so when do we get professional sensors?

No professional videographer would use anything but 3ccd chips. yet we all run around with top end canon's which are not. So when do you think photographers will start demanding fiveon type sensors? one of the main reasons for using 3 ccd in video is better low light performance, so surely that would also be true in DSLRs ?

Hi Daniel,

The sensor size in the pro-consumer Sony cameras are about 1/3 inch. Great issues with depth of field to get the 'film look'. In video, movement sort of wipes out a lot of things that would be unacceptable in still photography.

Best wishes,

Ray

Daniel Harrison said:

So when do you think photographers will start demanding fiveon type sensors?

Click to expand...

When the image quality is better than what is offered already?
When the price is not 3x as high as a single Bayer CFA sensor?

Foveon sensors, by the way, are an interesting technology. Unfortunately their image quality is often lacking in several aspects, many of them indirectly related to cost savings (lack of AA-filter, lack of color accuracy, lack of spatial resolution). They also create storage concerns for their Raw files (3x storage requirement versus Bayer CFA version of same output size), and the noise performance at high ISO is problematic.

Bart

Ray West said:

Hi Daniel,

The sensor size in the pro-consumer Sony cameras are about 1/3 inch. Great issues with depth of field to get the 'film look'. In video, movement sort of wipes out a lot of things that would be unacceptable in still photography.

Best wishes,

Ray

Click to expand...

True, but there professional cameras are the ones which benefit most from 3 CCD. I think we would all like a FF x3 type sensor, Anyway I like the 8mp from my 1D2 just fine, so I guess it doesn't really matter. But I am sure it would sell well if they did introduce it, and yes the cost limitations would be a problem. but in the end I think it is the way to go.

Daniel, "So when do we get professional sensors?"

Well, to my mind, at least, it's when we make professional use of what we have to deliver a professional product! This idea is not mine; no, not by a long shot! I'm just the "unguru", reporting a truth others have discovered and verified.

I remember an article in RobGalbraith.com and this picture

by Alex Majoli




Magnum photographer Majoli, of course is not "we", of course, he has left "we" to join Magnum!

He covered the early Iraq war, armed with guess what? Several Olympus C-550 Digicams. All the pictures given to Newsweek were taken with an Olympus 550 Digicam!

So it's perhaps a matter of using the sensor with which we can make pictures that do the job!

Still, a new sensor might bring new possibilities for the right photographer and we are all betting it's one of us!

Asher

BTW, He shot in jpg at low resolution!

Hi Daniel,

I am now out of touch with current video stuff, but what I have seen on the Sony site, it seems hd needs a pixel count of around one mega-pixel, and the sensors are still small. Some cameras still use a prism, others use the individual colour filters (bayer?) as used in most still cameras. Now, if you used a prism, and larger sensors, the camera would be larger, too.

Hi Asher,
I expect the olympus was used for a similar reason as they used the Sony vx1000 for video, - it does a good enough job, and is expendable. Not the sort of place you want to be fiddling with lens changing, and the like. A mobile phone would have been good enough, more or less.

Horses for courses.

Best wishes,

Ray

Daniel,

Image quality coming out of any and all pro video cameras comes no where near even an entry level DSLR camera of any make. The motion of 30 fps mitigates noise, and other digital artifacts in video cameras, so when watching a clip, it looks much better then it really is (frame by frame).

3 CCD's...big deal....even with 3 CCD's video image quality frame by frame is still sub standard to anything coming from a DSLR, so if you suggest DSLR's go 3 CCD's one could argue that doing this will be a move backwards, not forwards.

Now if Canon created a pro video camera which uses the 5D fullframe sensor, imagine the demands on image storage, but also, imagine the kind of high quality not seen by any video camera to date.

Minolta made a 3 CCD camera in 1995 - the RD-175. The sensors were not RGB but one was RB and the other two were G.

- DL

I don't think the OP is saying that a video camera has to have the same output per frame as a digital still camera (and if that's what you _are_ looking for, see Red One. http://www.red.com/

I have a 3ccd Canon video camera. It's incredible. The question was more of "when do we all get foveon sensors". The answer is, not for an extremely long time. The reason is simple. The big boys have already invested huge sums of money into the Bayer CMOS / CCD market. The end result are more than acceptable to the vast majority of people.

Foveon might even be the next step but I'll point you to Blu-Ray; which took over a DECADE before it was released w/ commerical support.

Daniel Harrison said:

No professional videographer would use anything but 3ccd chips. yet we all run around with top end canon's which are not. So when do you think photographers will start demanding fiveon type sensors? one of the main reasons for using 3 ccd in video is better low light performance, so surely that would also be true in DSLRs ?

Click to expand...

because there´s no advantage doing it.

1) professional sensors in digital backs are VERY expensive. That would mean very much more costs.
The needed sensor-size to get high resolution - and that´s the most important in professional use - would drive the costs of such a camera somewhere near to 80-100000$. That´s not a mass-production market.
2) the unit of 3 CCD is extremely complicated to manufacture and to mount - it´s military-like standard for tollerances in factoring such a unit. Professional videocameras are absolutely no bargains.
3) one-chip technology becomes better and better - don´t forget that the reason for 3-chip cameras for video is also the question of producing clean 25fps! That´s better to do with three independent monochrome data-streams than it is with one colourstream.

There´s just a big difference between digital photography and digital video technology.

The most advanced actual video production-camera for HD-movies, the ARRI D20, features ONE 35mm CMOS-sensor! Not three of it.
The camera is connected to a disk-array of some terabyte to handle the data-stream . .

http://www.arri.com/prod/cam/d_20/d_20.htm

best, Klaus

which top end camera do you use Daniel ? Not full frame not 16.7 MP. Many photographers are more than satisfied with the current state of technology on offer & look forward to the advancements just around the corner. When you consider the short history of digital cameras it is quite incredible that we have that level of technology at our fingertips.

PB

Daniel Harrison said:

No professional videographer would use anything but 3ccd chips. yet we all run around with top end canon's which are not. So when do you think photographers will start demanding fiveon type sensors? one of the main reasons for using 3 ccd in video is better low light performance, so surely that would also be true in DSLRs ?

Click to expand...

(assuming fiveon == foveon)

I agree and would love to use a 3CMOS camera. But the beam splitter goes where the mirror goes so its not going to be an SLR.

The issue with foveon is the same as with colour film - light has to get through the upper layers to reach the lower layers so, while being coincident, the sensors are not truly independent.

Also, I would rather the 3 CMOS were not RGB. I'm not sure how practical my preferred setup would be, however.