quote:ROCHESTER, New York (AP) -- A year from now, capturing a crisp, clear image of a candlelit birthday party could be a piece of cake -- even with a camera phone.
Eastman Kodak Co. said Thursday it has developed a color-filter technology that at least doubles the sensitivity to light of the image sensor in every digital camera, enabling shutterbugs to take better pictures in poor light.
"Low light can mean trying to get a good image indoors of your kid blowing out the birthday candles. It can mean you want to take a photograph on a street corner in Paris at midnight," said Chris McNiffe, general manager of the photography company's image sensor business. "We're talking about a 2-to-4-times improvement in (light) sensitivity."
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Typically new features like this would be more likely to show up in high-end products and then trickle down," said analyst Steve Hoffenberg of Lyra Research Inc. "But I think the biggest potential benefit of this may come in the camera phone environment. Camera phones are using smaller sensors to begin with and smaller sensors generally mean smaller pixels, which means lower sensitivity."
When the shutter opens on a digital camera, an image is projected onto the sensor, which converts light into an electric charge. Most sensors use the Bayer mask: Half of the millions of cells on a checkerboard grid are filtered to collect green light and a quarter each are filtered to let through red and blue light. A computer chip then reconstructs a full color signal for each pixel in the final image.
The new method, which has been under development for more than five years, adds "panchromatic" cells that are sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light and collect a larger amount of light striking the sensor.
Tailoring software algorithms to this unique new pattern enables faster shutter speeds, which reduces blurring when capturing a moving subject, McNiffe said.
Yay! I have a fairly nice camera, but even it has some pretty bad low light picture quality. This, plus the less blurring will be pretty cool. I might just upgrade my camera in a year. My mom will appreciate that, since she gets my camera hand me downs. Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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When it's dark, you either have to use flash to light the area, or use a slower shutter speed. Slower shutter speed==shutter open longer==more light coming in. Fast shutter speeds "freeze" action; if you reduce the shutter speed enough, even minimal movement like fine shaking becomes a problem, which will make the photo look blurry. For any shutter speed below 1/60, use a tripod to steady the camera and thus make the clearer. If you don't have a tripod, you can use a flat surface, or brace the camera on something. This applies to point-and-shoots as well as SLRs, as point-and-shoots automatically adjust the shutter speed to account for lighting conditions.
If they can make the sensors more sensitive to light, then that means the shutter speed won't have to drop so low, and thus you'd have less problems with bluriness due to camera shake.
Posts: 1805 | Registered: Jun 1999
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I can’t speak for Kodak’s high end cameras (I don’t have much experience with them), but I absolutely cannot stand their mainstream digital cameras - or just about any of their digital products for that matter. Every digital picture I’ve seen touched by Kodak - whether taken on a Kodak digital camera, printed on a Kodak printer or from a Kodak Picture Maker kiosk, or enhanced with Kodak Perfect Touch technology - just looks horribly fake. The colors pop, oh yes, and contrast is much improved in low light situations, but they just don’t look natural. It's a shame really, considering how they dominated the film and photo processing industry. I am intrigued by the potential this breakthrough has for cameraphones, though.
Personally, I get excellent low light shots with my Canon A710 IS. Except for the slow flash charge, it's an incredible camera for the price.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Wonderful! My friend will be thrilled. He's a huge photography buff, and loves nighttime photography. And as someone looking curiously into photography myself, this sounds intriguing. Thanks for the link, Lyrhawn.
Posts: 208 | Registered: Jun 2005
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The technology itself will be farmed out to many other camera producers, like Sony, Canon, Nikon, etc, for them to integrate into their cameras, it's not just Kodak cameras, considering this is technology replacing another camera part patented by Kodak that is already used in digital cameras.
By the time these are out and have gone through the consumer gauntlet, I'll probably be ready to start looking at a new camera myself, probably a Canon, as some of the newer Elphs are a lot better than my two year old Sony T33. Though I'm loathe to buy a new camera that I might have to buy new memory cards for (though they've dropped highly in price and increased in size).
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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The colors in all the pics, as hard as it may be to believe, were dead on. Some of the pics seem different than the others...and they should. They were all taken at different times, in differing light conditions.
No filters were used. I could have used a program to straighten them out (a little lopsided )n but I didn't, at least not for this.
posted
I was hearing about this on NPR's Marketplace today. It sounds like great technology. I hope it does well for Kodak; it sounds like the company itself is hurting (the consumer switch from film to digital occurred much more quickly than they had envisioned.)
On a related note, I had heard that Kodak was trying something new in inkjet printers; namely, that the printers themselves would be fairly pricey (compared to the $30 jobbies you can get off the shelf at Target these days, at least), but the ink cartridges, where many companies like HP are making the majority of their profits, would be comparatively inexpensive. It sounds like a good idea, though I have to wonder if the massive number of ink-refilling services I've seen pop up mean that the other companies aren't doing as well in that regard these days (despite some of them rattling sabers about refilling your ink cartridges voiding your warranty.) Has anyone tried a recent Kodak printer?
BTW, like the photos, Kwea.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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I don't think Kodak will sway a lot of home users with a super expensive printer and cheap ink, your average home user doesn't print that much (though, with people printing more and more pictures by themselves at home, that might be a factor).
Where your money is, is offices. Offices go through ink like fish swim through water, and if the investment in a more expensive printer will bring them bigger savings in the long run with cheaper ink, I can see many making the switch, but they'll have to offer some high end models.
It's potentially a great idea.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Mostly due to working in a photo lab for the past five years, I've made it a point not to critique others' photography. Preferences, perceptions, and memory retention can vary widely from one person to the next. What I consider fake may look very real to someone else.
Having said that, I can honestly say, Kwea, that those pictures are very nice. To clarify, however, my problem is mostly with skin tone in lower light situations.
Lyrhawn, Thanks for the info. I did figure Kodak would be selling this technology to other camera producers. My initial post was mostly a rant, for which I apologize. Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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