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Are we all clients of Sony ?
- Thread starter Thomas An
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rattymouse
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bobn2
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rattymouse
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You are talking about trivial differences between sensors that amount to a little bit of nothing. My point is that some folks make claims that Fujifilm (for example) designed the sensor in the X100 and that it is very much substantially different from an off the shelf model, thus giving it very unique properties unable to be matched by said off the shelf model. Consider Fujifilm's SuperCCD SRII sensor vs an off the shelf Sony one. The SuperCCD sensor was designed and built in-house by Fujifilm, back when they owned and operated a fabrication facility. The architecture of that sensor was fundamentally different from any other sensor (besides the obvious CCD/CMOS difference).
I seriously doubt we will see such a large difference from "customized" sensors.
I seriously doubt we will see such a large difference from "customized" sensors.
bobn2
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The truth is much stranger and more interesting. What there is in Nikon sensors is more than a bit of Mtsubishi. If you track the names on the patents, then you find that the core team came from Mitsubishi, and Renesas that does the fab is a successor to Mitsubishi Semiconductor. Now if you go back to the origins of canon sensors, and look at the papers they publish you find that Canon collaborated with Mitsubishi Semiconductor to get their sensor operation off the ground (Canon had no semiconductor design expertise at the time), and indeed one individual was in both teams. So the truth is that Nikon sensors have a bit of Canon in them.
bobn2
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Basalite
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I'll stick with my Sigmas.
Oy. I bet they don't like that. Doesn't surprise me, though. My partner used to work for a company spun off from NEC in an attempt to commercialize some work done at their research lab in Princeton. NEC, like most big companies, especially the Japanese giants, had a lot of cool stuff coming out of their labs but the companies moved so slowly they were making no money off them. Some nimble startup, usually American, always got established first. So they decided to give the IP toban American startup andclet thembrun with it. Lots of agreements were made and key people hired and granted stock options (it was about 15 years ago). Then NEC discovered they would have to pay a small fee for every product they made using this technology. That was a necessary part of the agreement to spin off this company. The problem was that several NEC competitors were going to get to use the IP for free due to cross-licensing agreements. Paying for 'their' technology and 'giving' it to Sony and Panasonic was too much, especially since they had decided to push this as an essential piece of a major standard. So they sneakily pulled the plug on the spin-off, in violation of the agreement, all the shareholders sued and got very nice settlements. The technology wasn't adopted as part of the standard and never made a penny for anyone except the core employees/shareholders who sued and settled (including my partner). I got a free trip to Tokyo (business class) out of NEC. It was all very revealing of how slow and inbred Japanese companies can be. Tokyo was lovely.
It is indeed awesome and I hope it makes it into the V3. The only question is whether the iq will actually improve. The speed and video capabilities will be superb. I suspect they're aiming it more at the video world, but have my fingers crossed for improved stills iq. I figure to be getting a new camera about the time the V3 is on clearance (maybe two years).
Sometimes they don't even have to pay for it, if there are cross-licensing agreements.
bobn2
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bobn2
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I don't have inside information, but I have a take on it. I think Nikon takes competitive tenders on each new camera, with their in-house sensor operation being one of the bidders. Whoever gives them the best solution gets that design win. It's a good strategy, keeps all their suppliers honest, including their in-house operation, which doesn't have the opportunity to get lazy. This is their second go at having in-house sensor capability after the LBCAST debacle - and I think they learned a lot from that. The point is that their sensor team doesn't cost so much, it's is a few individuals with the capacity for maybe a couple of designs a year but its presence is very important to their overall sensor supply strategy - it means they are beholden to no other company but still use the best of what other companies offer, and if they have a requirement no-one else can fill, they can do it themselves. Compare it with Canon's strategy, where the development of their whole DSLR line is limited by the capability of their fab and because they have tied so much capital up in that fab, they can't easily go outside.
As for Nikon being involved in the Aptina design, I'm not sure they were too much - it mostly looks like tech present on other Aptina products. Of course, where Nikon engineers will get involved in every design is process development - they are the suppliers of the photolithography equipment for most of the sensor suppliers, and they also supply much of the process related software that goes with that - as the suppliers develop their processes, Nikon support engineers will be called in to advise - which allows Nikon to say with some truth that they were engaged in the development process. Where the product is for Nikon, one can imagine that support might be part of the whole deal.
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Bob
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tecnoworld
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Sigmas are very good, at least at low iso. They are particular and probably not comparable with anything on the market. But if you consider nex, m4/3 or even fuji (the latter at least for af performance and overall speed) then nx300 is better.
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