On Mon, 24 May 2004 12:28:48 GMT, Lassi Hippeläinen
wrote:

Raphael Bustin wrote:

On 23 May 2004 22:21:57 -0500, (Bob Monaghan)
wrote:


the key point y'all missed is that it looks unlikely that a 35mm format
64MP sensor is likely, based on CMOS developer Carver Mead's comments at
end of article fundamental size limits in wavelength of light see
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0009/00...foveon16mp.asp

And who appointed Carver Mead as the authority on this topic?
Carver's got a specific product to sell, and so far it's been a
very hard sell. Foveon continues to play a very small role in
the digicam market.

He's got the physics on his side. The wavelength of light isn't
changing. You can't use smaller than five micron pixels, and even those
are pretty noisy. 64MP with 7x7 micron dots is 6x6cm in size, even
without the electronics between the pixels.


I'm not arguing your basic point. To date, the limiting
size for area-array sensors is around 20+ Mpixels,
and that's with "Bayer" arrays and pixel-counts.
Foveon, IMO, is a non-issue and non-starter, at least
for the time being. I think you could have found a
better source to cite than a four-year-old press release
from a third-rate player in the industry.

Imaging chips are at extreme odds with traditional silicon
processing, where feature sizes and overall geometries
are under constant downward pressure. So good, hi-res
imaging chips will be expensive, maybe forever, but at
least until they're produced and sold in very high volume.


I think MF and LF may continue to have a role in niche
applications. It will be many years (if ever) before a silicon
sensor can return the sort of pixel counts that I get from
scanning either of these. The only real issue I see is
how long will Kodak and Fuji (et al) continue to make
film in these formats?

Film will be competitive for a long time. When you start handling 64MP
(or 400MB) images, you'll soon notice some things:
- memory isn't cheap, and you need lots of it
- digital processing needs memory all the way from scanning workstations
to permanent storage
- permanent storage isn't permanent, unless it is refreshed every five
years or so
- the rest of the equipment gets obsolete even faster...

In terms of total cost of ownership, MF is still hard to beat. Digitals
win when you need the speed.


Again, I mostly agree with your main point. It's
all quite relative. MF is middle of the road if
you consider LF on one side and 35 mm on the
other. Comparing any one of these to digital
is like comparing religions.

In the overall scheme of things, memory really
is cheap these days... $100 will buy you:

* half a gigabyte of fast DDRAM, or
* a 120 gigabyte hard drive,
* a DVD writer.

Hard drives fail -- don't I know it. I've had my ways
tested recently but so far my CDs and DVDs are
holding up and have saved the day, literally.
Constant vigilance... thanks for reminding me.


rafe b.
http://www.terrapinphoto.com