> AFAIK, the problem of making large CMOS sensors isn't > in technology, but in economy. CMOS sensors, like all > silicon chips, are manufactured in units called wafers, > and the problem is that there will always be a percentage > of the chips on each wafer that will become useless > becuse of dust and other contaminations. Right. Contamination risk rises exponential to the sensor size. A production run of current large CCD sensors (according to sensor specialists of ESO) costs 50k $ and contains 10 sensors. Since there is a failure rate of over 90%, you can make the math yourself. CMOS however is cheaper in production because they are made on the same lines that computer memory is made on. Still the risk of contamination increases exponentially with sensor size. Increasing sensor size by 10% will more than double the price. However, there are good CMOS sensors around. The aforementioned sensor specialist is tinkering around with a number of RAW files from the D30 I sent, and he said they were "impressive for a CMOS sensor". He is working on conversion into NASA *.fits file format. I think Canon has some really nice tools there.... -- Michael Quack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.photoquack.de * **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
