[Leica] RE: Foveon Chip

[Jim Brick <jim@brick.org>]

At 10:42 AM 2/11/2002 -0500, B. D. Colen wrote:
>Stunning barely begins to describe it. Granted, we are looking at these
>images on our monitors, but the fine detail is really pretty amazing.
>Obviously there are those on this list who will pooh-pooh anything digital,
>and those who will continue to tell us that digital development has hit a
>brick wall and it will be a decade before digital equals film. BUT...for the
>rest of us in the real world this does indeed give one pause in terms of
>making any further investment in film-based equipment at this time.
>
>B. D.


It's a good thing that the journalism folks are not scientists. Everything 
that a marketing organization utters is always the greatest thing since 
sliced bread. Unfortunately marketing folks know that the journalists will 
run wild and blow everything out of proportion making the "breakthrough" 
seem like the second coming.

There is a h-u-g-e amount of marketing hype associated with the Foveon 
announcement. All of the same rules still apply. Foveon pixels are still no 
smaller than any other pixel and Leica lenses still resolve too much detail 
for the Foveon or any other sensor to capture without producing unwanted 
artifacts. Nyquist, like Murphy, is still in there taking his piece!

All this chip might do is reduce the amount of color interpolation that 
would normally be done. But I'm wondering how silicon happened to know to 
filter the exact primary colors (R, G, & B) and not let any other 
wavelengths through. Color film filters are exact. That's how we get our 
film's color pallet. Adjusting the filter layers in film produces saturated 
Velvia and E100VS, neutral Provia 100F, Astia, and E100, etc.

I guess we'll see. The examples that they show on their web site are 
completely bogus. When's the last time you had color moire patterns on your 
digital images? That problem was solved years ago. And getting type to have 
every letter a different color is laughable. Actually, impossible because a 
pixel cannot resolve a character. Only a point of light.

So let the marketing hype continue.

Jim

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