Quality/size ratio and digital - Re: [Leica] re: digital treadmill

[scott at adrenaline.com (Scott McLoughlin)]

Comments below.

Frank Dernie wrote:

> If I have understood the issue properly - a gross assumption - the  
> problem is that large imaging chips are a side-branch technology.  
> From the outset R&D on chips has centred on speed and miniturisation  
> with great success. The CCDs in P&S cameras, smaller than the  
> smallest fingernail, are in step with this. APS and larger sensors  
> are almost a new branch of the technology with complete new R&D  
> requirements which not everybody either has or chooses to devote the  
> resource to developing. On top of that the results available from  
> current P&S cameras are completely satisfactory for 99% of their  
> users. Development is likely to follow smaller with similar quality  
> not bigger and better, simply because of market size. My son already  
> prefers the pitiful camera in his phone to carrying an additional  
> "box", for him and his friends the quality is good enough to outweigh  
> the inconvenience. 

Sure, but there's always been cheap stuff alongside "not so cheap" 
stuff.  My dad still has (doesn't use) an old nasty Kodak Instamatic in 
his desk drawer.  I don't recall the existence of cheap mass market 
cameras being a market hindrance to the universe of nicer cameras, so  I 
still don't feel like I have a grip on the "macro economics" of the 
evolving camera market.

> A bit like HiFi where size, capacity and battery  life are more 
> important in the portables market than sound quality,  such for the 
> minute proportion of the market where quality is more  important there 
> will soon be no products at all.

Ugh, don't give me a heart attack!  :-)  I'm not a rich guy or an 
audiophile, but I've got a modest Arcam amp/Paradigm speakers (from the 
late 80's!) setup that sounds good for my smallish room where I listen 
to music. Bought a cheap CD player, learned my lesson and have been 
shopping around for replacement. 

My amateurish gear testing since I was in college (bought those speakers 
back then down the road across from  MIT up in Cambridge, MA) included 
(still does) putting Joni Mitchell's "Court and Spark" on and listening 
for the sound of her breath - inhales and exhales - and the sound of 
Jose Feliciano's classical guitar (I'm and amateur guitarist) on the 
title track. Makes all the difference between music and a "tone 
generator." Unlike my own midrangey preferences, my ex wife used to be a 
treble nut and used to always listen to Steve Winwood's "Back in the 
Highlife" - she loved chimey highs. Kind of like good pot vs. good 
coke.  We never did merge our stereo systems, and probably should have 
learned our lessons back then and never gotten married :-)

> On top of this I understand that every silicon wafer on which the  
> chips are made has a certain number of defects per area. Clearly this  
> makes a situation where there is a chip area where 100% scrap is  
> statistically inevitable and means also that reject rates will  
> exponentially increase with size. I don't know how much effort has  
> been put into reducing the number of defects per area recently, if  
> the cost of super pure wafers is extremely high and the size of chips  
> has continued to miniaturise it is entirely possible that there has  
> been little recent research done on this area.


Excellent point. Circuit density has been the name of the game in 
computer chips.  A few years back, I was wondering if research into 
decreased defects and increased yield-per-wafer would be increasing to 
support making bigger sensors more cheaply. Skipping post-processing (no 
new real detail there), I wonder how good the pixel density/noise is 
going to get on small sensors.

> It could well be that the projected market for large chips is so  
> small that only small R&D budgets will ever be devoted to it and the  
> chips themselves will always be special small production run items  
> which are relatively very expensive.
> Frank
>
It's really pretty sad. You know, the heck with religion. We need a 
"sensory jihad."  Show the faithful a few 8x10 platinum prints, give 
them some real Italian pizza and gelato, feel the cool caress of a well 
worn Indian Madras shirt or the heft and density of a nice Austrian 
loden cloth coat, let them listen to well recorded music (Chesky or 
something) on a good stereo system. Let them have a peek at sensory 
heaven, as it were. That'll make folks hopping mad about what they've 
been missing and ready for a good fight :-)

Scott

> On 16 Jan, 2006, at 04:28, Scott McLoughlin wrote:
>
>> Makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense is why more companies
>> aren't then manufacturing more sensors.  Business abhors a vacuum, as
>> it were.  Certainly in other areas of semiconductor design and  
>> fabrication
>> (and associated supporting chipsets, firmware and the like) there  is no
>> shortage of companies - and plenty of venture capital to start new  
>> ones.
>>
>> What is the $$ volume of the camera industry (consumer, commercial,
>> industrial)?  If it's relatively small, that might explain the  
>> differences with
>> the rest of the (huge) chip industry.
>>
>> Scott
>
>
>
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