Leibson's Law: It takes 10 years for any disruptive technology to become pervasive in the design community. This blog is about the disruptive technologies that either have or will win over electronic engineers, some that won't, and why. Written by Steve Leibson, Tensilica's Technology Evangelist. See my history site at www.hp9825.com. You can email me by taking the first letter of my first name, appending that to my last name, then the magic email symbol, followed by the name of the company I work for, and then a dot followed by com.
Sep 10 2008 2:24PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (6) |
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Photo enthusiasts like me love Photokina time. All the new goodies show up. Leaf, a medium-format digital camera vendor has set the new bar for 6x6 cameras with its 56-Mpixel AFi-II camera system. Leaf codeveloped the CCD sensor with Dalsa Corporation, a specialist in high-end silicon imaging.

The sensor images 9288x6000 pixels at 16 bits/pixel. Each uncompressed image taken with the camera requires 112 Mbytes of storage (16-bit TIFF files need 345 Mbytes). The 56-Mpixel version of the Leaf AFi-II camera body costs $39,995, five dollars short of $40k. You can get a Starbucks flavored drink with the remaining $5. The Zeiss and Schneider lenses for the camera are, of course, extra. It's a pro camera, but even photo patzers like me can drool over the coolness of this machine.
There’s a lot of signal processing in a camera like this and cameras like the Leaf AFi-II point the way to the future for other camera systems. Although consumer-grade cameras aren’t likely to need 56 Mpixels—ever—we’ve not yet reached the point where consumer cameras are pushing the abilities of the human visual system. So it’s a safe bet that sensors will continue to grow in pixel size and the resultant processing needs will grow for the next few years.
Related entries in: Digital Camera | Multimedia |