Under the Desktop: Bright Monitors, Big Chips — The PMA Highlight Reel

Forget Disneyworld and Epcot Center. Or the natural stars at Gatorland. The hottest ticket in Orlando this week was the Photo Marketing Association’s PMA 2002 convention and tradeshow, according to reports from the show floor.

I’ve gathered together a couple of PMA announcements that focus on image quality, from a groundbreaking sensor technology that could raise the bar on resolution and color accuracy, to new display vendor for the content-creation market offering lines with very-high performance.

Sensor without Censors
Lucky PMA attendees got the first public look at Foveon’s new X3 color image sensing technology, announced earlier this month. The forthcoming chip aims to replace the current CCD (charge-coupled device) or CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) sensors used in most current digital cameras and flatbed scanners.

The X3 leverages a natural property of silicon (the base material of microprocessors): colors of light are absorbed differently through the material. Each pixel of the X3 chip can measure the amount of red, green, and blue light striking its surface. This is comparable to the color layers in traditional analog film.

On the other hand, CCD or CMOS sensors use arrays of RGB pixels, with each pixel having a filter of a single color. Since each pixel measures only one color, the chip requires a variety of sophisticated routines to calculate the three-color value that will be assigned to each pixel that forms an image. For example, before determining the color of a single pixel, an algorithm will check the readings of surrounding pixels of different colors and then make adjustments.

For professional photographer Stephen Johnson, this voodoo process means that two-thirds of a digital image from a CCD- or CMOS-based camera or scanner is “made up — and that’s a lot of stuff to make up!”

Johnson has tested a prototype X3-based camera for a few months and hailed the results as “stunning” and “a real technical breakthrough with tremendous potential.” While he uses a scanning studio camera to gain the most resolution and accurate color for his images, he said the Foveon prototype was “the first handheld camera that attempts the same idea.” You can see some of Johnson’s sample X3 images here.

According to Foveon, this technology will lead to more accurate images and higher resolutions at lower price points. More test images from the X3 prototype camera were made by Digital Photography Review.

One interesting feature of the X3 sensor is what the company calls variable pixel size (VPS), which can virtually group the pixels. For a still photograph, you would want the native pixel size to attain the highest resolution. Then again, larger pixels would be better for low-light photography or capturing moving images, so the processor creates virtual clumps of pixels that work together as a unit. Foveon said the X3’s VPS technology could let manufacturers offer a camera suitable for both moving and still images.

Also shown at PMA was the first commercial product with the X3 sensor, the Sigma SD9 SLR camera from Sigma, due to ship later this year. Although unpriced, other reports suggest that its price will be in the $3,000 range.

So, should the X3 disrupt your planned purchasing decisions for digital still and video cameras as well as scanners? Perhaps not, unless you’re in the market for an expensive camera like the Sigma SD9.

Today, Foveon’s X3 is an exciting technology with potential, with one announced product from a partner. Yet, there’s often a gap between the promise of a technology and its real-world implementation in products. That can make a difference for both price and performance.

In addition, while the images from CCD and CMOS cameras are interpolated, we understand the results and implications of these technologies. And we compensate by shooting images in the highest resolution available as well as cleaning up images with graphics applications. It’s what we do, right?

Meanwhile, vendors of CCD and CMOS cameras will continue to pour lots of dough into their engineering effort to improve the technologies and cost.

“And that’s not to say the X3 won’t have its own share of issues,” Johnson said, while at the same time praising its results in his images. This wisdom holds true for any technology and product that we fit in our workflow.

The real proof must come from evaluating the images from shipping products and the figuring what value we can attain from a new product.