photomarcs wrote:Though, as Aim54x has pointed out somewhere before, his views on the Fuji CCD EXR is rather disturbing, seems quite heavily false and misleading..
Now that you have let it out of the bag Marcus (such a good friend you are), I have only really had a read through the article (primarily the later pages) and was quite disturbed by some of the things said. Esp in reference to Fuji (does the author have a dislike??)
without making a special mention of Fuji: It is my assessment that Fuji make a living in the hyper-competitive world of digicams by making cheap, 2nd rate products, then use some gimmick to misrepresent them as class-leading and charge accordingly, but leaving a margin so that their price seems a bargain. They love to talk up their "Super CCD" technology which uses a diamond pattern instead of a square and has piss-farting little extra sensors at the corners. Supposedly this is supposed to give amazing improvements in sensitivity... This is a lie. As I have shown in the course of this analysis the only thing that matters is pixel pitch. Little corner sensors aren't going to do Jack Shit and the wasted space means that the end result is actually LESS sensitive not more. If you need proof just use one of their crap products and look at the horrible NR-smeared results for yourself. Their latest trick is their "EXR" technology, which is just pixel binning in camera. You can do pixel binning on your computer simply by resizing in your favourite editor. "Get Fucked Fuji!" You are the snake oil merchants of the digital camera world.
I find it hard to believe that someone that has spent so much time in "reading" about the physics behind a digital camera can fail to read the data about the Fuji SuperCCD and SuperCCD EXR sensors that he has such a disagreement with. The whole crux of the SuperCCD technology lies in its "OCTAGONAL" photosites which minimise the wasted space between the pixels (and the definition of pixel pitch is actually the distance between two adjacent pixels, not the diameter of an individual pixel, so it does not take in to account the wasted space between pixels - the terms photosite and pixel being used as the same in most of the literature), pixel pitch is increased marginally, but the total working photosensitive area on the surface of the sensor is increased. Furthermore, the extra square photosites in the traditional SuperCCD functioned to add extra contrast information to aid with dynamic range (theoretically).
The
modern SuperCCD EXR does not have these extra square photosites, but has a octagonal photosites that are aligned in the traditional SuperCCD 45 deg angle (as opposed to the 90 deg alignment in every other sensor) to minimise space wastage. Furthermore the EXR sensor has a different colour dye system with adjacent pairs of photosites being sensitive to the same colour (ie RRBBRRBBRRBB...then the next line being GGGGGGGG) so adjacent photosites can be binned (pixel binning) on a sensor level to increase effective pixel size (ie make each pair of pixels act like a single larger pixel) which according to the physics says we get better low light performance and dynamic range (larger pixel pitch, fewer megapixels). The EXR sensor is the only sensor that has this ability to pixel bin at this level, and has the added advantage of not producing false colours whilst doing so. Just a trivial note on the EXR sensor, pixel binning is only one of its tricks, the other very interesting trick is the ability to shoot two differential exposure frames to combine increasing dynamic range similar to the way a HDR bracket does so (think a 2 shot HDR bracket in camera). Having used an EXR camera and numerous SuperCCD cameras I have to admit that the tech does what it claims to.
I really feel that, although this article does contain a lot of useful information it is written the latter stages (especially) of it is written in a manner that distorts the truth with little use of proof. The author appears to be attempting an emulation of the style of writing that has gained a mr Rockwell both an audience of adoring fans and people that cannot help but laugh at the inaccuracies.
Did anyone note the string of Wiki references? Surely if you have spent time to research this topic you would have the sense to realise that WIki is not an acceptable reference for anything that is to carry scientific weight. It is too easy to publish inaccurate information, flawed arguments, biased opinions and plain bad research on the web, this is yet another example.
Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 2:02 pm
