Sony plots digital camera revolution

[MICKEY88]

Super 60fps CMOS sensors to change cameras for good...

has anyone else read this..??

http://www.tech.co.uk/gadgets/digital-cameras/digital-cameras/news/sony-plots-amazing-digital-camera-revolution?articleid=836087196

 

[Groucho]

This sounds like it's talking more about video (ie, camcorders), not digital cameras - I think some camcorders call it "high speed shutter".

Personally, I can't stand the way it looks. It's popular in action movies (especially with explosions with dirt flying around) but I'd much rather see the blurring that the naked eye would see when watching a movie than what looks more like a high-speed slideshow... but that's just me.

Actually, the article sounds like it's full of technical inaccuracies.

Until now, digital cameras, even single lens reflex cameras, have only been able to capture a few frames per second, says Sony. This means that moving objects are hard to photograph without blurring the image.

Last time I checked, number of frames per second had nothing to do with getting a non-blurry image. (How did we ever survive with film cameras without motor drives?) And most point-n-shoots can already record at 30fps.

The author appears to be confusing continuous shooting speed with shutter speed, and Sony very well may be trying to confuse the issue themselves.

What they apparently have is a chip that's fast enough to process 60 fps at "full resolution" (whatever that means), which is fine but hardly unprecedented. You still have the issue with capturing enough light to get a satisfactory image at 1/60th of a second (or faster) shutter speeds. The idea that the article states, that you'll be able to take sports photos with no blur thanks to this miraculous new sensor just doesn't ring true.

There's also the issue of space... how many consumers will want to capture video at 60fps that'll take up a lot more room than the same video at 30fps, for almost no visible difference in quality?

 

[MICKEY88]

This sounds like it's talking more about video (ie, camcorders), not digital cameras - I think some camcorders call it "high speed shutter".

y?

I think the following 2 lines make it fairly clear they are talking primarily still cameras..


Sony's amazing new CMOS sensors will be incorporated into future models in its Cybershot camera range


But Sony's new CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) sensors are capable of capturing images at an astonishing 60 frames per second. So that's 60 high-resolution images being captured every single second, on a standard digital camera.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Personally, I can't stand the way it looks. It's popular in action movies (especially with explosions with dirt flying around) but I'd much rather see the blurring that the naked eye would see when watching a movie than what looks more like a high-speed slideshow... but that's just me.

That's something that I noticed when I got my high def camcorder. Shutter speeds faster than about 1/60s produced a strobe-like effect. It's why I've mostly been shooting in manual or shutter priority.

I hope it is a really cool breakthru for Sony. They certainly need it. I was looking at some financial numbers today. Sony, despite having annual sales over $70 billion has a market cap of only $49 billion. That compares with Canon having sales of around $35 billion but a market cap almost $70 billion. "Little" Nintendo has sales of just over $4 billion but is valued at an astonishing $67 billion. That's right, Nintendo is worth more than all of Sony by a substantial margin. While I'm a big fan of the Wii and the DS and I've been rather down on some of the dumb things Sony has done lately (PS3, flaming batteries, root kits), I still have a hard time believing that the present value of Nintendo's future earnings is worth more than that of Sony. I'm tempted to short Nintendo and buy Sony betting on a relative correction.

 

[seashoreCM]

If you take standard definition video (about 480 scan lines by about 640 to 720 pixels per line and can get the frame rate up to 60 per second and can also get some more pixels on each line, then you are close to HDTV. Although HDTV proper may have 1080 scan lines, that is 540 per 1/60'th second. Although there may be up to 1920 pixels per line, you can get away with 1500 or even 1200 per line for casual camcorder use.

 

[ukcatfan]

I believe that they are talking about still cameras, but I have to agree that the author of that story has no clue what he is talking about. Frames per second has nothing to do with getting a blur free image. If the correct exposure would still call for a slow shutter speed, you will still have blurring. Also, if the shutter speed drops below 1/60, then the frame rate would also be reduced. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if a shot takes 1/10 of a second to capture, then you absolute max per second would be 10. There has to be some overhead processing time as well, so to get the 60 fps, I suspect that you would have to go for something like 1/80 at the slowest for the shutter speed.

Kevin

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

Plus, how fast are you going to fill up your MemoryStick taking full-size stills at 60/sec?

However, what they might be planning is to give their Cybershot cameras a new "burst" mode where it will take X (up to 60, I'd guess) pics "all at once" when the shutter gets pressed.

It would be a cool feature, but I don't see it getting used *that* much....

Maybe super-speed will become the new megapixels race ... just like the latest *OMG-gottahaveit!!!* is Face Detection....

 

[Groucho]

I should have said that the claims relate to the video mode of a PnS still camera, not a camcorder. Without it saying what "high resolution" means, the claims are pretty useless. I have seen other recent press releases about cheap PnS digicam sensors that can grab HD video.

What they're doing is speeding up how fast the chip can process that much data as well as how fast the sensor can tranmit it. However, I don't think there's a memory card out there that's fast enough to handle accepting 60 frames per second at, say, 6mp. (Which would be much higher than high-definition video and rather pointless, and there are virtually no display devices capable of showing a resolution that high, so where are you going to reap any benefits?) So if it's not capping at the camera's full resolution, then you're not doing 60fps at native resolution and you can't pull a still out of the video and have it be identical to taking the photo in still-camera mode.

If you take standard definition video (about 480 scan lines by about 640 to 720 pixels per line and can get the frame rate up to 60 per second and can also get some more pixels on each line, then you are close to HDTV. Although HDTV proper may have 1080 scan lines, that is 540 per 1/60'th second. Although there may be up to 1920 pixels per line, you can get away with 1500 or even 1200 per line for casual camcorder use.

I just had a big long response to this written and decided to bite my tongue.

Suffice to say, SD content, no matter the FPS, can't touch HD of any flavor. Proper HD is either 1280x720 at 60fps, 1920x1080 at 30fps interlaced, or 1920x1080 at 60fps. (Well, approximately 59.9fps for NTSC, 50fps for PAL.) As far as I know, all BluRay and HD-DVD discs are authored at 1080P, in fact actual films are usually encoded at 24 fps, to match the original film.

That being said, high-def seems like almost overkill for home videos, though I will probably change my tune on that in the next few years.

 

[manning]

More info

http://www.sony.net/Products/SC-HP/cmos/index.html
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0702/07021801sonyhighspeedcmos.asp
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/sony-cmo...ionize-videography-and-photography-297824.php

 

[LPZ_Stitch!]

Based on the DPreview article, it sounds *exactly* like the sensor is doing 6MP at 60fps!

The goal, apparently, is to make it completely seamless to go from video to high-quality stills. So far, AFAIK, all of the cameras that *can* take a full-resolution still while taking standard 640x480/30fps video will drop a couple of frames leaving you with a second-or-so gap in your video.

Apparently, this sensor won't do that! Impressive ... most impressive....

However, how fast are you going to be going through an SD card at "a data rate of around 384 megapixels per second"!!?

It seems like even the biggest 16G SDHC cards (are they even out, yet?) are only good for about 42 seconds of this kind of treatment ... I'm not really sure how I'd use that....

I guess we'll have to wait to see where this is going....

 

[Groucho]

The DPReview one looks, as usual, like just the standard Sony-authored press release in DPReview theming, with a small paragraph of their own content on top.

I still fail to see how this is revolutionary in any way. I don't see the advantage of 6mp at 60fps over something closer to 2-2.5mp (1920x1080 or even 1920x1200) - very, very few display devices can go much higher than that so when you view it, it'd have to be downsampled anyway... and it takes a quite fast PC just to handle HD content, to play back a video clip at 6mp (and resize it to your monitor's resolution) would take a really high-end box.

I do like the 300fps at lower resolution, to take a short high-speed-camera clip would be fun, but you'd still need an enormous onboard buffer to store the video before its written out to the slower memory card. And again, at least one other recent sensor hyped the same thing. (Actually, a quick glance at Gizmodo shows that Casio showed a complete 60fps-at-6mp, 300fps-at-lower resolution camera last month. Here is a video taken at 300fps - unfortunately it's vvveeerrryyy bbbooorrriiinnnggg. )

I also do like that it's 1/1.8" - that should be the new common sensor size for PnSs, not 1/2.5".

I am reminded of an article that someone linked to a few months ago, where someone predicted the death of still photography, with stills grabbed from video cameras replacing them. I don't see it happening... shooting video and shooting stills are totally different IMHO.

 

[seashoreCM]

By the way, a single 1920 x 1080 HDTV frame is equivalent to a two megapixel still picture. So long as still photographers are coveting much higher megapixels, current HDTV camcorder still frames won't satisfy and still cameras cannot die.

OT: Both Blu-Ray and HDDVD DVD's and players handle at most 1080p at 30 fps (encoding 24 fps for most films) or 1080i at 60 fields per second.

 

[Master Mason]

I just bought a new camera, I am NOT even looking at anything new for a couple of years

 

[MarkBarbieri]

That being said, high-def seems like almost overkill for home videos, though I will probably change my tune on that in the next few years.

You've got a projector setup. Try watching home movies on it during the same week that you've watched a well mastered DVD, a high def broadcast or Blu-ray/HD-DVD show, or played a computer/console game. SD in general looks like garbage at 100". I couldn't stand it. Now with an HD camcorder, the video is bearable to watch.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I am reminded of an article that someone linked to a few months ago, where someone predicted the death of still photography, with stills grabbed from video cameras replacing them. I don't see it happening... shooting video and shooting stills are totally different IMHO.

I'm in extreme agreement with that. I find it difficult to shoot video and take pictures on the same outing. The entire psychology in how you tell the story is different. Video is about telling a story by recording action as it unfolds. Photography is about capturing a single picture that tells a story. The thought processes for doing one are completely different than the other.

 

[boBQuincy]

I'm in extreme agreement with that. I find it difficult to shoot video and take pictures on the same outing. The entire psychology in how you tell the story is different. Video is about telling a story by recording action as it unfolds. Photography is about capturing a single picture that tells a story. The thought processes for doing one are completely different than the other.

Add to that the thought processes for when we are taking photos for a scrapbook or a slide show, more different methodologies from those used for a video or a single photo. No wonder I'm so confused!

 

[Groucho]

You've got a projector setup. Try watching home movies on it during the same week that you've watched a well mastered DVD, a high def broadcast or Blu-ray/HD-DVD show, or played a computer/console game. SD in general looks like garbage at 100". I couldn't stand it. Now with an HD camcorder, the video is bearable to watch.

Oh sure, that's why I figure that I'll change my mind in the next few years

The projector setup is basically for movies only, and occasionally some highdef documentary-type stuff, like Planet Earth, etc.

The other thing to remember is that your average SD television broadcast is all of 480x480, part of the reason it looks so bad compared to a decent DVD. Plus its often terribly compressed, so there's a fair amount of macroblocking, etc.