Advice about 12.8 MP Canon Please

Michael Weinstein wrote:
On 2006-04-18 12:53:13 -0400, Mark Conrad said:


I am seriousely contemplating buying a new 12 MP Canon.

Would appreciate advice from actual owners of that camera.

Contemplated usage will be mainly for producing offset lithography
phamplets and possibly larger 8 x 11 inch slick brochers, if the Canon
is up to that task, technically speaking.

My setup will be an Intel-based Mac using Quark and In-Design for
editing the raw digital image from the Canon.



Anything I should know or be aware of?

I am essentially new to digital photography. This will be my first
digital camera of any kind.

What am I getting into?

Mark-


Are Quark and Indesign universal binary? As far as I remember Adobe is
18 months away or so from taking their software to universal binary,
which means an Intel Mac will actually run slower than a G5 Mac on that
software. No?

The next Quark release is supposed to be, but with Adobe they have
announced no changes to InDesign until at least next year. Adobe are not
changing their normal product delivery schedule just because Apple
changed chip suppliers for some products.

On a practical level, you will not be likely to see much difference in
operating speeds for either application running on Intel chipped Apple
computers. These applications and their normal day to day routine uses
just don't push computers that much. Nearly all users would be unlikely
to notice any slight difference in speed. Any differences would be more
noticeable in PhotoShop, any video editing, or any 3D applications.

There is compelling reason not to go with Quark, at least on the latest
version. Despite PDF support, their implementation functions poorly.
Many printing places do not support native Quark files beyond version 5,
and some even not supporting native files beyond version 4.11. That
means delivering rendered EPS or PostScript files, something anyone
using Quark on Windows is somewhat familiar doing. If you want a further
reason, even if you are a long time Quark user (like me), you will find
that the newest versions do not support opening older version files (and
that even applies to templates).

If you really want to be an early adopter of technology, then buy a new
Intel Mac. If you want to actually get work done, wait until a second
version works out all the bugs and problems. If you need a set-up for
work, you want reliability instead of problems.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com

Gordon Moat wrote:

On the other hand, I don't think what FUJI are doing infringes upon
Foveon patents, which is what you seem to be suggesting. Or is there
some other aspect to what you are suggesting?
First off if no name said anything about patents I missed it, but to
tell if there were any infringement you would have to read the claims
on any Foveon patents, just looking at the technology they brought to
market will not tell you this.

But more to the point I think was that the Fuji technology does not
look all that new. Time will tell if they really have something
worthwhile, for not I am not getting the excited about it.

Scott

Gordon Moat wrote:



no_name wrote:




Well, as I said, it sounds like the Foveon sensor.

The only difference I see is the organic semiconductor, a matter of
materials, not design. The basic structure is the same as the Foveon
or film for that matter ... blue sensitive layer, green sensitive
layer and red sensitive layer, stacked in that order.



If the "design" was the same, FUJI would be committing patent
infringement. While the idea might be similar, I don't see any patent
infringement in the FUJI design . . . do you?


I don't think the concept of layers responding to different colors of
light would be patentable, it's pre-existing ... film's been there done
that.

I don't know if the technology Fuji is using to implement this idea
infringes on Foveon patents or not, although since it's based on organic
conductors I expect probably not.

But, since the concept itself isn't patentable, the "designs" are very
similar:

Film - Blue Sensitive layer
Yellow filter layer
Green Sensitive layer
Red Sensitive layer

Foveon - Blue Sensitive layer
Green Sensitive layer
Red Sensitive layer

Fuji - Blue Sensitive layer
Green Sensitive layer
Red Sensitive layer

Basically, Foveon is dead technology. Kodak bought out all
the imaging chip technology from National Semiconductor,
except for the Foveon technology.


I don't know that Foveon IS a dead technology. Only the future will tell.

But I haven't found any reference to National Semiconductor being the
developer of the Foveon sensor.

With a little bit of a search, I did find some indication that National
Semiconductor's fab plant was used by Foveon for chip manufacture, but
National Semiconductor couldn't sell the Foveon technology to Kodak
because National Semiconductor didn't own the Foveon technology.