I don’t mean to suggest that standard resolution CCD cameras are going to disappear anytime soon. But the industry reached some milestones in the advancement of CMOS image technology, and there seems to be consensus that CMOS imagers can now match even the low light performance of CCD.
The word I’ve heard from companies who work in the digital camera world is that as of 2010, all new digital cameras will be using CMOS imagers. Even in the highest end professional digital cameras, where quality is of the utmost importance. You won’t see CCD any more.
Digital cameras and camcorders drive most imager development, so, this makes 2010 a big watershed year for CMOS imagers.
Where this will have the biggest impact will be in megapixel cameras, since CMOS has big advantages on faster frame rates of megapixel images. CCD has always struggled with this.
The other big area is wide dynamic range. Post processing of CMOS images is the best way of getting ultra wide dynamic range – which provides a significant improvement in video quality, especially with outdoor scenes.
Another new development that is just starting to show up in very high-end digital cameras that is worth keeping an eye on, is post-processing of the image to improve low light performance. Nikon has a camera, for example, that can now take pictures with an ASA rating of 3,200.
You can’t always believe the ASA rating on digital cameras, but what Nikon is doing is adding a lot of extra post processing of each image allowing it to extract the image information out of the noise, making for much better low-light pictures.
The problem is that today the method they are using takes seconds to process one image, so it won’t work real time for video. But I’m sure it is only a matter of time before this can be done in real time, which will represent a huge advancement for security applications.
While I’m on this subject, I think it is also worth mentioning that CMOS imagers also passed another important milestone a few years ago. Industry experts agree that CMOS imagers have now passed the resolution and quality of film.
Here’s a link if you would like to read more about this:
http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF7.html
While CCD technology hasn’t seen any significant advances in the last 5 years, CMOS imager designs keep getting better, going through improvements every two years. So, we can expect ongoing developments in the coming years.
July 10, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Hi Doug,
I have talked to a number of megapixel camera manufacturers recently who emphasized that they were moving to CCD chips (most frequently cited was Sony CCD chips). There seems to be a lot of concern about low light megapixel image quality and the potential for CCD to resolve this.
What do you think of this?
Best,
John
July 10, 2009 at 6:16 pm
John,
There are a lot of reasons why some companies are choosing CCD megapixel imagers still, this year.
For example, most of the megapixel CMOS imagers on the market are not based on the latest pixel designs. Some chips in the most popular products being sold are two generations old.
Secondly, the imagers getting the newest pixel technology are aimed at camcorder or digital camera markets, so they aren’t always usable or even available to security camera manufacturers.
Sony, for example, won’t sell most of their new CMOS imagers to security camera manufacturers, only to consumer electronics companies.
What I’m going on is what the pixel designers are telling me. The latest pixel designs in CMOS are equaling the performance of CCD. Even Sony engineers have now said this, and if anyone has a reason to protect CCD, it would be Sony.
So, I think 2009 will still have companies selecting some CCD imagers, and maybe even into early 2010, but after that I think it is all in the favor of CMOS.
I will add one more important piece to this discussion. CMOS imagers are digital from the chip, so it is easier to process the data, but without the right image processing the low light performance is not as good. Some companies are not including this added noise reduction, which is why their low light performance is over 1 lux.
But this kind of high quality noise reduction will become standard by mid next year, and continue to improve. So, it isn’t just the imagers, it is also the image processing chips that haven’t quite caught up yet.
However, it looks like in 2010 this will all shift to advantage CMOS. That’s why I’m saying the days of CCD are numbered.
I hope that helps.
Doug.
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