More Big Megapixel Talk [CR1]
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jrista said:
Hopefully you are correct. One was some Swedish website or group and I don't know whether they knew how or were able to dig deep enough or not. They said they didn't see evidence of building any expensive new sensor lines. But who knows.
The R&D slash was Canon person but not from DSLR group (although I believe referring to that group). But who knows.
Hopefully they are wrong or it won't matter.
Hopefully and possibly so.
Hope so.
True, although such companies usually stumble more in the long run than the ones that keep charging, but it is a very common occurrence for companies to end up acting like that. For some you can sort of understand the fear about pushing forward and risking this and that for cameras it seems a lot more stable so it seems a bit less understandable but it had definitely happens all the same.
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Something else to keep in mind that Canon does a hell of a lot more than just DSLR's. They have dozens?, many dozens? (hundreds?), of research groups researching technolgoies for a variety of fields. A lot of it is sensor and lens related for other industries than DSLR, some of it is printer related, there is obviously a lot of optics research, etc. R&D budget slashing in general could affect any one of a number of areas at Canon that has nothing to do with their DSLR camera initiatives.
@Mikael: You stated, more than once, that Canon doesn't have the technology to generate large sensors with small transistors. I beg to differ. They developed a 120mp APS-C sensor with a high readout rate a couple of years ago. I found a page describing it: http://www.canon.com/technology/approach/special/cmos.html.
Their CMOS technology, which is capable of producing larger sized sensors (at least up to APS-H size, but if they can do APS-H size they can do FF size) with pixel sizes as small as 2.2 microns. Their 120mp APS-H sensor sported some kind of hyper-parallel sensor readout and processing to support the 9.5 FPS readout rate. That indicates some kind of column-parallel or maybe row-parallel read and ADC strategy, as the reason Sony designed CP-ADC originally was not so much for the IQ improvement as it was for the readout rate improvement (although in Sony's case they were aiming for 60fps readout for mirrorless cameras.)
I garner two things from Canon's prototypical 120mp APS-C sensor. One, they are most certainly capable of fabricating large sensors with very small transistors (the pixel size is 2.2 microns, so transistor size has to be incredibly small to pack enough red and amplifier circuitry into each pixel). Two, they already seem to have technology that allows very fast hyper-parallel readout of an incredibly pixel-dense sensor. Three, their parallel readout seems to process pixels as well as simply read them, indicating some kind of on-die ADC.
@Mikael: You stated, more than once, that Canon doesn't have the technology to generate large sensors with small transistors. I beg to differ. They developed a 120mp APS-C sensor with a high readout rate a couple of years ago. I found a page describing it: http://www.canon.com/technology/approach/special/cmos.html.
Their CMOS technology, which is capable of producing larger sized sensors (at least up to APS-H size, but if they can do APS-H size they can do FF size) with pixel sizes as small as 2.2 microns. Their 120mp APS-H sensor sported some kind of hyper-parallel sensor readout and processing to support the 9.5 FPS readout rate. That indicates some kind of column-parallel or maybe row-parallel read and ADC strategy, as the reason Sony designed CP-ADC originally was not so much for the IQ improvement as it was for the readout rate improvement (although in Sony's case they were aiming for 60fps readout for mirrorless cameras.)
I garner two things from Canon's prototypical 120mp APS-C sensor. One, they are most certainly capable of fabricating large sensors with very small transistors (the pixel size is 2.2 microns, so transistor size has to be incredibly small to pack enough red and amplifier circuitry into each pixel). Two, they already seem to have technology that allows very fast hyper-parallel readout of an incredibly pixel-dense sensor. Three, their parallel readout seems to process pixels as well as simply read them, indicating some kind of on-die ADC.
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Mikael Risedal said:
Well, I find it ironic that the moment I provide a hard link with some actual evidence of relatively recent innovation, you resort to a personal attack. To be blunt, I don't mind so much...that's a sign of weakness in your argument.
Let me flip your request around. Give me proof they Canon is not continuing to innovate. Give me proof that Canon actually has indeed cut funding to their DSLR-related R&D and not to some other research group for an unrelated or tangentially related field that's proven unproductive or nonprofitable. You throw out a lot of anecdotes, but you don't really back much of it up. The couple times you did actually included an image to back up a claim, everyone on this forum could see that it was an underexposed shot produced for a biased comparison by the most chaotic photography forums on the net: DPReview.
Let's dispense with the anecdotes and sketchy evidence, and start pointing to some hard facts. I've tried. Your turn.
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Mikael Risedal said:
What facts? You haven't supplied any facts. Only your personal opinions and speculation. Stating that "Sony could do a 500Mpixel if they want with theres mobile tech and a 24x36mm surface". Well, for one, your grammar and spelling could use a little, well LOT, of work. But second...that statement is 100% speculation. You can't spew pure speculation like that then a moment later turn around and tell me to "meet you on the facts." That's about as hypocritical as it gets.
The simple fact is, Canon has demonstrated an actual 120mp APS-H sized sensor with a 9.5fps readout rate. Sure, its a prototype, but its real. Canon states in their own information about it that it has broad on-die parallel readout and pixel processing. Those are facts. I speculate that Canon has something similar to Sony's CP-ADC based on that prototype sensor. What it is exactly and specifically how it works I can't say, as I have yet to find a patent on the technology in any publicly searchable repository. But the fact is, Canon does have on-die hyper-parallel (my term, since I don't know of a better one to describe something like row- or column- parallel logic in a sensor die) readout and pixel processing...something they innovated, and fairly recently (a lot more recently than 2004, which you assert is the last time Canon innovated anything...another anecdote.)
Mikael Risedal said:
Honestly, I could care less if you think my logic is flawed because my posts are not short. ???
I may have written a lot of posts on this forum, but I've written about 1/5th that or less compared to many members. I have about 700 posts. I guess that gives me a little bit of reputation, but not a ton. I don't expect anyone to listen to me at all. I'm a debater...people generally don't like debaters, so I rarely expect any positive return from my posts. There are members here who have thousands posts here, such as LTRLI and Neuro. A guy like Neuro has the kind of reputation that makes people listen and respect his opinion. I come and go, I chat and debate when I'm here, and then I'll be gone for weeks as I'm out and about camera in-hand photographing. I'm not terribly concerned with my reputation, I guess. I have made about 10,000 photos since the last week of August, so I have a good solid couple of weeks of post-processing, tagging, organizing, and printing to do for the keepers, which is why I'm here. I've been spending a lot of time in front of my computer browsing forums while I wait for a print to complete.
You, on the other hand, have what...50 posts? You barge in, hands chock full of personal attacks and gobs of anecdotal quips that you keep claiming are accurate, posts packed with some of the worst spelling and grammar I've seen in recent memory, but without anything to really back any of it up. We've both swapped anecdotes, and that will obviously get us nowhere, so I've requested that we both start backing up our claims with third-party evidence. I've tried...I've started supplying links to external resources that back up my claims. Yet you refuse to reciprocate.
All things being equal, you can feel free to keep doing what your doing. I don't think your grammar & spelling, your personal attacks at me, your persistent use of bold text, or your anecdotes are doing you or your arguments or yourself any good. For the moment, I'm done swapping anecdotes. I'm done even replying until you start backing up your own claims with hard evidence...press releases, financial reports, objective studies, whatever it may be. Otherwise we are just dancing around each other to no good end, and since you come off as a troll, I'm done feeding. (Hell, I probably should have stopped feeding you a long time ago.)
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LetTheRightLensIn said:
I don't believe a new sensor line costs a billion in US$$. That is roughly the cost of a new semiconductor fabrication facility, and generally thats the kind of cost for one of Intel's incredibly advanced, cutting edge CPU fabrication facilities when they move from one die size to another. For one, if the design and development of a new sensor line doesn't necessarily require a new fab. If Canon has already produced a 120mp APS-H sensor with 2.2 micron pixels and some advanced parallel readout & processing circuitry with their existing fabs, it seems doubtful they would actually need to drop a billion or so a new one. As for R&D to design a new sensor, thats probably a cost of millions....but a far cry from a billion unless Canon has some seriously ground-breaking, game-changing technology up their sleeve. I doubt they have something that impactful (although one can hope...competition IS good for the consumer!), and they certainly have the sales and market share to invest a few tens to hundreds of millions in the development of new sensor technology (they still are the largest digital camera company in the world.)
It's highly doubtful Nikon and Sony spent a billion dollars designing Exmor. Just think about that for a moment...have either of them even made a billion dollars off the sales of the cameras that actually use Exmor sensors? (I mean, if we assume that Nikon actually made the full $3000 off each D800 they sold, they would have to sell over 333 million of them to make a billion dollars. At actual cost, they would probably have to sell over 500 million!) Thats an unholy lot of money to spend on "R&D". The development of a fab, in this case Sony's fab, is an entirely different story. Sony can use a single fab to produce a bazillion sensors a year in half a bazilion sizes and shapes for another half a bazillion purposes, for use in a zillion different industries and devices. Sony's (or for that matter Canon's) investment of a billion dollars in a semiconductor fab turns around and makes them many billions more. But that's a fab...not a new sensor design. And Mikael is purely speculating when he claims that Canon has to build a new fab to build better sensors (a statement I'm still waiting on some hard evidence for, and for which I believe there is evidence against in the existence of their 120mp APS-H sensor.)
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Here is another little fact. Found this while digging through news for Canon's stock (spurred on by one of the other threads here on CR). Seems Canon has ranked third in overall patents filed in the US last year. That means Canon filed a HELL OF A LOT OF PATENTS!!
I believe the idea that Canon is not an innovative company with the horsepower to compete is a load of troll crap. As I've been saying, there is nothing to prevent Canon from stepping up their game and ultimately giving Nikon a run for their money. And the notion that they couldn't drop a few billion on a new semiconductor fab if they wanted to...another load of troll feces...they have a $45 billion dollar global revenue. A billion dollars is barely more than pocket change.
Additionally, another strong mark for Canon that Nikon just doesn't hold a stick to is their customer support, which apparently has been award winning for nine years:
Reference: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oce-arizona-series-printers-ideal-for-producing-membrane-switch-overlays-2012-09-26
I believe the idea that Canon is not an innovative company with the horsepower to compete is a load of troll crap. As I've been saying, there is nothing to prevent Canon from stepping up their game and ultimately giving Nikon a run for their money. And the notion that they couldn't drop a few billion on a new semiconductor fab if they wanted to...another load of troll feces...they have a $45 billion dollar global revenue. A billion dollars is barely more than pocket change.
Additionally, another strong mark for Canon that Nikon just doesn't hold a stick to is their customer support, which apparently has been award winning for nine years:
Reference: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oce-arizona-series-printers-ideal-for-producing-membrane-switch-overlays-2012-09-26
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Mikael Risedal said:
Ok. No idea where that pie chart came from, so I can't verify its accuracy.
Here are some more facts. Canon's business is primarily based on sensors of one kind of another and optics of one kind or another.
Here is a report on their business units that covers three years. Within this report, Canon indicates they have three major business units: Office, Consumer, Industry/Other. All three of these business units produce products that use CMOS sensors and chips. From a revenue perspective, the Office unit, 53.6% of Canon's overall revenues, rakes in $24.5 billion. The Consumer unit, 37.5% of Canon's overall revenues, which covers all the photography, video, and printing stuff we are interested in (except imagePrograf printers...which are part of the Office unit) brings in $17.1 billion. The final and smallest unit, their Industrial products and everything else, 11.7% of Canon's overall revenues, brings in $5.3 billion. Canon's Industrial products division is capable of building the kind of equipment required for a semiconductor fab, such as Semiconductor Lithography units.
Factual reference: http://web.canon.jp/ir/annual/2010/rep2010f.pdf
According to another report about Japan's local business (I assume this is just the local business, not worldwide like the above report, as Canon's worldwide revenue in yen is in the several trillions):
A full 27%, almost 1/3rd, of their business is consumer imaging. That 27% brings in around ¥164 billion in revenues. Another 49% of their business is business solutions. This largest segment brings in around ¥297 billion in revenues. Another 5% is industrial equipment, which involves a lot of sensor tech and optics, brings in around ¥30 billion in revenues. The final sector of Canon is their IT software, which is about 19% of their business. Not really sure what this division covers. This sector brings in ¥115 billion in revenues. There is also another ¥26.3 billion Canon simply chocks up to "Other". That is a total of ¥632 billion yen each year. In US dollar terms based on the current exchange rate, those numbers are:
Consumer Imaging Division: $2.1 billion
Business Division: $3.8 billion
Industrial Tech Division: $385 million
IT Solutions Division: $1.5 billion
Other: $338 million
Factual Reference: http://cweb.canon.jp/eng/corporate/activities/product.html
Even in US dollar terms, Canon's division related to consumer imaging, photography, video, etc. is almost a third of their business, and their second largest division from a dollar amount. Just about every device they ship from their consumer imaging division (including lenses) has at least one cmos chip in it. Every single actual imaging device, be it a DSLR, EOS-M, P&D, bridge camera, video camera, whatever...contains an image sensor and other CMOS devices to process pixels. They don't necessarily make ALL of those chips (many of their cheaper P&S cameras use CCD's manufactured by none other than Sony), but they make a significant percentage of them. And thats just the imaging division. The Industrial Tech division is also a heavily dependent on CMOS sensors and image processing chips. Hell, office products like printers and copiers require sensors. Canon most definitely has a significant need for a large CMOS production facility.
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Canon Rumors said:<div name=\"googleone_share_1\" style=\"position:relative;z-index:5;float: right; /*margin: 70px 0 0 0;*/ top:70px; right:120px; width:0;\"><glusone size=\"tall\" count=\"1\" href=\"http://www.canonrumors.com/?p=11396\"></g
<strong>A bit more information
</strong>I’m told that the coming big megapixel camera is a very new sensor design/overhaul. The emphasis is in the dynamic range of the sensor. Performance is said to be on the level of medium format, even better than the impressive D800.</p>
<p>The same person also says the camera won’d be a “3D” or any other “D”, it will get an all new naming scheme.</p>
<p><strong>EF 35 f/1.4L II
My opinion on how this should go.
This camera should be a 5DIIIs or some such name (a sensor, software, and processing pipeline only upgrade to the 5DIII), released at $3599 or less with a simultaneous price drop on the 5DIII to $2799 or less. It should most certainly include at least one still-image crop mode that really crops, including the raw data, to allow faster frame rates, smaller sizes, and a deeper raw buffer.
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Really Canon has a way to increase megapixels by a firmware update soon to be released. The 1dx/1dc/1dxs all the same camera just diff firmware lol...
For those hell bent on facts and info, i apologize for making lite of this but i am feeling a little wiley right now.
For those hell bent on facts and info, i apologize for making lite of this but i am feeling a little wiley right now.
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Bosman said:
I didn't realize the firmware update would affect the 1D X. I can see how you might be able to use firmware to improve the resolution of a video camera. I thought the 1D C was downsampling the pixels off the sensor anyway. Couldn't a firmware update allow it to sample every pixel, or add some form of RAW/native output?
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Mikael added that pie chart which is correct for the June 2012 standings of all CMOS/CCD standing. However that has little to nothing to do with what is going on as Omnivision and almost everyone else named there is a cellphone/small sensor manufacture. Cellphones, car backup cameras, security video cameras, ect.
To add a little more to the pressure that Canon is having it's all in the numbers. Nikon and Sony are the only places Canon is feeling any pressure from in tech from but companies only care about these numbers.
Nikon 2011 profit: ~349 million USD
Sony 2011 profit: ~ (-584 million) USD
Canon 2011 profit: ~3177 million USD (1.17 billion of which is from consumer products)
As jrista said, Canon may or may not have the tech to beat Nikon/Sony but why should they go out and drop money on new stuff when selling the same stuff is working quite well making almost 10x as much as Nikon last year.
//all numbers come from the companies 2011 financial report. Nikon and Sony are numbers from the entire company
To add a little more to the pressure that Canon is having it's all in the numbers. Nikon and Sony are the only places Canon is feeling any pressure from in tech from but companies only care about these numbers.
Nikon 2011 profit: ~349 million USD
Sony 2011 profit: ~ (-584 million) USD
Canon 2011 profit: ~3177 million USD (1.17 billion of which is from consumer products)
As jrista said, Canon may or may not have the tech to beat Nikon/Sony but why should they go out and drop money on new stuff when selling the same stuff is working quite well making almost 10x as much as Nikon last year.
//all numbers come from the companies 2011 financial report. Nikon and Sony are numbers from the entire company
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Country Bumpkins said:
Mikael popped out of nowhere and started to make many posts about Canon sensors in this as well as Fred Miranda forums. He is either a kid having fun on the internet or a truly disgruntled owner of several Nikon/Canon/Hasselblad/Leica products.
In any case, even though I doubt he has any factual evidence to back his assertions, I feel that it is not necessarily a bad thing to repine about Canon sensors. It's the same with DXOMark: full of garbage but some of their basic (not projected or opinionated) findings are correct.
Canon ought to step up their sensor technology especially with regards to their low ISO dynamic range.The problem is this: does any of this whining get to Canon management and do they have the means to solve it?
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