602 questions

[Jack G Heckler]

But even with the higher capacities, I don't think the shelf
life is any better. And that's what causes trouble for me. I have
no trouble having enough power for my camera - as long as I
remember to charge the darn things!

I want a power source that can be charged in January and still be
(nearly) fully charged in March (assuming, of course, that I
haven't used it in the meantime).

Jim...somewhere I read and actually copied to my "Digital Camera
Tips" Word document (I'm over 30 pages of info now), a long-term
test of NiMH batteries and chargers...it may have been on Imaging
Resource.

Jack, thanks. Yes, I've already read that piece. It was very well
done.

But I don't remember it addressing my main issue of shelf life. Do
you remember seeing anything on that topic there? The best new
NiMH batteries may power a camera for the whole day of shooting,
but I think their charge fades on the shelf just as quickly as
those of the past. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.

No, I don't believe it did address shelf life...my thought was that the batteries could just be left in the trickle charger between uses. But maybe that would not be good for the batteries in the long run. In any event, when I do get a DC, with our first grandchild just 12 weeks old, those batteries will not be sitting around long between uses!!

As a side bar, we just bought a Sony DSC-S85 in work and I had the opportunity to bring it home a couple weekends ago and was very impressed with its battery life...along with other features. I used it alot indoors with the LCD on and many built-in flashes, and got over 3 hours on a charge! The photos looked very good and NO REDEYE was present on many facial closeups and on longer shots. Nice camerra that is also on my short list.

Jack

 

[ianR]

But I don't remember it addressing my main issue of shelf life. Do
you remember seeing anything on that topic there? The best new
NiMH batteries may power a camera for the whole day of shooting,
but I think their charge fades on the shelf just as quickly as
those of the past. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.

Yes this is true. There's a technical article about this somewhere in one of the battery sites.

NiMH lose about 15% of their charge per day doing nothing. So they are dead in about 30 days.
This isn't true with Lithium and it isn't true with Alkaline.

Somewhere here recently someone was talking about the Sony InfoLitium I think and I think they really are excellent. I have a Sony DV and the batteries have incredible life for their power and retain a charge for a long time. They also give really precise info about how much charge they have left.

However, they are really expensive and I suspect that per minute,the Kodak for the 6900 is the best buy.
regards
Ian

 

[Jim Gilliland]

But I don't remember it addressing my main issue of shelf life. Do
you remember seeing anything on that topic there? The best new
NiMH batteries may power a camera for the whole day of shooting,
but I think their charge fades on the shelf just as quickly as
those of the past. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.

Yes this is true. There's a technical article about this somewhere
in one of the battery sites.
NiMH lose about 15% of their charge per day doing nothing. So they
are dead in about 30 days.
This isn't true with Lithium and it isn't true with Alkaline.
Somewhere here recently someone was talking about the Sony
InfoLitium I think and I think they really are excellent. I have a
Sony DV and the batteries have incredible life for their power and
retain a charge for a long time. They also give really precise info
about how much charge they have left.
However, they are really expensive and I suspect that per
minute,the Kodak for the 6900 is the best buy.

Thanks, Ian, that confirms my understanding.

 

[togsky]

Jack,
Good to here from a fellow IE. Thanks for the compliments.

Jim,

Like I said, I'm not a scientist, electronics engineer and now I have to add that I'm not a mathematician also. But the mathematics rules of sampling is true only if you have the same variable, otherwise it is not also applicable if what you are comparing are octagonal and rectangular surface. If you put the rectangle inside an octagon, you will have two extra trapezoid on both sides of the octagon hence octagon is bigger in terms of surface area. If you have a bigger surface for capture, don't you think you will be able to capture more data than a smaller surface area?

This is an excerpt from a link I also found here:

Fujifilm's engineers designed a completely new octagon array CCD that eliminated the circuits connecting the transfer electrodes almost completely and freed up a whole area of the pixels now available that could be used for the photo diode and the transfer electrode part quite effectively. It became clear that the more the pixels were minimized, the more valuable the new structure became for the improvement of the performances compared with current CCD structure. In addition, the horizontal and vertical resolutions improved by 1.4 times and to increase the numbers of pixels after signal processing by 2 times.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1012&message=2186135

See: http://home.fujifilm.com/products/digital/sccd/review.html

I am not a scientist or an electornics engineer (actually I'm an
industrial engineer), but don't you think that using a different
design in CCD makes a lot of difference here. This is just like the
current debate on what kind of processor to use in your computer,
AMD or Intel. AMD has a lower speed in terms of instruction but it
accomplishes more because it increased the amount of work that it
can process per amount of time. The same thing with Super CCD.
Since it has a different design, it may be capturing more details
than a regular CCD even if they have the same amount of megapixel.
Just my two cents!!

togsky

An IE from New Jersey...now that has to be some logical thinking!!
I also was an Industial Engineer during the early years of my
career and worked for 5 yearss in S. Jersey and am in complete
agreement with togsky's two cents! The naysayers should take their
argument to another forum where they will find some sympathy for
their rantings! Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be
wrong...

Jack

 

[bluh]

I'd consider what remote controlling you would have for the camera if you take astrophotos or terrestrial pics. The Sony 707 has only optional wired remote and the Fuji S602 seems to have nothing for remote.

I'm thinking of getting the Canon G2 still (I keep changing my mind) which has infrared remote. 10 second delay timers can be okay I guess, enough time for a telescope to settle after being fiddled with.

Anyway, if you haven't seen the Digi-T adapter yet, or this other one I was thinking of:
http://www.ckcpower.com/

I haven't used anything but a regular SLR T-adapter before so I'm hoping something will work out well for using my telescope.

My wife bought me an ETX105 for my birthday last month. I like it
very much, but we really haven't had enough clear skies for me to
use it heavily yet. Unfortunately, clear skies in January/February
in northeastern Ohio tends to mean cold temperatures. Brrrr.

The astrostar computer controller is very cool.

No, the tough decision is the camera. The S602 looks to be the
best choice, but the Sony F707 is right up there too. I have a
couple of concerns with the S602.

The first concern is the lens extension tube. I'm afraid that it
will cause severe vignetting when using the camera with a
telescope. However, I've read discussions here and in several
other forums now that suggest that I may find little practical
difference between these cameras in this area. Stated another way,
they may BOTH turn out to be poor choices for telescope eyepiece
vignetting. :-(

--Farewell, Bob H.

 

[Jim Gilliland]

Jim,
Like I said, I'm not a scientist, electronics engineer and now I
have to add that I'm not a mathematician also. But the mathematics
rules of sampling is true only if you have the same variable,
otherwise it is not also applicable if what you are comparing are
octagonal and rectangular surface. If you put the rectangle inside
an octagon, you will have two extra trapezoid on both sides of the
octagon hence octagon is bigger in terms of surface area. If you
have a bigger surface for capture, don't you think you will be able
to capture more data than a smaller surface area?

No, that's not true. If you have a larger sensor, you can gather more light, which means that you can have less noise. But the amount of information is determined by the number of pixels, not their size. The larger cell improves the accuracy of your samples (which is a good thing, of course), but nothing more.

The raw information gathered by the CCD is carried in the 12-bit number that is recorded by each individual cell. As long as you are working with a constant number of cells and you don't increase the bit-depth of the samples, the amount of information being recorded doesn't change. After all, that IS the raw information - three million twelve-bit numbers. If you don't increase either the number of samples or the bit depth, the amount of information doesn't change.

This is an excerpt from a link I also found here:

Fujifilm's engineers designed a completely new octagon array CCD
that eliminated the circuits connecting the transfer electrodes
almost completely and freed up a whole area of the pixels now
available that could be used for the photo diode and the transfer
electrode part quite effectively. It became clear that the more the
pixels were minimized, the more valuable the new structure became
for the improvement of the performances compared with current CCD
structure. In addition, the horizontal and vertical resolutions
improved by 1.4 times and to increase the numbers of pixels after
signal processing by 2 times.

Yeah, there's a lot of misinformation floating around. They were doing OK until they got to that last sentence. But at that point they appear to have gotten confused between effective pixels and recorded pixels, to borrow some definitions from an earlier post.

The image recorded by the Fuji camera does have 1.414 as many pixels recorded in each dimension - horizontally and vertically. But because the information encoded in those pixels is the same information that was gathered by the CCD in the first place, there is no net increase in resolution.

 

[Jim Gilliland]

I'd consider what remote controlling you would have for the camera
if you take astrophotos or terrestrial pics. The Sony 707 has only
optional wired remote and the Fuji S602 seems to have nothing for
remote.

Yes, that's a good point. The wired remote for the Sony is under $50, but I'll probably start out just using the timer. Eventually, though, it would be nice to have the remote control. I wish these cameras had more capabilities like that, but astrophotography will be just one of many ways in which I use the camera, so I won't let that issue determine which camera I buy.

I'm thinking of getting the Canon G2 still (I keep changing my
mind) which has infrared remote. 10 second delay timers can be
okay I guess, enough time for a telescope to settle after being
fiddled with.

Yes, many people seem to get by with that approach.

Anyway, if you haven't seen the Digi-T adapter yet, or this other
one I was thinking of:
http://www.ckcpower.com/

Thanks. I have seen that one, but it seems rather expensive. For less money I can get the Maxview40 from Scopetronics, which includes the eyepiece. Of course, the advantage to the CKPower one is that you can put it on pretty much any eyepiece. And it appears to be extremely solid and well-made.

I haven't used anything but a regular SLR T-adapter before so I'm
hoping something will work out well for using my telescope.

It sounds like we're in the same boat. I've played just a bit with 35mm astrophotography, but it was years ago. So I'll be coming into it new with the new camera, whatever it turns out to be.

Thanks for the insights.

 

[Jack G Heckler]

Jim,
Like I said, I'm not a scientist, electronics engineer and now I
have to add that I'm not a mathematician also. But the mathematics
rules of sampling is true only if you have the same variable,
otherwise it is not also applicable if what you are comparing are
octagonal and rectangular surface. If you put the rectangle inside
an octagon, you will have two extra trapezoid on both sides of the
octagon hence octagon is bigger in terms of surface area. If you
have a bigger surface for capture, don't you think you will be able
to capture more data than a smaller surface area?

No, that's not true. If you have a larger sensor, you can gather
more light, which means that you can have less noise. But the
amount of information is determined by the number of pixels, not
their size. The larger cell improves the accuracy of your samples
(which is a good thing, of course), but nothing more.

Jim...there are those who believe, as I do, there is more to the term "resolution" than just the number of pixels. Why you do not understand that there are many other factors involved (such as lense quality, sensor interpretation, software manipulation, and yes even the honeycomb structure of the SuperCCD!!) is beyond me as you are obviously a very intelligent person. Let's face it, as long as you strictly adhere to the formula that resolution = no. of pixels this discussion will never end. Have to admit that the thread has been interesting reading!

Have a good one...Jack

The raw information gathered by the CCD is carried in the 12-bit
number that is recorded by each individual cell. As long as you
are working with a constant number of cells and you don't increase
the bit-depth of the samples, the amount of information being
recorded doesn't change. After all, that IS the raw information -
three million twelve-bit numbers. If you don't increase either the
number of samples or the bit depth, the amount of information
doesn't change.

This is an excerpt from a link I also found here:

Fujifilm's engineers designed a completely new octagon array CCD
that eliminated the circuits connecting the transfer electrodes
almost completely and freed up a whole area of the pixels now
available that could be used for the photo diode and the transfer
electrode part quite effectively. It became clear that the more the
pixels were minimized, the more valuable the new structure became
for the improvement of the performances compared with current CCD
structure. In addition, the horizontal and vertical resolutions
improved by 1.4 times and to increase the numbers of pixels after
signal processing by 2 times.

Yeah, there's a lot of misinformation floating around. They were
doing OK until they got to that last sentence. But at that point
they appear to have gotten confused between effective pixels and
recorded pixels, to borrow some definitions from an earlier post.

The image recorded by the Fuji camera does have 1.414 as many
pixels recorded in each dimension - horizontally and vertically.
But because the information encoded in those pixels is the same
information that was gathered by the CCD in the first place, there
is no net increase in resolution.

 

[Jim Gilliland]

Jim...there are those who believe, as I do, there is more to the
term "resolution" than just the number of pixels. Why you do not
understand that there are many other factors involved (such as
lense quality, sensor interpretation, software manipulation, and
yes even the honeycomb structure of the SuperCCD!!) is beyond me as
you are obviously a very intelligent person. Let's face it, as
long as you strictly adhere to the formula that resolution = no.
of pixels this discussion will never end

Jack, you're right that resolution is determined by more than just the number of pixels. I've been deliberatly discussing only that aspect of resolution because the other things that affect resolution (color assessment, lens quality, sensor accuracy, JPEG compression) aren't really in dispute. No one is making claiims in those areas that violate the laws of science and math.

So I've been focusing on the one area in which people seen to be misinformed.

However, I do have to disagree with you on two of the items in your list: software manipulation cannot affect resolution, and CCD geometry can only offer tradeoffs in resolution. I've already demonstrated that clearly. If you don't want to accept it that's up to you, but the accuracy of the statement isn't affected by whether or not people believe it.

Anyway, I think the discussion will end because frankly there's nothing left to say.

 

[Peter G]

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1012&message=2190272

 

[tschorer]

Wait, before you go, could you answera a question for me? Which is better the fuji super ccd in the 602 or the sony 5mp, and why? Because fuji says they can get a 6mp image from their 3.5mp sensor... if you could clear this up that would be great.
sorry if this has been covered before, I must have missed it.
sorry, couldn't help myself.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1012&message=2190272

 

[gary e]

So how will the 602 compare to the sony 707? Thanks.Gary

Can't we just leave it at that? If someone does not do his/her
homework to compare features, resolution, how pics look on the
monitor and printer, battery life, type of memory, etc., and spends
$800 on a camera that they are not satisfied with...then shame on
them!! I am ready to buy my first DC and had decided on the 6900
about the time that the rumors of its discontinuance hit and prices
started climbing. Now I am putting the purchase on hold and will
wait for the S602 to hit the market and see how it stacks up
against the competition.

Have a good one...Jack

I am not a scientist or an electornics engineer (actually I'm an
industrial engineer), but don't you think that using a different
design in CCD makes a lot of difference here. This is just like the
current debate on what kind of processor to use in your computer,
AMD or Intel. AMD has a lower speed in terms of instruction but it
accomplishes more because it increased the amount of work that it
can process per amount of time. The same thing with Super CCD.
Since it has a different design, it may be capturing more details
than a regular CCD even if they have the same amount of megapixel.
Just my two cents!!

togsky

An IE from New Jersey...now that has to be some logical thinking!!
I also was an Industial Engineer during the early years of my
career and worked for 5 yearss in S. Jersey and am in complete
agreement with togsky's two cents! The naysayers should take their
argument to another forum where they will find some sympathy for
their rantings! Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be
wrong...

Jack

 

[Mike Lewis]

The price is not bad for it beeing new... when the 6900Z was new was it over $1,000?--Mike L. http://www.pbase.com/ferrari355/galleries