If they're going to cram 16 MP onto a chip that size, why not just make a
24x36mm sensor?
The cost of silicon per area.
DagT
Yes but I don't understand - why continue to try and get the best out of
a smaller sensor? Surely the aspiration of all SLR camera makers who have
ventured into digital, is to produce a DSLR that captures the full 35mm
frame? Anything else is surely too complicated for most people to
understand WRT smaller chips mean that lenses don't work quite the same
way as before etc etc. Or is the 1.5 crop here to stay forever, as a sort
of 'new format' along with a smattering of 'D' lenses?
The cost of silicon per area is very much a nonlinear function.
The probability of having an error in one "device" when they produce a
whole wafer of them increases dramatically as the area of that "device"
increases. Also, when one of these "devices" has an increasingly likely
error, more of the wafer is wasted when it is thrown out.
APS-sized DSLR sensors will be around for awhile. The magic of
computer's evolution over the past 30 years has been cramming more and
more transistors into the same area (read: cost) on a wafer.
-Cory
--
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* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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