From: Sil Horwitz (silh@earthlink.net)
Date: 09/12/00-04:58:58 PM Z
At 2000/09/12 01:38 PM -0500, you wrote:
>I believe Japan is forbidden to sell a CCD sensor in excess of 4M pixels,
>national security issue. I have heard that KODAK has a 5 Million pixel
>design that they are putting on the merchant market and for internal use.
>These are the largest sensors I have read about lately.
Spoke with a Kodak rep at the recent PSA Conference, and he explained that
Kodak owns the CCD patents and licenses all other makers. I don't think the
size problem is a "national security" issue, but Kodak's . The new sensor
is CMOS, and uses a different principle than CCD (CMOS is
transistor-related; CCD is a Charge Coupled Device which has limitations
and is expensive to fabricate). From what I understand (the rep wasn't
clear on this) the CMOS sensor has almost limitless resolution, but is
slower than the CCD. We're all to hear lots more on this before long.
Hard to keep up, isn't it? So why doesn't someone invent (or dig up some
old ideas that couldn't be used as the technology wasn't previously
available) a simple method for creating UV+ in exactly the light
frequencies needed for alternative processes? It can be done, but no one
has yet figured out how, as far as I know.
Sil Horwitz, FPSA
Technical Editor, PSA Journal
teched@psa-photo.org
silh@earthlink.net
Visit http://www.psa-photo.org/
Personal page: http://home.earthlink.net/~silh/
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