is nothing more than the latest and greatest CCD sensor. they broke hte 100 Megapixel mark.
Having said that, bravo for them.
Cost? (Score:4, Funny)
Astronomy? (Score:5, Informative)
Astronomers run their CCDs at liquid nitrogen temperatures (to reduce thermal noise), and for UV astronomy they use "thinned" chips (etch/grind away the back of the chip so you can illuminate it from that side - otherwise too many photons are lost before reaching the light sensitive volume.) I'm not sure what other features astronomical CCDs require which might not be present in this chip. Pixel size shouldn't matter too much (except in its effect on noise) as you can design your camera to scale the image to suit the detector.
Re:Astronomy? (Score:3, Informative)
Nicely done. Another great Waterloo Ontario Canada company.
Once again... (Score:2, Funny)
SBIG (Score:3, Insightful)
reference [pacificsites.com]
Re:Is there any blue ray for digicam? (Score:3, Funny)