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Hardware Technology

The Future of Digital Camera Technology 429

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the selecting-a-new-buzzword dept.
An anonymous reader writes "CNet News has an interesting look at where digital camera technology is headed now that the megapixel buzzword can be put to rest. From the article: 'In compact cameras, I think that the megapixel race is pretty much over,' says Chuck Westfall, director of media for Canon's camera marketing group. 'Seven- and eight-megapixel cameras seem to be more than adequate. We can easily go up to a 13-by-19 print and see very, very clear detail.'"
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The Future of Digital Camera Technology More

The Future of Digital Camera Technology

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  • stop the jpegs! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MikeFM ( 12491 )
    Now that we have cameras of a decent MP maybe we could stop saving as jpeg and instead use a lossless format? That combined with a decent optical zoom and something like a 13MP camera would be good. That leaves us with the primary worry of storage. I'd suggest making cameras able to wirelessly connect to another portable device you could carry in a pocket of purse that acts like a hard disk and could store 100GB of files or more. That and improved batteries would be great.

    • Re:stop the jpegs! (Score:5, Informative)

      by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75@@@yahoo...com> on Sunday February 05, 2006 @01:57AM (#14644632)
      Now that we have cameras of a decent MP maybe we could stop saving as jpeg and instead use a lossless format?

      Er, it's called RAW, and all pro cameras and even a lot of pocket cams are capable of using it. This is unrasterized data, so it's about as lossless as it gets (even TIFF is destructive because it rasterizes the images before it's saved).

      The problem with RAW formats right now is that they're all proprietary, but this isn't really that big of a deal in practice. Generally speaking, if an image editor supports RAW at all, it will support every major camera. And every camera that supports RAW also ships with its own conversion software (so you can save as whatever format you want).
    • What you are describing exists. (And costs $5000-8000, not including the lens.)

    • Re:stop the jpegs! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @02:26AM (#14644708) Homepage Journal
      I'd suggest making cameras able to wirelessly connect to another portable device you could carry in a pocket of purse that acts like a hard disk and could store 100GB of files or more. That and improved batteries would be great.

      On one hand, you suggest a technology that sucks the ever-loving batteries dry and on another, you suggest improving batteries. Battery life is probably far better without using wireless. Batteries are a chemical energy storage technology that simply cannot, by their very nature, improve as quicly as transistor process technology, the best way to improve battery life is to make electronics not draw excess current in the first place. Flash cards are improving in size pretty well. Anything higher than 5MP is going to demand practice and heavy stabilization, through optics and a tripod, to take full advantage of the sensor resolution.

    • Overrated (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 05, 2006 @03:16AM (#14644822)
      Who the fuck modded this +5?

      What he's asking for already exists. You can use RAW mode or some cameras will even save as TIFFs if you don't want jpegs. Same for wireless - that stuff is already available (although not mainstream -- yet). Current batteries aren't bad either (heck, I can fill a 2GB card on a single battery). Also, for pros who do a lot of shooting, there has been specialized battery packs for years [for the camera AND flashes] and such solutions...

      There are plenty of things that suck with cameras nowadays, and these things aren't it.

      The interface/menus on most cameras suck (especially P&S cameras - those menus are like a fucking maze, and what about the impossible to remember button combinations for anything non-trivial?)

      Dynamic Range. I don't want more megapixels, and current noise levels are about as good as they'll ever get (compromises). But I *WANT* more dynamic range already - even better, a film-like "shoulder" in the response curve (in the highlights) - without having to combine pictures. It's annoying to have to combine shots all the time (even if one uses ND grads). This is perhaps the biggest issue with regards to digital photography right now.

      What about that four thirds "universal" system they used to talk so much about? I don't want to sell all my Nikon glass (several thousand $'s worth) to be able to use a Canon camera, or what if I wanted to use a Canon lens on my Nikon? This was supposed to let you do it by swapping a mount/adapter. Absolute freedom! No more system lock-in!

      The lighting system on most cameras is quickly becoming a mess. Forget about tried and working "real" TTL (matrix, color matrix or whatever). Now you need special oddball not-quite-TTL (dTTL/eTTL/iTTL) flashes for every new camera they put out... It's getting more complicated as you try to use things like plain TTL strobes and such... CCDs made this harder, and they try to make you believe it's better now, but it isn't.

      There are tons of things that could really improve...

      There are many things which have improved a lot on recent cameras: things like startup times and shutter lag, orientation sensors are pretty much standard, etc.

      People worry too much about megapixels. You also need the [expensive] glass with sufficient resolving power to make use of it. And for 99% of the population, it's already overkill. How many megapixels one needs to make bullseye snapshots of their dogs? Give 'em a million megapixels and their photos will still suck. And resolution isn't "linear". To have a picture twice the size in each direction, you need 4x the resolution i.e. the difference between a 5 and a 6MP camera is nearly non-existant. If you need more megapixels than the current cameras, most likely you'll need to switch to a medium format camrea with a digital back (mainly because even the most expensive 35mm lenses only have so much resolving power), which will cost tens of thousands.

      • Re:Overrated (Score:3, Insightful)

        by SillyNickName4me ( 760022 )
        The interface/menus on most cameras suck (especially P&S cameras - those menus are like a fucking maze, and what about the impossible to remember button combinations for anything non-trivial?)

        Something that was solved quite some time ago by the early Camedia cameras from Olympus and anything similar to it.

        Dynamic Range. I don't want more megapixels, and current noise levels are about as good as they'll ever get (compromises). But I *WANT* more dynamic range already - even better, a film-like "shoulder"

        • Re:Overrated (Score:4, Informative)

          by shmlco ( 594907 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @04:43PM (#14646950) Homepage
          "An increase in dynamic range would be nice, 12bits/color would be a good start really..."

          If you're referring to dynamic range the same as one does in film, that is, seven "stops", then simply adding more bits to the A/DC doesn't get you there. You need better sensors, as a pixel well has characteristics too. Namely a noise floor and a ceiling that saturates with too much light. Mess with the ceiling in an attempt to prevent early saturation, and you kill low-light sensitivity. Dive too deeply into the floor, and you have noise issues.

          The standard analogy is a set of stairs five feet tall. I can have each stair be a foot high, or each stair be 6" high. With the later, I have more "bits", and be more accurate in terms of height (color), but the set of stairs will still only be five foot tall. In film terms, I will have captured only five "stops" of data, no matter how finely I divide them up.

          That's why you see such oddball attempts at sensor design, like Fuji's SuperCCD, where one sensor in each matrix is harder to saturate, and as such is dedicated to pulling more detail out of the highlights.

          Now in that case, you do need more bits to represent the data, but not in the way normally thought of. A 10-bit converter will still map the white point to 0xFFFF and the black point to 0x0000, and get the job done, but as range increases that leaves you with larger gaps (posterization) between individual points in the range. A 12-bit A/DC will fill in those gaps and give you smoother transitions.

          • Re:Overrated (Score:3, Informative)

            by SillyNickName4me ( 760022 )
            Now in that case, you do need more bits to represent the data, but not in the way normally thought of. A 10-bit converter will still map the white point to 0xFFFF and the black point to 0x0000, and get the job done, but as range increases that leaves you with larger gaps (posterization) between individual points in the range. A 12-bit A/DC will fill in those gaps and give you smoother transitions.

            A small detail maybe, but it would between 0x00 and 0xFF for 8 bit data.

            Of course you are completely right about

    • Battery and speed (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The other comments in this thread seem to only talk about the file size issue of the picture you snap. But there are actually three other factors you need to keep in mind. And since the parent mentioned that he would be OK with a 100 MB image, these factors would become readily apparent:

      1. Battery life. If you snap pictures with lossless formatting, and thus increase the storage space used per picture, your battery life will plummet. Simply because the camera will be expending much more energy, either
      • As with many things, the more expensive cameras have far chunkier buffers. There is really no other way to speed up 'write' time (Viewed as the time between taking one shot and when you can take the next) than bigger buffers or an inherently different type of memory.

        That said, my (very) old digital camera taking photos at 320x240 (Maximum resolution) was shit fast.

    • Re:stop the jpegs! (Score:2, Informative)

      by gaspyy ( 514539 )
      I wish there were an "-1 Uninformed" mod.

      You can (and SHOULD if you're serious about photography) save in a lossless 12bit format - it's called RAW.

      Decent optical zoom - buy a dSLR and you can get any zoom from fisheye to extreme telephoto, macro and more.

      13MP - already exceeded by Canon and Kodak in their dSLRs. Hasselblad has 39 MP!

      Wireless - already there in Canon 1DS Mark II I think.

    • Re:stop the jpegs! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by b0r1s ( 170449 )
      Three things besides megapixels to consider:

      1) Optical lenses - SLR? Aftermarket lenses available?
      2) Memory available - CF, SD, capable of using 2GB+ cards
      3) Speed - how fast does it start, how fast can it autofocus (if enabled), how long between shots

      Like many others, eventually went with the Canon 20D, and am very happy.

    • Re:stop the jpegs! (Score:5, Informative)

      by SKPhoton ( 683703 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @04:32AM (#14644978) Homepage
      Want to save an image losslessly? Digital SLRs (and some point in shoots) let you save in RAW. Not only is the image saved losslessly, but you can adjust white balance, exposure (within reason), sharpness, and more all after taking the photo!

      Want decent optical zooms? SLR lenseshave been available for decades now that range from 8mm to a whopping 1200mm. That's over 100x for you guys used to talking about lenses in terms of "how much zoom" they have. Canon's lens selection [canon.com].

      Want 13MP? The Canon 5D [canon.com] does 12.8. The Canon 1Ds Mark II [canon.com] does 16.8.

      Want storage? You can get CF/SD cards as large as 8 gb, and portable hard drives such as the Epson P-2000 [dpreview.com] made for offloading photos out in the field.

      Want to wirelessly transmit photos? The 1Ds Mark II can do it with the WFT-E1A [bhphotovideo.com].

      Current batteries can let you shoot 2500 shots on a single charge. Spare batteries are cheap and keeping spares in your bag is no big deal.

      The thing is that all this technology is already available, but be prepared to spend thousands of dollars for it. If you're looking for all this technology crammed into an everyday point & shoot, give it a few more years.

      Instead of more MP, how about better high ISO capabilities? No shutter lag from when you press the button to when the camera takes the picture? How about taking photos at 8fps? Instant-on when you power up your camera? Quicker autofocus? These features are very important, but these too are available on DSLRs, and for a price. Considering how little money you're spending on a point & shoot, they do quite a bit as it is and they'll only get better. The technology is already there and it will eventually find its way down to lower end cameras.

    • Re:stop the jpegs! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by GWBasic ( 900357 )
      My camera saves a 7 megapixel image as a 7 megabyte jpeg. For consumer-grade equipment, it's surprisingly high-qualit!. A few days ago, I was shrinking an image to email to my family, when I noticed a 1-pixel spec in Photoshop. Thinking that my lense was dirty, I zoomed in to see that it captured a bird in flight!

  • JPEG Files (Score:3, Insightful)

    by megrims ( 839585 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @01:35AM (#14644558)
    From TFA:
    Will the under-the-skin nanocomputers of 2100 still recognize JPEG files?

    Why all the big attachment to JPEGs?
    Isn't it better to be taking lossless pictures with digital cameras anyway?

    (My digital camera only writes in jpg format. I'm not sure if this is rare amongst digital cameras nowdays, but it doesn't seem ideal.)

    • Re:JPEG Files (Score:3, Insightful)

      by caffeinemessiah ( 918089 )
      For the same reason the masses perfectly enjoy their MP3s as opposed to listening to digital CD rips in WAV format. The whole point of JPEG (and mpeg for that matter) was to eliminate information that was not in the average human's perceptual range.

      Plus, I think people might be pissed if you told them that their 40GB iPods would only hold about 50 CDs worth of music. Then again, maybe not.

    • It depends on how much you want to pay. Again, for those who are willing to put out the big bucks, such cameras are readily available.

      What it comes down to is a tradeoff between image quality and storage space (where less storage space leads to a lower cost). Digital cameras wouldn't be affordable to the vast majority of people if that tradeoff wasn't made.

      When it comes to cameras, storage space is one of those needs that cannot be satiated. People will always want more storage space. At least using JPEG, f

    • Re:JPEG Files (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CyricZ ( 887944 )
      It's quite likely that devices in the far future will still be able to decode JPEG images. We can still manipulate tape and disc images from systems from the 1960s, as shown by the SIMH project. Of course, we can also read Old English texts from 700 AD. And we can read other texts from far before that.

    • They are called RAW files. Normally they are tough to work with but Apeture is changing that. I started playing with it recently and it changed my attitude about RAW files. Targa and Tiff files are normally better than JPEG but RAW is the best way to go. RAW files can be huge and tweaking them isn't desireable but Apeture avoids that problem and can handle the massive files with ease. I was never a Mac fan but Final Cut Pro and Apeture have made me a believer.

    • Re:JPEG Files (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jetson ( 176002 )
      (My digital camera only writes in jpg format. I'm not sure if this is rare amongst digital cameras nowdays, but it doesn't seem ideal.)

      Once you go beyond about 5 megapixels it seems rather rare to be stuck with any one format. My Lumix (Panasonic) FZ30 (8mp) does does raw or tiff in addition to jpeg, but the CCD has a lot of noise in low light situations so the extra memory requirement may not be justified.

  • So what, technology should just stop because consumers don't need anything better? Technically most people don't need more than 1ghz of processing power, but thankfully that hasn't stalled the IT industry. Personally I think we should continue on until we hit a technological wall, or at least until the consumer models would be way too pricy. I see no reason I shouldn't have a 100 megapixel camera if someone can deliver me one for a few hundred dollars.
    • Technically most people don't need more than 1ghz of processing power, but thankfully that hasn't stalled the IT industry.
      640K should be enough for anybody

  • 3 megapixel cameras were more than adequate... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Max Threshold ( 540114 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @01:42AM (#14644573)
    ...for all but the most discriminating consumers. The only difference with 8MP cameras is that now people are posting 4MB images on their Web pages, or emailing them to Grandma who's still stuck on dialup.
    • There's a lot of people out there who have no concept of the Golden Mean or Rule of Thirds. If I get ahold of one of their pictures and have to edit it, I like being able to crop and have the extra resolution to zoom in. For those people, 16MP isn' even enough.

  • The next likely advancement: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @01:44AM (#14644584)
    Better quality CCD sensors with very low "noise" even at high ISO settings (ISO 1000-1600). This will likely require either larger size sensors or improved semiconductor design for the CCD sensor itself.
    • Good point. It's annoying that even decent digital cameras aren't good at taking motion pictures or low/weird lighting pics. It's frustrating that I press the button and there is a slight delay before my picture is taken - making me miss the shot half the time if things are moving. Almost as bad is that I try to take an outdoor photo at dusk and the camera isn't able to capture anything but gray. Understandable problems but I'd love to see some improvements there in cameras affordable by the average consume
    • I thought we were pushing the theoretical limit for that - there are only so many photons impacting the sensor surface, and it's not possible to catch many more with much more accuracy than we already are. Sure we can make each sensor smaller, but that doesn't create more light. Short of making the sensors themselves larger and larger (say 5" x 4"), all I can see for improving quality is (drum roll...)

      Interpolation through motion compensation! Yes that brain-ruining technology that takes multiple low-r

      • Stopping Throwing Away Data (Score:5, Interesting)

        by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @05:01AM (#14645024)
        I thought we were pushing the theoretical limit for that - there are only so many photons impacting the sensor surface, and it's not possible to catch many more with much more accuracy than we already are.

        Actually, even if you had a theoretically "perfect" CCD or CMOS, you can catch about two-to-four times as many photons.

        The problem lies in the way the photosites capture light. Most designs are variants of the every other location is green with red and blue alternating the others. Something like:

        RG
        GB

        Green gets twice the representation as human eyes are more sensitive to green and thus more detail in that part of the spectrum is considered desirable.

        A recent trick to squeeze out more is to turn the photosites at 45 degrees to the grid you actually capture. You're then forced to interpolate more but the theory is that you get a smoother response.

        Regardless though, any given location can catch red OR green OR blue parts of the spectrum. If green falls, 50% of it is lost. If red falls, 75% is lost - same with blue. You're always throwing away half to three quarters of your photons simply by having photosites dedicated to individual colors.

        With Foveon they try tackling things differently. By exploiting the fact that different wavelengths can penetrate silicon to different depths, they figured you can have a three layer deep photosite that captures red AND green AND blue - none of this ignoring chunks of the spectrum and throwing away data.

        Of course, for all it's a cool idea, it's proprietary, has only made it in to a few cameras and doesn't seem to be hitting its full potential yet. My guess is there's still quite a bit left that can be squeezed out of CMOS (Canon's 10D got noisy at-or-just-after 400 ISO wherease the 20D, 18 months later, could handle 800) and we'll see them follow that technology for a while whilst waiting for Foveon to move out of patent protection.

        Still, in the future, I'd imagine we'll see Foveon or something different but exploiting some similar concepts replace individual colored photosites. Until that point, no matter how good things get, there's always a full stop of light's worth of extra quality sitting and waiting.

  • Bill Gates, meet Chuck Westfall... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 05, 2006 @01:45AM (#14644585)
    Amended quote: 8 megapixels of resolution should be enough for anybody.

  • Mult-use devices (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gunpowda ( 825571 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @01:46AM (#14644593)
    I think we'll eventually see the integration of camera functionality with other devices to the extent that there'll be more of these products than there will be just plain cameras.

    I personally carry my phone around far more than I do my camera, and consequently I find myself taking photos where I'd normally be wishing I had my camera with me. Integration can be disastrous if the usability of any of the devices is affected, but if done properly, it can be excellent. Bring on the iPod Camcorder Phone!

    • If UNIX has taught us anything, it is that we should focus on creating small, highly-specialized applications (be them software, cell phones, cameras, or whatnot). Similarly, what Windows has taught us is that massive, monolithic applications are often failure-prone, unwieldy, and overly expensive.

      That is why we need to take caution with these sorts of integrated devices. Soon enough they perform neither function reliably. It is often better to have a cell phone that is only a cell phone, and a camera that
    • It's better to have the camera in your phone than no camera if you're out somewhere and want to snap a picture...but the quality of even the best phone cameras is crap compared to a $50 credit-card-sized digital camera at the office store.

      My "real" camera's lens is bigger than my cell phone. Just because of optical limitations alone, you'll never have a decent camera in a cell phone.

      • Re:Mult-use devices (Score:3, Insightful)

        by vought ( 160908 )
        My "real" camera's lens is bigger than my cell phone. Just because of optical limitations alone, you'll never have a decent camera in a cell phone.

        That must be why microscope lenses are so crappy.

        I'd like to correct your assertion that it's somehow difficult to make a small, sharp, lens. It's far easier to design and build a tack-sharp lens that is 6mm across than to make an equally sharp lens that is 40mm across. Similarly, the larger the lens, the more elements and groups you must add to the design to cor

  • Those who flunk History are doomed to repeat it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tsar ( 536185 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @01:53AM (#14644616) Homepage Journal
    "In compact cameras, I think that the megapixel race is pretty much over," says Chuck Westfall, director of media for Canon's camera marketing group. "Seven- and eight-megapixel cameras seem to be more than adequate."

    Anyone care to guess how long it will be before this quote supplants "640K should be enough for anybody" as the Worst Technology Prediction Ever?

    • Re:Those who flunk History are doomed to repeat it (Score:4, Informative)

      by Riktov ( 632 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @05:45AM (#14645116) Journal
      This really is different from the 640K limit.

      The 8MP (or whatever it may end up being) limit is defined by human perception. If no human being can distinguish between a photograph displayed at resolution A and the same photo displayed at resolution B which is greater by some factor, then B is more than adequate and nobody's going to want or need anything beyond that, even if it's techonologically feasible.

      In digital audio, we really have reached the limit of human perception, which is probably around 320KB/s, 48kHz. There is probably no technical problem in creating digital audio at 4MB/s, 1Mhz, but you don't hear any audio engineers asking for it.

      No similar limit of perception applies to our ability to use and store information.
    • "In compact cameras, I think that the megapixel race is pretty much over," says Chuck Westfall, director of media for Canon's camera marketing group. "Seven- and eight-megapixel cameras seem to be more than adequate."

      Anyone care to guess how long it will be before this quote supplants "640K should be enough for anybody" as the Worst Technology Prediction Ever?

      I would say the digital photography field is just a little different than the general computing field, so that really isn't that bad a statement. Your average snapshooter isn't clamoring to print his photos at 36x48 inches nor crop 90% of their image and still expect to have decent resolution. There are a lot of people who are really quite happy with their 3- and 4-megapixel cameras. Having eight or more megapixels is just icing on the cake except for people who actually need or want the extra resolution for various reasons. Even a sharp 3MP photo can often be printed up to 13x19 and still look decent. At the consumer level we really have reached the flattening-out part of the curve in terms of the megapixel race.

      What the digital camera world really needs more than ever-increasing megapixels at this point is A) improved dynamic range, B) less noise at high ISO ranges (800-3200+), and C) more cameras with built-in image stabilization. These three things will actually solve real-life problems that people have when taking pictures.

      I think dynamic range is the biggest problem. Cameras just aren't capable yet of getting information out of both deep shadows and bright highlights in the same image the way our eyes can. This is confusing to most people and ruins a lot of shots. "Blown" highlights and pure black shadows with no retrievable information are the bane of the digital photography world. Sure, you can shoot RAW and try to manipulate it in Photoshop, but that is really way beyond most people.

      Besides dynamic range, most shots are ruined by blur. Either the shutter speed was too slow to stop the movement of the subject, which can be helped a lot by higher ISO capabilities, or the camera was moving too much, which can be helped quite a bit by some built-in image stabilization. Bottom line is, lack of megapixels is no longer the cause of most unacceptable photographs for most people. Except for the pros, it's time to move on to improving other features. I can't really envision a world where regular people are screaming for 32-megapixel compact cameras. Ain't gonna happen.

  • Just a quick Primer (Score:5, Informative)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @01:56AM (#14644626) Journal
    It is not all about MegaPixels.

    There are two other things that can make or break a camera
    1. Lense Quality
    2. Size of the CCD/CMOS


    What seems to slip by the average digital camera buyer, is that megapixels are only relevant in relation to the size of the CCD/CMOS.

    SIZE does matter.
    BIGGER is BETTER.

    Here's a great website that does a basic talk about sensor sizes [dpreview.com]

    If you follow [dpreview.com] the [dpreview.com] links [dpreview.com] you'll learn a lot more about why the sensor & pixel size are possibly more important than just the megapixels offered.

  • Pro verses consumer (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Belseth ( 835595 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @01:58AM (#14644633)
    now that the megapixel buzzword can be put to rest.

    7 or 8 megapixel may be adequate for consumer cameras but even the highest pixel count availible doesn't match the needs of a lot of professionals. They've finally hit pro level but for high res work many still need to use film. The mass market race is over but pro cameras will keep increasing for years to come. A 4'x5' still has far more resolution than the best camera on the market today.

    • Not to mention, film has an analog quality that is currently nearly impossible for digital to emulate. Sure, I could drop $3,000 on a 12-megapixel camera and spend hours tweaking a photo in Photoshop to get some nice effects. But I can get those effects from my cheap Olympus OM-4 set-up with a tilt-shift lens or my custom pin-hole lens.

      I love my digital camera, really. But there's so much more warmth, depth, and life in my film camera shots.

      Just like music - digital has a ways to go before it can match the
      • This isn't true anymore. The current crop of DSLR's surpass 35mm film in every way. In every way. No, you don't have to spend hours in Photoshop to get some nice effects either.

        We're not talking about just ease of use or a nice work flow with digital anymore, which used to be the main draw for many pros. We're talking about better quality of the image also. No, not every digital camera is going to be better than 35mm film. But some are. The EOS 5D is one of them. Yes, it's 3000 bucks so you'll have to pay

    • Still shooting large format film (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mrs. Grundy ( 680212 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @03:00AM (#14644787) Homepage
      I am one of those photographers. I make large prints often 30x40 and shoot largeand medium format film. I am pretty nervous about the day I can no longer get a box of 4x5 film and hope technology makes it possible to still get great prints at these sizes. 8 megapixels doesn't cut it. Of course, a large format camera can take a digital back if you have the money for such a beast, but it isn't so practical if you do photography that is off the grid like I do.

      I was looking at an ad in the New York Times just last week. It was a full-page photo for a major telecom and all I saw was pixels. It was something and art director would never have stood for even a couple of years ago but will accept today in exchange for the digital workflow and instant gratification. I'm not sure a lot of people who state how much resolution is enough have ever seen a good print made from a piece of large format film. But then again this isn't so different from what large format photographers were saying when 35mm came on the scene and it turns out the world was big enough for both.

      • The Arizona Highways magazine started taking digital photos from people with digital film planes for medium format cameras...

      • Re:Still shooting large format film (Score:4, Interesting)

        by RedBear ( 207369 ) <redbear.redbearnet@com> on Sunday February 05, 2006 @11:10AM (#14645761) Homepage
        I am one of those photographers. I make large prints often 30x40 and shoot largeand medium format film. I am pretty nervous about the day I can no longer get a box of 4x5 film and hope technology makes it possible to still get great prints at these sizes. 8 megapixels doesn't cut it. Of course, a large format camera can take a digital back if you have the money for such a beast, but it isn't so practical if you do photography that is off the grid like I do.

        There is a medium-format digital back that came out recently with 38-megapixels. Something tells me that by the time your film goes the way of the dodo there will be quite a few options available for you to do the same quality work with digital that you've been doing with film. Printing at 30x40 is a piece of cake even for the 16MP Canon 1Ds Mark II. Is it going to have the same resolution if you look at it with a magnifying glass? No, but what are you doing looking at a poster with a magnifying glass? Unless you're printing billboard-size, you aren't actually seeing all that resolution under most circumstances. If you really do have the skill and the audience that require all that resolution I'm sure you'll be able to afford a digital solution in the near future that will closely approximate what you're doing with film, if not surpass it eventually. Think of it as an opportunity rather than a roadblock.

        A good site to check out if you haven't seen it already is luminous-landscape.com, where the owner of the site is an experienced professional photographer who has done some interesting comparisons between digital and film and found to his own amazement that digital has now surpassed the image quality of 35mm film and is working on overtaking even medium-format. That was a couple of years ago. Looks like there is a recent article by another large-format photographer that you may find very interesting, comparing the 4x5 film you use with the very 38MP back that I mentioned earlier. Happy reading:

        http://luminous-landscape.com/essays/Cramer.shtml [luminous-landscape.com]

    • Re:Pro verses consumer (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MadCow42 ( 243108 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @07:45AM (#14645302) Homepage
      Bull - 100%.

      A consumer digital camera certainly won't meet the needs of a professional photographer, but there ARE professional digital cameras out there.

      For medium format, there are companies like Leaf (now owned by Kodak) with 30MP or more. For large format (like the 4x5 you mention) there are scanning backs that will give you 500MB files or larger. Even scanning a 4x5 tranny on a high-end drum scanner will give you little more detail than that, with a lot more hassle (check out Better Light, or other names like that - these have been available for YEARS).

      They're not cheap, but they're available.

      The things I'd like to see improve in pro-sumer cameras are noise levels, shutter lag, and sensitivity. I have a Panasonic Lumix LX1 (8MP) which i AWESOME including a wide angle lens from Leica. However, the noise in low-light pictures drives me nuts.

      I used to be a professional photographer, and worked for a company that specialized in devices that used laser imaging to output images on film and paper (up to 4 by 10 FEET at 400 pixels per inch). A 500MB file from a 4x5 scanning back looks stunning at that size.

      MadCow.

  • Image Stabilisation. Low-light performance improvement. Battery Life.

    • Image Stabilisation.

      A tripod or "steadycam" attachment solves that very well now so you don't have to wait. Even a monopod helps a lot.

      Low-light performance

      Large aperture (aka fast) lenses get you a lot of the way there - but will cost and be on cameras with detachable lenses. With static subjects you can just expose it until noise becomes a problem (well over thirty seconds with some cameras - which have noise compensation that make much longer exposures look reasonable). Eventually they'll be more se

  • My position (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SocialEngineer ( 673690 ) <invertedpanda@@@gmail...com> on Sunday February 05, 2006 @02:03AM (#14644650) Homepage

    As a professional graphic designer and artist, I feel that we'll still need a bit more in order to say "we've got enough pixels." For instance, I do a lot of texture photography - shots of various objects, capturing as much of a surface as I can. I want my stock textures to be as high-res as possible, because there are times where I need to isolate very small areas and blow them up to an extreme. Same goes for regular stock photography; I need to be able to isolate and blow up certain parts to an extreme, and I can't always set up a nice macro shot (with a random occuring event, such as a drop of water).

    In short? No, 8mp isn't enough for me.

    • As a professional graphic designer and artist, I feel that we'll still need a bit more in order to say "we've got enough pixels."

      You probably need a better lens, not more megapixels; and that won't be happening in consumer cameras for quite a while. I have an 8mp DSLR, and even at 8MP, the clarity isn't that great simply because I have cheap lenses. Also, they said that for the consumer cameras, the megapixel race is over. Of course for professional cameras (which I suppose you count as a professional, i

  • Video/HDR and more - keep developing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Paraplex ( 786149 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @02:29AM (#14644714) Homepage
    I have a suggestion: VIDEO.

    However many megapixels, but I can still only capture 640x480 video. theres no reason this couldn't be full PAL/NTSC or even HD - add a weight to it and you have a extremely good quality video camera for very cheap.

    Let me edit the camera OS and I'll implement it myself, including time lapse or variable frame rate. I'll connect it to my laptop so i don't run out of space.

    They keep wanting to milk us for every new "HD" format video camera.

    The other thing they can implement is HDR photography. I know RAW is good, but if they can master true HDR that would be awesome.
  • 'In compact cameras, I think that the megapixel race is pretty much over,' And 640K should be enough for everyone! I wouldn't mind the ability to zoom in on pictures. I expect the future photo albums to be digital anyway (be it digital paper or something similar). What if you could zoom in on a bird in the background, or even the reflection on someone's glasses? What if you could take holiday shots of a mountain or bridge, and then zoom in later to count animals and people. Also, as other people have men
  • I realize the article is aimed mostly at consumer compact cameras rather than SLRs, but this is a big discussion among SLR users, a rapidly growing part of the market as prices continue to drop.

    Canon appears more dedicated to the full frame format. The new 5D and the lack of true "pro" lenses in the EF-S format seem to demonstrate this.

    Nikon looks more dedicated to its DX format, especially given its new D200 and selection of "pro" lenses (its 17-55mm f2.8, for example).

    Both companies and some third-partie
  • I really wish Canon had put IS into it's S80. [dpreview.com] That's the key feature missing from it that the PowerShot S2 IS has. [dpreview.com] I can live without the massive 12x optical zoom because I want a compact size, which is what the S80 has instead. The S80 is the first Canon to add the iPod-like jog dial with four buttons underneath, making manual control a whole lot easier in the same amount of space.

  • Light field photography (Score:5, Informative)

    by supersat ( 639745 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @02:57AM (#14644776)
    A little less than a year ago, a graduate student at Stanford gave a talk on light field photography at the University of Washington. The results were extremely impressive. Basically, by inserting an array of microlenses in front of the CCD, you can determine the direction of every ray coming into the camera. You lose resolution, but who needs 8 megapixels anyway? What you DO get is the ability to refocus the image in software, and take photos in low light and still retain a high depth of field.

    I highly encourage you to check out his light field photography site [stanford.edu], including his galleries, tech reports, and papers. It'll blow you away.

  • My wish: "focus bracketing" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WoTG ( 610710 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @03:13AM (#14644816) Homepage Journal
    My relatively old camera has exposure bracketing, which has proved useful a few times for me. But focus bracketing would save MANY more of my photos. I'm imagining that the camera would take a photo at whatever the current focus system does, then focus out a bit, and focus in a bit (Ok, I don't know the terminology). It's far too often that my particular camera doesn't quite focus right. Either I aim it wrong, or the lighting throws it off, or maybe in hindsight, I just wish that I had focused on something else. Plus, editing the photos later would be much more interesting.

  • What do I want? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by newandyh-r ( 724533 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @03:24AM (#14644834)
    First and foremost, the camera must be small and light enough that I can always carry it with me - and yet have a useful optical zoom.
    Concord seem to have that problem solved.
    More than the 3 MPxl resolution would be nice, but is not the top priority for me.
    Reducing the latency to near-zero is my next request - cheap camera-phones almost manage it; why not "proper" compact cameras.
    Good low-light performance, and a flash that can be set to a default of "off" would also be good.
    (Again, those camera phones seem to do pretty well in this ... in fact they don't have flash!)
    Now you've solved these I'll happily push up to 6-8 Mpxl if this does not lose the low-latency low-light performance.
    I might even pay £100 for such :-)

    Andy

  • Speed! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lahvak ( 69490 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @03:31AM (#14644848) Homepage Journal
    I am surprised they didn't talk about speed. Latency and shot to shot. Every consumer level dicital camera I have tried so far was incredibly slow compared to a cheap film camera. I would buy new camera every two years if it was significantly faster.
  • Dont digital cameras still suck really bad at taking night pictures? Is that improving? And dont they also have poor color accuracy or has that improved?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • There's no point in this article that hasn't been discussed in a miriad of other forums.
    Please mod it down.

  • the problem w/ "oughtta be enough for anybody" ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by timothy ( 36799 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @04:32AM (#14644976) Journal
    I'm glad that my digital photos don't all take up 19TB apiece -- but I am puzzled by the idea that I should be complacent with a given MP number as "good enough." I want shots that are infinitely detailed, and (at least in the area of interest) infinitely sharp. Since neither of these is an available option, I've got to settle for for "sharp enough that I can stand it" and "as detailed as the lens and sensor let me get."

    Doesn't everyone at some point end up cropping their digital photos, and hitting the jaggies? The main reason I'd like more (and more and more) resolution is because I don't *know* how big I want that photo to be shown in the future, and I don't know if cousin Vinny has a hilarious expression on his face that will be lost in the haze at 5MP but might be a treasure at 10MP ...

    The idea that 8 or 10 MP is "enough" and that now everyone can just go home and be happy isn't completely groundless (we've certainly reached a point where "more pixels" isn't the main thing being sought by camera buyers), but it's only true while other things (sensor designs, storage capacity, cheap-yet-bright-and-not-too-heavy lenses) catch up and remind us that data uncaptured is data that can't be restored.

    I'm sort of hoping that mid-range DSLRs hit 12MP in the next 2 years, and that Pentax still makes one that runs on AA batteries ;)

    timothy
    • >>>
      Doesn't everyone at some point end up cropping their digital photos, and hitting the jaggies? The main reason I'd like more (and more and more) resolution is because I don't *know* how big I want that photo to be shown in the future, and I don't know if cousin Vinny has a hilarious expression on his face that will be lost in the haze at 5MP but might be a treasure at 10MP ...
      >>>

      I think most manufacturers as well as consumers agree that an add-on telephoto lens is a more economical and s

  • The entire industry is based on lies (Score:3, Informative)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @04:37AM (#14644987) Homepage
    They tell you the camera has 8MP, but "forget" to mention that in reality it has 4M green pixels and 2M of each red and blue. And there's a blurring filter in front of the sensor to reduce moire. So if you photograph fall foliage, your 8MP camera turns into a 2MP one at best. In the BEST case, it's a 4MP camera really, not 8MP.

    The only sensor that takes full RGB readings at each sensor location is Foveon, but it suffers from inferior color reproduction and lower ISO sensitivity. It's also pretty low on "real" pixel count - currently at around 3.5MP (which in Canon/Nikon terminology would be called 10MP, because each pixel takes full RGB readout). Foveon pictures are extremely sharp, though, and render textures very well. If they solved their color reproduction issues and upped the pixel count to "real" 5MP - I'd RUN to the store with my credit card in hand to buy a camera based on this sensor.

    • Overrated: simplistic assumptions. (Score:5, Informative)

      by guidryp ( 702488 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @12:12PM (#14645978)
      "They tell you the camera has 8MP, but "forget" to mention that in reality it has 4M green pixels and 2M of each red and blue. And there's a blurring filter in front of the sensor to reduce moire. So if you photograph fall foliage, your 8MP camera turns into a 2MP one at best. In the BEST case, it's a 4MP camera really, not 8MP.

      The only sensor that takes full RGB readings at each sensor location is Foveon, but it suffers from inferior color reproduction and lower ISO sensitivity. It's also pretty low on "real" pixel count - currently at around 3.5MP (which in Canon/Nikon terminology would be called 10MP, because each pixel takes full RGB readout). Foveon pictures are extremely sharp, though, and render textures very well."

      This utterly fails to take into account how the human visual system works. It also fails to take into account the necessity of filtering when sampling. It also fails to take into account the sophistication of current interpolation algorithms.

      The Bayer pattern is actually just about the most efficient layout for capturing images for human perception. I have done dozens of camparison of images capture using the 6Million Bayer arrayed sensors, versus 10.2 Million layered sensors. In the end they are essentially equivalent. The bayer layout allows you to do more with less by taking into account the human image processing system that is heavily organized to toward luminance/green information.

      It is utter fanboy nonsense to say a bayer 8MP camera turns into a 2MP when taking fall foliage shots. In any real world situation including fall foliage, an 8MP bayer camera like the Canon 350D will capture more detail than the Foveon sensored SD10 NEW 10.2 Million Pixels (3.4 Mp Red + 3.4 MP Green + 3.4 Mp Blue) (description from Sigma USA page).

      As technical bunch we should be able to understand that optimization is sometimes better than brute force. By tilting the sensor toward green, it is tilted toward luminance capture and tilted toward the way humans view details.

      In thousand of empirical comparison online, parity is reached when there is an approximately equal number of green sensors. So 6MP bayer (3MP green) where approximate equal to 10.2MP foveon chip with ~3MP green. Actual 10MP bayer (5MP green) cameras like Nikon D200 easily capture much more detail than Sigmas 10.2MP chip.

      The sampling issue. The Sigma has no filter to prevent undersampling artifacts. It doesn't suffer from colour moire artifacts, but it has plenty of luminance moire. See here for an ancient comparison of the 6MP Canon D60 and the 10.2MP Sigma SD9:
      http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/DigPhotog/alias/ [wfu.edu]
      Scroll to the photo comparison at the end. The only extra detail in the Foveon based image is Aliasing errors. These are extremely prevalent in Sigma images with sharp diagnals, or repeating patterns beyond the Nyquist frequency of the sensor.

      In the end, bayer is an excellent engineering optimization to do more with less. The real comparison that counts is how does it compare with film. A 6mp Bayer sensor in an DSLR is already better than 35mm film. By 10MP it is significantly better.

      The other important factor is how the bayer DPI translates in the printed image. I have found that around 240 DPI is close to optimal image quality. So a Canon 350D with a 3456 pixel image width can produce a superb quality image about 14 inches wide. Be aware this is not to say you can't print larger. This is highly subjective depending on source material, but with detailed material this is the point where I consider that you would be hard pressed to notice any improvement from more pixels.

      So even if you only want to print 13"x19" I think you could still see improvement from more pixels if printing detailed subjects like landscapes.

      You can argue the quandry of subject, material and view distance till the cows come when considering viable prints size. I mere wish to express what I consider the
  • We need more trees to produce photo paper. A direct result of future DC.

  • "Canon's S2 IS can even film and snap stills simultaneously, thanks to separate shutter and start-stop buttons."

    Can even what?

  • Image stabilizers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by elgatozorbas ( 783538 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @05:45AM (#14645115)
    Though I used to work in DSP (digital signal processing) I don't want any of it in my camera, still nor motion. Give me a high resolution, decent optics and preferably a RAW output format. I'll do the buying of memory cards and a tripod for my shaky hands. But NO digital mumbo-jumbo for me.

  • 16:9 widescreen format to suit next gen displays (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Quizo69 ( 659678 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @10:19AM (#14645602) Homepage
    I'd be quite happy with a digicam that took photos at 1920x1080 or even a multiple of that, say 3840x2160, in the aspect ratio of all future TVs and monitors (ok, 16:10 seems to be the monitor ratio thanks to stupid Microsoft and their idea of having HD res PLUS room for taskbar.... but close enough).

    Anyone else notice how digicams all take 4:3 pictures these days no matter how high end they are, just as the public is moving to 16:9 as the default ratio?

    So....

    any digicams out there ahead of the pack and already implementing widescreen resolutions by default?

    I would think that a 1920x1080 camera phone would be quite the sweet spot for storage and speed while preserving good quality pictures for viewing on TVs direct from the camera....

    Anyone?

  • Multiple ISOs in same picture? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nerdposeur ( 910128 ) on Sunday February 05, 2006 @05:27PM (#14647089) Journal
    One thing that makes photography less than idiot-proof is the fact that a photo can only have one exposure. I don't know how the human eye works, but I observe that I can, for example, look at a person standing in an open doorway with bright sunlight outside and see their face clearly, as well as the trees outside. With a photo, if I expose the picture correctly for their face, the sky outside will be bright white; if I expose for the sky, their face will be dark.

    A given piece of film can only have one sensitivity, but digital cameras now let you choose the ISO you want for your photo. Is there a technology yet that will use multiple ISOs in the same shot in order to get everything properly lit, or at least closer to it?

    I don't know whether that would look good or not, but it would probably produce more usable pictures for things like security cameras.

    If it does look good, and you could combine it with the "multiple focus" technology liked to by supersat here [slashdot.org], you could basically point and shoot at random, then sit down later to crop and refocus the picture until it's perfect.

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