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Toys Hardware

Sony Shoots For 4-Filter CCD, 8 Megapixel Camera 405

Posted by simoniker from the color-filter-volume-goes-to-four dept.
Artifex writes "If you're looking to spend about $1200 on a new digital camera, check out this Digital Photography Review look at Sony's upcoming 8 MegaPixel Cyber-shot DSC-F828. The most interesting thing isn't the number of pixels in this prosumer-grade camera, but its 4-color filter CCD system. ['Instead of the traditional RGB color filter array, the new CFA is made up of Red, Green, Blue and Emerald (like Cyan) color filters.'] I've always been a strict Canon fan, but this is making me think twice."
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Sony Shoots For 4-Filter CCD, 8 Megapixel Camera More

Sony Shoots For 4-Filter CCD, 8 Megapixel Camera

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  • woah! (Score:4, Funny)

    by NudeZiggy ( 635825 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @03:56PM (#6725581)
    is this like in response to the article about those people born with extra cones and see that odd shade of green that no one else can see?

    • Re:woah! (Score:2, Funny)

      by BabyDave ( 575083 )

      Maybe they mean Octarine:

      It was the King Colour, of which all the lesser colours are merely partial and wishy-washy reflections. It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because whereever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself.

      But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.

    • Re:woah! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:18PM (#6725847)
      It's in the orange range, and its always women. It's caused by the inverse of the gene deficiency which causes red/green colorblindness in men. Women acquire an extra cone type, they are called 'tetrachromatic'.

      • Re:woah! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:34PM (#6726011) Homepage
        The unfortunate effect of this is because they only have that gene (since it's obviously recessive), all their male offspring are colorblind. Interesting none the less, though.
        • The unfortunate effect of this is because they only have that gene (since it's obviously recessive), all their male offspring are colorblind. Interesting none the less, though.

          I suppose, then, that the inverse would have to hold as well - that any man with this sort of colorblindness had a tetrachromatic mother?

          What's that like, anyway? Do oranges just appear more brilliant?

          • I suppose, then, that the inverse would have to hold as well - that any man with this sort of colorblindness had a tetrachromatic mother?

            Faulty logic. Just because X is true doesn't mean that the reverse of X is true. The gene is recessive, meaning for the woman to be tetrachromatic she must have both recessive genes for tetrachromaticity. This gene is carried on the X chromosome, which she has two of, but her prospective son only has one of. It only takes one such gene to make her son colorblind, sinc

    • It's Squant! (Score:2, Funny)

      by xleeko ( 551231 )
      All right! I've been waiting for a Squant-sensitive camera for a while now. Now I can start creating my web pages using the Negativland Squant Plugin [negativland.com]!
  • ...why on earth are you wasting your time lounging around /.? Get back to work, man! Make the big bucks! Hurry!

  • Color management? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @03:57PM (#6725594) Homepage Journal
    So, my first question is.....How is color management done with this thing given color profile usage in Colorsync and other approaches in say Adobe software? Are there going to be color profile matching algorithms included so I can manage color with this camera?

    • Re:Color management? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:20PM (#6725868)
      Color management would be handled the same as any other digital camera. Even though the CCD has a four color filter, the data is converted back to 3 color RGB (14 bit i might add... giving a slightly wider color gamut than current 12 bit digicams). If having a profile for your digicam is important I would recommend Monaco system's (now x-rite corporation) MonacoDColor application. This handy little app will allow you to perform easier color corrections simply by applying the cameras profile. It also intigrates well with Monaco EZColor (their prosumer monitor/printer calibrater).

      so to sum it up... you do it the same way you always have... the new filter just gives more accurate color (epically since sony was well known for their clipped reds and yellows).

  • It is a single CCD! (Score:5, Informative)

    by pbox ( 146337 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @03:58PM (#6725607) Homepage Journal
    The camera (as almost all other) feature a single CCD. It does however have a 4 color fileter in front of it. BTW, Nikon had that for about 4-5 years now.

    • Re:It is a single CCD! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:04PM (#6725692) Homepage Journal
      It does however have a 4 color fileter in front of it. BTW, Nikon had that for about 4-5 years now.

      So....theoretically, it would be possible to perform multispectral imagery with this camera by including spectral filters of preference....Say, different IR filters or what have you. Processing these data are of course the next problem, but I seem to remember a DARPA proposal recently asking about this very problem for portable use. Hmmmm, so little time, so many questions to ask, so many possible experiements.....

      • Re:It is a single CCD! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by pbox ( 146337 )
        Well if you somehow manage to fabricate the 2.7 micrometer pixel pitch filter array, and also manage to remove the currently mounted one, and replace it with this custom-made of yours.

        Well, good luck..
        • Sony's videocameras do this at the touch of a switch - it's called Nightshot and it swaps the color filter for an infrared-only one, in addition to turning on an infrared light.
      • You can also do this with scanning hyperspectral imagery techniques. Use a lens that only records a vertical slit, put a prism behind it so it splits that vertical slit into the spectrum, and record the image onto a 1024x1024 2-D CCD. This records the X-axis in 1024 colors spectrum sample points. To make a 2-D image, scan the lens over a still life. You now have a 2-D image with 1024 actual colors per pixel. Compress the data using various techniques. Enjoy.
    • It does however have a 4 color fileter [sic] in front of it.


      Yes, sorry, editing error when submitting.
      I'm sure you can understand. (looks at quote)
      I think they've fixed it, now.

      BTW, Nikon had that for about 4-5 years now.


      Are they the same colors? Link, please?

      • Re:It is a single CCD! (Score:5, Informative)

        by pbox ( 146337 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:15PM (#6725811) Homepage Journal
        Thanks for the edit. I did use preview this time.

        Here is the link to Nikon 995 [dpreview.com]. This features C-M-G-Y filter array. Even older one is Nikon 900 [dpreview.com] (truly ancient as far as digital photography goes) and it also has CMGY.

        Also worth noting that Sony named this color emerald, probably some patent is protecting the cyan (maybe Nikon)?

        • thanks for the links (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Artifex ( 18308 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:39PM (#6726046) Journal
          Also worth noting that Sony named this color emerald, probably some patent is protecting the cyan (maybe Nikon)?


          I don't know if Nikon has a patent protecting that, but to just make up a plausible reason, I'd guess that the Emerald is close to, but not the same, wavelength as the standard Cyan in a CMY (or CMYK) setup.

          I really hope someone does a followup paper (even white papers from one company touting the superiority of its approach to the other's) comparing these. Also, if they could explain whether RGB or CMY is better for sensing light, anyway. My gut instinct is that RGB should be better, because my junior high art teacher and high school physics texts say that light uses RGB and pigments use CMY, but surely Nikon must know something more.

          • It's not just the difference between what colours you use to mix, it's a fundamental difference between how light is produced, and how light is reflected.

            RGB is an "additive" model. You start with black (no light), and add light to it. Adding all 3 RGB components creates white light.

            CMY is a "subtractive" model. You start with white (normal ambient or source light), then add pigments which ABSORB some of this light. Magenta, for example, absorbs green from the RGB spectrum, leaving you with R+B =>

          • Re:thanks for the links (Score:3, Informative)

            by Thorgal ( 3103 )
            Technically, you have three types of color sensitive cells in your retina (so-called S, M and L cones) and you need at least three variables to describe color as seen by humans. That said, nonlinearities in cones' reception make it beneficial for color reproduction to add more variables. Hence RGBE.

            Also remember about CMY and CMYK problem in printing, where theoretically CMY would be enough to reproduce full gamut, yet CMYK is used due to ink impurities, which make it difficult to match exact black.
    • Nikon digitals use a CYGM filter, not RGB+E.

  • Prosumer-grade digital camera? ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06&email,com> on Monday August 18, 2003 @03:58PM (#6725614)
    Feed the baby, wife and self, pay the mortgage, etc.?

    Decisions, decisions.

  • What is 35mm equal to? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tevenson ( 625386 ) <tevenson.gmail@com> on Monday August 18, 2003 @03:58PM (#6725615) Homepage
    Forgive my ignorance when it comes to photography, but what resolution do we need to reach to achieve 35mm quality pictures. I know my 2.1 megapixel camera can take pictures at 1600x1200 and when those are printed using my HP Photosmart printer they look 'near' perfect.

    I'm assuming we're passed 35mm now then, and that these cameras are just going above and beyond what anyone has seen?

    • Re:What is 35mm equal to? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:05PM (#6725704)
      Not necessarily. A photograph taken with a 35 MM can be blown up quite easily to 16x20 using a high end drum scanner (DS for example) It would not be as good as a 4x5 transaprency, but I have sen it done. At that size, for commercial uses, you would want at least a 4800x6000 resolution which is nearly 29 Mega-pixels.

      What your printer at home produces and what commercial printing produce are 2 very different things. The screening technologies are very different and require different source data

    • Re:What is 35mm equal to? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It depends on a lot of circumstances, but the general concensus seems to be that a 35mm negative shot with a good lens contains about 11 megapixels of information.

      Of course, pixels is only a small part of image quality. There's also s/n ratio, whitebalance, dynamic range, etc.

      For holiday pictures and stuff like that, digital has reached equality with 35mm a few years ago. For professional work (especially medium size negatives) it still has a long way to go.

    • Re:What is 35mm equal to? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Brahmastra ( 685988 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:09PM (#6725753)
      It depends on how big you want to print the images. "Photo-quality" prints are typically 300 DPI. If you want to print a 4 x 6 image, that means you need and image that is 1200x1800 pixels to print at 300 DPI. If you want to print larger pictures, you need more mega-pixels. Also, the images in almost all digital cameras (except the Canon EOS1DS) is not 35mm. 35mm Film has an aspect ratio of 3:2. Digital cameras have the same aspect ratio as a normal computer monitor which is 4:3. When you are printing an image on 4x6 paper from a digitial camera, a small portion of the top and bottom is usually chopped off (unless you flattened the image). Digital cameras haven't yet passed 35mm film quality when it comes to how many pixels are captured. The closest is the Canon EOS-1DS(11 Megapixels) which rivals some consumer 400 speed films. But digital cameras still have a long way to go to rival 100 speed(or slower) film. But, the amount of detail captured in fine-grain 35mm film is almost never used by the typical consumer anyway. To make 4x6 prints, a 2 megapixel camera is about as good as a film camera.
      • Kodak digital cameras are 3:2 too.

        Slow Down Cowboy!...

      • Re:What is 35mm equal to? (Score:5, Informative)

        by aoteoroa ( 596031 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:52PM (#6726171)
        Brahmastra. Thanks that was a good job comparing the resolution of a 35mm to Digital. My experience with a Nikon 5000 is that it's 5 megapixels is good enough to create great looking 8x10 images. But there is more to good quality photography than the resolution of the film, or of the digital chip.

        IMHO the quality of the lens is a the single largest determinant in a camera's ability for producing creative photos, and is an area where many digitals fall way too short.

        The first thing I do when shooting a photograph is decide what the subject is. The next thing I do is frame the photo in such a way that anything that is not relevant to the subject is excluded from the photo. A good lens on a 35mm slr gives you the ability to use selective focus [k12.ca.us] so that your subject is sharp, and everything else is a blur. For this technique to work you need a longish lens, and a wide aperture. Most point and shoots and digitals fall short in both categories. (My $1500 CAD Nikon included) So the thing that interested me most about this Sony was it's Carl Zeiss lens 28 - 200 mm equiv. F2.0 - F2.8 aperture.

        Zeiss is famous for quality, and 105 mm lens, at f 2.8 is a beautiful combination for selective focus portraits.

        • Selective Focus (Score:3, Insightful)

          by phliar ( 87116 )

          So the thing that interested me most about this Sony was it's Carl Zeiss lens 28 - 200 mm equiv. F2.0 - F2.8 aperture.

          Zeiss is famous for quality, and 105 mm lens, at f 2.8 is a beautiful combination for selective focus portraits.

          Only problem is that background blur (a.k.a. bokeh [photo.net]) depends on the sensor size. This camera has a minuscule 8.8mm x 6.6mm sensor, compared with the 36mm x 24mm image you get from 35mm. My favourite portrait lens is my EF 100/2.0 USM which is beautiful with 35mm film. Howe

      • Re:What is 35mm equal to? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jovlinger ( 55075 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @05:04PM (#6726299) Homepage
        Just to amplify parent:

        Depends on film. The pixels in film are the light grains, and are bigger the faster (more light sensitive) the film is. Better films will have smaller grains for any given speed.

        Then you start comparing to medium format cameras (think fashion fotographer peering down into camera infront of chest), and digital falls even further behind.

        OT comment: Digital is better than film for 90% of the population. The key is that people take a whole lot more pictures with digital cameras, thus taking pictures they never would with a film camera, and any picture you take is MUCH better than the picture you didn't. And, the more pictures you take, the higher your chances of snapping a gem by sheer luck (I know skill plays no part in my photography).

        I've taken several pictures with a digital camera where I was bummed there wasn't more cropping availible, but I would never have taken the pictures at all if I had to lug an SLR or 35 mm "compact" (compared to digital compacts, that's a bit of a joke) along with me.

    • Re:What is 35mm equal to? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ausoleil ( 322752 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:12PM (#6725785) Homepage
      I did some Googling and found this guy has done some math:
      http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film .vs.dig ital.1.html

      Example:
      Fujichrome Velvia has an lpm1.6 = 80 lpm. Equation 1 gives 10 megapixels for intensity detail, but

      16 Megapixels is not that far away from the consumer market.

      Me, I'll stick with my view camera. You'd need a few gigapixels to even approach an 8X10 contact print.
    • High quality 35mm images would be comparable to something digitally in the area of 27 megapixels. We're not there yet, but we're getting very close. And the color saturation of electronic CCDs rivals that of the best slide film IMO, so it's just a matter of time before film is dead.
    • 1) Blow-ups. 2.1Mpixel pictures look good on 6x4" prints, but if you enlarge them you'll notice the lack of resolution.

      2) Detail. You'll notice the lower resolution in details like sharp and/or thin lines, like edges of a brightly-lit wall or power lines on poles.

      3) Digital zoom benefits from a higher resolution as well.

      It's a little like the difference between high-end and mid-range loudspeakers. Most people will hear the difference in quality when doing a direct comparison, and most people will
    • Lost in the comparison between film and digital is the issue of dynamic range... I have been told by photographers that, at best, digital is close to where slide film is at (~5 stops) while print film's dynamic range is 6-7 stops. Resolution won't matter much if you're losing detail in the highlights and shadows.
  • If thats 8 mega pixel at 24 bit color thats gonna be 22.8 mb per picture (non compressed)! I don't think I need my pictures to be THAT high quality (or large)

    • Re:Gonna need some serious memory (Score:4, Informative)

      by cr@ckwhore ( 165454 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:15PM (#6725807) Homepage
      Most people won't need image resolution that high ... HOWEVER, it is good if you want to do anything with professional or production quality.

      3264 x 2448 resolution will allow you to print a 21" x 16" print @ 150DPI. Thats enough for production quality posters, calendars, etc. It'll allow you to print an 8x10 at 300DPI, which is arguably better than 8x10 quality with regular 35mm film.

      This camera is also good if you're a decent shot and want to sell your photos through stock shops like gettyimages, corbis, etc. You *NEED* to have resolution like this before production houses will even look at your stock images... because guess what they do with them?.?.?.?... that's right... posters, calendars, and other production which requires 150-300 DPI at reasonable visual sizes.

    • Think about cropping and zooming. You notice a region of interest in the picture but it's all fuzzy by the time you blow it up.

    • If you're going to be saving an uncompressed images, it's going to be the raw image file, not the 24bit interpolated file.

      That file will probably be in the neighborhood of 8-16mb in size, depending on how they store the image (ibpp sensor, 12bpp sensor, 16bpp sensor, packed image, peripheral data, lossless compression, etc).

  • One CCD ! (Score:2, Informative)

    by gsfx ( 398367 )
    It has only one CCD, but instead of having the regular RGB pattern on it, it has a four color pattern.

    http://www.dpreview.com/news/0307/03071601sonyrgbe ccd.asp [dpreview.com]
  • I thought Emerald was green?

    Anyways,

    I heard somewhere (probably the discovery channel) that out of all the colors humans can percieve, green was the color we could detect the most amount of shades from.
    • The green thing is true. That's one of the reasons why night vision goggles are green. The eyes are more sensitive to the wavelength. When I first saw this camera (saw a link to it a few days ago) that's why I was thinking. Why a blue color instead of a green? All I can think of as a reason is that the camera is already sensitive enough in the green wavelengths, and that it's in the more blue region that they need more sensitivity to be more comparable to film or the eye. Who knows.

  • Forget it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by furiousgeorge ( 30912 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:00PM (#6725634)
    http://www.foveon.com

    'nuff said.

    Color filters and staggered pixels? Ringing, moire patterns and color bleeding. No thank you.

    Now that there is a proper color CCD technology, why is anybody using the old system (at least, on a $1200 'professional' camera).

    j

    • Re:Forget it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SheldonYoung ( 25077 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:16PM (#6725825)
      No, not 'nuff said. The tradeoff with the Foveon sensor is the stacked detectors for each color component create much more noise in the bottom component. In the end it will mostly come down to which sensor type can be produced more practically.

    • Re:Forget it (Score:2, Informative)

      by mozumder ( 178398 )
      All the more important considering that you can get a 10 megasensor Sigma-based Digital SLR for around $1000 nowadays... See the DPReview [dpreview.com] site to compare this with other 6 Megapixel sensor.

    • Re:Forget it (Score:2, Redundant)

      by doctor_no ( 214917 )
      let's also not forget that there seems to be draw backs to the foveon CCD as well.

      here's an experpt from dpreview from the review of the Signam SD9 which uses the CCD...

      "Sensitivity is limited and image sharpness and color response seem to drop off at higher ISO's. More serious is the tendency to clip color in a highlight, something I've described as "color clipping" and "gray halos". At this stage it's unclear if this is a sensor issue...Unnatural blue skies / chromatic aberration sensitivity ...Disappoi

  • Spend $300 more (Score:4, Interesting)

    by toupsie ( 88295 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:00PM (#6725635) Homepage
    I personally love my Canon EOS 10D [dpreview.com]. Pictures from it require the use of profanity to describe their amazing clarity, i.e., fucking great. It uses the EOS lens system and is a true SLR. However, if I had the money, I would get a Canon EOS 1D [dpreview.com].(DROOL) It has a full size 35mm sensor where the 10D is about 80% the size of a 35mm sensor.
    • Um, no, the 1D still has a 1.3x "multiplier". You're thinking of the 1Ds. (*droooool*)

      :)

    • Re:Spend $300 more (Score:5, Informative)

      by dboyles ( 65512 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:12PM (#6725781) Homepage
      The 10D is a great camera for the price, but readers should note that the $1499 MSRP is for the body only. Lenses must be purchased seperately. I read the article on the Sony a few days ago so I can't remember the focal length specs, but to get something similar on the Canon would require a serious cash outlay for lenses. In fact, I don't think there's a single Canon-mount lens that will cover that range. The EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens might be closest, and is considered a bargain at around $500 - and that's inexpensive as far as lenses go. Most likely two lenses would be required to cover the Sony's focal length, and a good pair will run around $2500.

      I should disclaim, I don't even own a 10D, although I plan to. I currently have a Powershot S400 because I need a small point-and-shoot, but I also want a full-featured camera for serious (albeit amateur) photography.
      • I bought my EF 28-135mm IS for $350. Great moderately priced lens. The problem with the SONY camera is that you are stuck with the lens that comes with it. If you own a Canon EOS Film Camera, you can use the lens from that on your 10D. The 10D is worth every penny of its price! My jaw drops every time I move photos from it to my Mac. I can't scan film from Elan 7 in to look better. It's a great amateur digital camera that makes you feel like a pro.

  • Sony = Proprietary (Score:3, Interesting)

    by computersareevil ( 244846 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:01PM (#6725639)
    I avoid Sony products because of their constant attempts to force consumers into proprietary technology. See the Memory Stick and InfoLithium and Beta and Hi8, all of which are proprietary and require expensive licensing for any third party to make.

    When I went looking for a digicam a couple of years ago, it came down to Olympus C3000 an some Sony (DCS-550?). The deciding factor was the Olympus uses readily-available, open-standard AA batteries and Multimedia cards, while the Sony uses proprietary, closed-standard Memory Sticks and InfoLithum batteries.

    You mileage may violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics...

    • Sony != Proprietary-- it takes CF cards! (Score:4, Informative)

      by raygundan ( 16760 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:08PM (#6725726) Homepage
      If you had bothered to look, you would have noticed that this particular sony camera uses standard compact flash cards, in addition to sony's normal memory stick.

      • this particular sony camera uses standard compact flash cards, in addition to sony's normal memory stick
        It also takes memory stick PRO. In fact, the highest resolution for video recording is only available if you're using a memory stick PRO card.
    • OK, I can see the issue with the media. But what is the big deal with the Batteries? Who cares what they use.. It's not like you need to use the same battery on the camera as in your laptop and to power your car... Did I miss something? Propietary is only *bad* if you need to share things across boundaries. My Canon lenses for my SLR are propietary and are damn good... I don't care that they won't fit on a Nikon...

  • $th color layer from Fuji? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cant_get_a_good_nick ( 172131 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:01PM (#6725647)
    Fuji color film essentially has this. 4th color layer that renders tones better, especially in non-optimal light. I think Agfa has this as well.

    Would be interesting to find out if this becomes widespread enough, if PhotoShop would allow manipulation of this layer someday. Would be interesting.
  • I refuse to purchase any of Sony's still cameras. I am protesting their annoying practice of crippling their equipment's capabilities in order to introduce a plethora of different versions. Specifically, I can't stand how they take a great video camera, the DCR PC100-120 and cripple its still image capability in order to force consumers to purchase two pieces of equipment instead of one. Just say NO!
    • It could be that the video camera's ccd dosent even have to be 1mp to take good looking miniDV video. Why put a 3mp sensor into a camera who's primary purpose is to take lower resolution video. They are not crippling anything, it's just the difference between still and video.

      Anyways

  • Amazingly (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiftOp ( 637065 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:02PM (#6725660) Homepage
    For the same $1200, you can get corrective eye surgery so you can see something close to half the resolution offered....

  • Cyan (Score:5, Funny)

    by mopslik ( 688435 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:02PM (#6725663)

    Emerald (like Cyan)

    Isn't cyan blue? Reminds me of an old sketch by the Frantics:

    "I remember her eyes over the yawning abyss of a week and a half. I remember their brown glow lighting the room like a shock of azure sky...

    Azure...

    Blue. Right. They were blue. Blue as ocean water, in its deepest emerald hues....

    Emerald.... Green.

    Right. They were... they were green, kind of a greeny-blue... Sort of aquamarine, with browninsh flecks.....

    OK, I remember her tits.

  • That's what I'd do with the extra money. See old Slashdot article below.

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/08/1802 22 &mode=thread&tid=152

  • Makes sense. (Score:5, Informative)

    by cbiffle ( 211614 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:03PM (#6725673)
    The center frequencies to which our green and blue cones are sensitive are rather far apart, spectrally -- at least, compared to the G/R cones. Looks like the E sensor on this CCD is between the G/B cones.

    (RGB sensors and emitters are generally calibrated to the center frequencies of our cones.)

    This is a good idea that I'd never considered. More color information is always good, and we can always just define a transform to reduce it to human optics. If nothing else, this makes more data available for image correction and whatnot. I wonder if you can actually get the RGBE data out of the camera, or if it stores three-channel JPEGs like everyone else?

    Well, in any case, tetrachromats rejoice.
    • RGB sensors and emitters are generally calibrated to the center frequencies of our cones.

      Tetrachromat humans occur VERY rarely, and only as females.

      For the rest of us, RGB centered at our own visual peaks makes the most sense of any encoding scheme possible. Not only can we not see another color, but it wastes space in the image (ie, some optimal conversion function can, by physical necessity, reduce those four colors to an RGB triad indistinguishable from the original quartet by a normal human.

      Now,
      • For the rest of us, RGB centered at our own visual peaks makes the most sense of any encoding scheme possible. Not only can we not see another color,

        Not true. We can see colors that monitors can't display -- IIRC, mainly deep purples. Oh, of course, as long as we're using modern monitor technology with RGB additive, storing images in RGB makes perfect sense. However, in general, there are other more general schemes; wavelength+amplitude would be one, and CIE [wikipedia.org] is an internationally accepted standard to desc

        • Re:No, it doesn't (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Alsee ( 515537 )
          And more manipulation could reduce it to TWO numbers, related to wavelength and frequency.

          First, wavelength = 1 / frequency. They are effectively only a single number. I'm going to guess the "two numbers" you intended were wavelength and intensity.

          Second, normal human visual colorspace is inherently three dimentional and cannot be reduced to just two numbers. Just consider white, you cannot reduce white to a wavelength intensity pair. You always need three axes such as (red, green, blue) or (cyan, mag

  • It's still CCD.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Atilla ( 64444 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:07PM (#6725724) Homepage
    CCD is getting kind of old... And the quality is not even close to the CMOS type pickups. A CCD camera has to correct the image using its software before it actually becomes half-ass tolerable, and you still end up with some artifacts when photographing certain textures.

    Yes, CMOS cameras are a lot more expensive, but image quality is IMHO better than 35mm film.

    Take Canon's EOS DS-1.. Take a look at some of the sample pictures - they are amazing.
    http://www.canoneos.com
    • You have to use software to correct images acquired from both CCD & CMOS images. The type of noise you get from each sensor is different, but work has to be done on both. Cannon is probably the first company to figure out how to perform image correction on a CMOS acquired image well enough to yield a good image (by comparison, take a look at Kodak's CMOS 12mp DSLR ... the color is so bland it's not even funny, and the noise isn't that great either).

      The advantage of CMOS sensors is that it can produce
    • CMOS is still an inferior imaging technology. CCDs are used in most of the more expensive cameras, including teh EOS-1D (but the 1DS does use CMOS). CMOS cameras still suffer from most of the same image artifacts that CCDs suffer from (except for trailing), as they also use color filter arrays. Foveon is the only technology out there that has all three colors for every pixel.
    • And a comment on the sample images. They're not that great. They suffer from some pretty bad chromatic aberration and loss of focus near the edges. What's the point in having 11.1MP if the lenses can't perform as well?
  • Sony technology is great. Really, it is. But their computer products are at least as restrictive as Apple's, if not more so. I've read too many reports on Memory Sticks being unreadable in Mac computers to even think about buying their cameras. Same with their CDRW and DVD drives. Their Clie handhelds run the Palm OS, but you need special shareware to sync it with a Mac. And from what I've heard, many non-Sony PCs have similar problems more often than they should.

    If I owned a Vaio PC, I'm sure it'd be no c
    • I have been using MemoryStick (tm) and Lexar generic memory stick media with 2 different Macs with no problems whatsoever. I have a Sony digital camer, a Sony miniDV camcorder, and 2 Sony Clie PDAs. All working fine.
    • What's up with their CDRW drives? I've been buying Sony CDRW drives for my machines for years, and I've never had a problem with them under any OS, and never had one fail.

      You really can't paint Sony with a broad brush. Some of their products are fantastic, while others are just rubbish. You just have to know which are which!

      steve

  • Argh! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Wiz ( 6870 )
    I, for one, welcome our new emerald overlords!

  • the best thing is... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BobTheLawyer ( 692026 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:22PM (#6725884)
    ...that Sony have finally conceded that "Memory Sticks" are a hopeless piece of proprietary crap and have included a Compact Flash slot.

  • Good Science on the eye's capabilities (Score:5, Informative)

    by RobertB-DC ( 622190 ) * on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:23PM (#6725903) Homepage Journal
    There's an excellent source of information about what "three primary colors" actually means at of Dave Trapp's Sequim (WA) Schools [mac.com] science department site. There's a relatively simple explanation [mac.com] of how color vision works, then a facinating and highly detailed [mac.com] in-depth discussion of the issue.

    Some interesting notes from Mr. Trapp:

    * "All three [signals] are equally sensitive to blue light, two have expanded ranges that include green and yellow light, and the third signal includes sensitivity to red light."

    * "While these paradigms of primary colors have worked well for human printing and light uses for over a century, it is likely that the three primary colors are not descriptive of the world, but rather an artifact of our eyes, the tools we use to perceive the world."

    * "The real world does not have primary colors!"

    He also discusses how the world would be perceived differently if we evolved a fourth cone, sensitive in the UV region. Very cool stuff!

    Interestingly, though, he's no longer teaching science, and details the reasons [mac.com] on his site. Anyone who's ever been driven crazy in a class taught by a guy named simply "Coach" (and who on this site hasn't?) will sympathize with this good teacher's plight.
    • Sorry to reply to my own post, but I did a search on "tetrachromatic" and found a very interesting article in Slate, describing three up-and-coming vision-enhancement technologies [msn.com]: surgical correction to 20/10 (available now), CCD implants with direct transmission to the brain (give it 10-20 years), and gene-therapy generation of a fourth type of photoreceptor (pie in the sky, like the Internet was).

      For their first experiment, they want to give a third color receptor to monkeys. Then, it's our turn:

      There

  • so there's a chance.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Large Green Mallard ( 31462 ) <lgm@theducks.org> on Monday August 18, 2003 @06:27PM (#6727206) Homepage
    That for once, Sony will make a digital camera with colour balance that doesn't look like it was calibrated by a colour blind monkey with a penchant for blue?

  • Fovon comparison test. . . (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fantastic Lad ( 198284 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @10:24PM (#6729003)
    The Sigma installed Fovon technology was my target as I stomped down to the camera district.

    --Cuz, you see, scanners suck for color. (That blue-white neon bulb plays HELL with all color. Images which may have been, say, painted beneath nice warm yellow incadescent bulbs turn into entirely different images when subjected to Borg lighting.)

    With this in mind, I dragged a painting down with me and waited around for half an hour for one of the sales people to get free. Business is booming in the digital camera trade. I watched two stalwart pro-camera guys barter on the edge of $10,000 each, all in order to get themselves out of film and finally into the new digital technology. The change-over is hot on, and there aren't enough sales guys to go around! So I waited my turn.

    When I was finally able to get some face time with one of the guys, I slapped the illustration down on the counter and told him what I was all about. So ten minutes later, there were three cameras set up for me to try out. I'd brought my own flash card with me so I could take the results home to test. That was my brilliant plan.

    Here's where it all went awry. . .

    First off, the Sigma camera, the Fovon chip notwithstanding, is a poorly designed piece of junk. It wouldn't work. The guy complained that it burned through its batteries like wildfire, (it took at least two different sets of batteries; one for the camera body and one for something else. And still another set for the flash. If one set wasn't up to snuff, the whole thing would do nothing. He said it was a piece of shit. So I never actually got try out the thing.

    Furthermore, when you go to buy one of these high-end jobs, the $2000 bucks quoted in the add does not include a lens. Just the camera body. Yikes! --For my needs, I was looking at blowing, at least another $1-2000; probably more. If you are shooting artwork, you can't be screwing around with curving lines and such at the top and bottom of an illustration. Plus, if you want something which is can achieve a 300dpi print quality at a reasonable size. . , well 6 megapixels in the hardware just won't do. --Especially since you can't use all of the image area sighted by the camera. Straight lines go curvey the closer to the edge of the lense you get.

    Now I did test a Canon, and an Olympus. Both worked and were designed much more effectively. Plus, both Canon and Olympus offered slightly more affordable lens solutions. The color problem, of course, was gone. The camera would take in whatever color light you bounced off the subject. That wasn't even an issue; color correctors would be looking for new jobs when these kinds of cameras became workable. But this particular camera store didn't have anything which shot in the kind of size range a print illustrator would need.

    Now, this problem might go away with the Fovon technology. Supposedly, you get higher resolution for your buck, simply because of how it understands color. But I've yet to test a camera which has the chip.

    One way or another, I went home again, convinced that color correction was a task I could handle with a smile simply because of all the money I wouldn't have to spend on a half-assed answer.


    -FL

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