I know this is a bit old but I also agree that price points will come down. Moore's Second Law of Computers is that the 'price of silicon acerage' is constant. IE as density goes up, the only way to bring cost down is to bring size down. There are all sorts of factors in this, including yield rates and surface utility.
One of the big diffs between the Foveon solution and film is the difference between a Forest and a Woods. A Forest is a haphazard place with trees chaotically distributed amongst undergrowth. A Woods is a place only with trees and is typically a cultivated mono-culture of tree type. Here in the west, we have lots of 2nd and 3rd growth tree farms. With rows upon rows of trees, just like corn stalks. They cause all sorts of visual artifacts because the gaps between them are regular. Same is true of Foveon. Their solution is better than RGGB, but it still has a regular pattern to it, and it still is susceptible to particular pattern pathologies including Nyquist sampling artifacts. ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 4:28 AM Subject: [filmscanners] Re: Foveon On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 02:48:18 -0800 Arthur Entlich ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > Once > production ramps up, the price per unit will drop and yields will likely > improve allowing for larger chips. Also, there is no specific advantage > to a larger chip if the lenses are very good quality I disagree. Intriguing and promising though this Foveon tech is, a full-frame chip size would be much better for any type of CCD. It's not as if the output from existing CCD and CMOS designs is exactly shabby in real life, it's just that there isn't enough of it. That is where the breakthrough really needs to happen : some sort of wafer tech which makes large chips possible at low cost and high yield. The day that happens I really will start jumping up and down. What Foveon may give is information *density* on a par with film. That's wonderful if true (I rather suspect it's true for medium-fast film but 'grainlessness' is a plus which fudges ultimate resolution for smoothness of tone). However the chip size will constrain the overall equivalence to half frame or perhaps APS. There are many reasons for 35mm's enduring success, but one is that the total amount of information available is sufficiently versatile to encompass many uses. Used carefully, it permits a size of use for which there's a wide requirement, at a quality for which there's a wide requirement, and all with good ergonomics. The film is just an encoding medium, and until CCD's can achieve both equivalent or better information density *and* size, equivalent versatility is not going to be available from digicams. There may be overriding reasons why this is acceptable (eg press use turnaround speed; your acheing shoulder), but in absolute quality terms it is a brick wall. Fine-grain films are required to begin to approach the transfer abilities of the best lenses. If a CCD can match that ability per unit area, great, but it needs to be the same size for the exact same reasons that 6x9cm negs beat 35mm. And yes, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9cm and 5x4" CCD's would be nice too, but let's not be greedy, yet :) Regards Tony Sleep http://www.halftone.co.uk - Online portfolio & exhibit; + film scanner info & comparisons ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body