The inventor of this new chip was thinking out of the box (he's a physicist, not an engineer, so maybe that explains it)... He's also no youngster. Dr. Mead, no stranger to brilliant inventions, is 67 years old.
The concept takes advantage of the way light reacts when it passes through silicon. Basically, the light penetrates to different depths based upon its color. The sensors are capable of determining the light color based upon the depth the photon travels into the silicon. Besides the obvious fact that this is working a lot like film which uses several layers of sensitized silver that are positioned between light separating filters, it is ultimately cheaper to produce, and doesn't place the processor demands on the camera that the bayer matrix does to convert it into a usable image. This probably will mean lower electrical consumption, lower component cost and count, faster capture, and more light sensitivity. It might also be sharper. The other thing about this design is that since each pixel sensor is a complete "unit" fully capable of recording full color and luminescence, the size and shape of the pixel can be altered or ganged. This means the same chip can be used in both high resolution applications like digital photography, and lower resolution digital video, all within the same camera, altering the res with a push of a switch. Pretty neat stuff. The first version of the camera using the higher res version of the chip will be available in a month or two from Sigma, which is incorporating it into a SLR at about $3000 US. The smaller chip, out in about 6 months, or less, will end up in lower res digital cameras selling for under $1000. The possibilities are probably just being scratched. I can see some every fast slide scanners that capture the full image in one go... in a fraction of a second. Art ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
