CCD #'s and filming at night?

[figment97]

hello out there... got a question that has probably been asked a million times... but is there a correlation (SP?) between the CCD # and filming at night?

what's a good CCD #? 1/6?

is it better the higher you go? or the smaller the CCD #?

we have a canon minidv (something 200 model) and it didn't take very good night time film...

just thought i'd ask my favorite photography board.

thanks...

 

[pisco]

The relationship that will have a greater affect on this is sensor size v. megapixels. As the number of pixels on the senor grows the size of the actual pixels decreases and the amount of "bleed" from one pixel to the next increases as well. This will cause more noise in the images.

That being said, as the smaller sensors increase in pixel counts, the manufacturers also implement better algorithms for reducing/eliminating noise in the images. So utlimately, it truely comes down to the relarionship of the image size, resolution and image processor.

 

[Groucho]

PnS (and presumably camcorder?) CCD sizes are given in "imperial fractions", probably because they're shorter than writing out the actual measurements in millimeters.

Unfortunately, this comes out rather counterintuitively - the smaller the second number, the larger the sensor.

For example, the common point-and-shoot digicam has a 1/2.5" sensor, which is 5.76mm x 4.29mm. A 1/1.8" sensor is larger, 7.176mm x 5.319mm.

Everything else being equal - a bigger sensor beats a smaller one.

This is especially true for night photography (or videography.)