RANT: SONY's Misdirection in Sensor Design: A Suggestion

[Maverick_]

SONY makes the chips for most P&S cameras today, including Canon. I am really annoyed with Sony constantly shoving more mega pixels into these super tiny chips. It's very disturbing for a serious user like myself.

12MP is already overkill, 15MP is purely criminal. All Nikon's pro cameras are topping out at 12MP today. And for most printing needs, 12MP at 4000 pixels wide is totally sufficient. And here we're talking point and shoot, not pro stuff!!!

It's really just stupid to use the Mega Pixel race as a marketing strategy. There is no reason at all that a 15mp jammed packed into a tiny 1/1.7 or 1.8 or 2.5 can be more useful than a 4000 pixel wide 12MP. There is really no reason for this in consumer P&S cams. None!

I wish Sony would simply set the limit at 12MP and work instead on making these sensors better. Come up with brands to distinguish between 12MP sensor grades.

You know the credit card industry uses the same plastic, but they color them differently to distinguish class. Sony can do the same, you can have a 12MP I, or 12MP III, or 12 MP Super IV-Extreme. They can use their massive marketing and branding budgets to come up with really cool designations for these chips. So not all 12MP sensors appear the same.

The engineers at Sony: please STOP this madness, stop shoving, pushing more MP into tiny chips just to force the consumer to "upgrade" and buy new cams every year or two. Make the chips better instead and bringing them back by upping the quality. S

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http://www.shahramshiva.com

 

[thebard37]

. ..here it is.

They do it because they must.

Which camera company will be the one to "draw the line" at a MP count?

That is the company that will lose sales because the others wil simply increase their MP count and get the customers that need more of something they don't even understand.

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Comments are always welcome.

Zach Bellino

'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.”
-- from 'I Remember, I Remember'
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

 

[PhotoTraveler]

First, engineers aren't the ones driving this. Marketing is.

Secondly, Sony isn't the only sensor maker, there are many of them, and thus they all have to keep pushing forwards.

Third, the pixel raise won't stop, and can't stop till a physical limitation happens. People buy on pixel count, those companies who don't match, will fall behind in sales. Sony makes the sensors, but they aren't the one forcing everything.

And of course, every day, they (all sensor makers) improve their designs, it is what enables them to move forwards. They aren't going to just stop development. And the development they do is driven to allow these advances. If they didn't push forward on pixel counts they would have no reason to make improvements. A 10MP sensor wouldn't improve, it would just stay what it is. But as they go forward, the can take what they learn and put some of that into lower pixel count sensors. See the Nikon D3. It wouldn't be anywhere near as good as it is if there hadn't been the pixel raise which created demand for better NR methods. Without the pixel raise, it could be a 12MP FF camera with high ISO that does no better than ISO 200 till it's worthless. High quality sensors need to pixel raise to exist.

If you can find a way to get people to not want more Pixels, try to find a way to market cameras with no increase in pixels and not loose the potential buys in a dazed stare. You might have a chance of getting your wish. Still, other people welcome every pixel they can get their hands on.

 

[Maverick_]

see, you think more MP jammed packed into a super tiny chip is progress. Not so!

Progress is making exceptional products. The trick is not keep making the MP higher, that by itself is not progress, nor does it generate better quality images. Keep in mind we are talking consumer cams, not pros. Major fashion photographers can't have enough MP. Just talking consumers here.

Progress is making a 12MP chip that shoots totally clean at 800iso or 1600iso. That's progress.

Progress is making a 12MP chip that shoots amazing images, on a consumer cam, at 4 frames a second at highest resolution.

Stop thinking in MP, that's not progress. That's marketing BS. Panasonic has stopped the race. Good for them. S

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http://www.shahramshiva.com

 

[Maverick_]

really don't. Panasonic is not doing it and they make excellent cams. they happen to make their own small chips by the way. Fuji doesn't do it. it seems to be just Sony that's going nuts and those who buy their small chips seem to be following this mindless trend.

S

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***
http://www.shahramshiva.com

 

[Larawanista]

I used to admire Sony for its pure innovativeness. Now lately...

The iPod sent the Walkman to oblivion...
The Betamax gave in to VHS...

The UMD never took off to replace the CD, the mini-CD, the DVD, the mini-DVD etc.
CF and SD slaughered memory stick...
Wii slaughtered PSP3...

Sony-Ericsson is now a far fourth from Nokia, Samsung and Motorola (not to mention Apple's iPhone)

Some wins...

Blu-ray killed HDVD...
A350 is considered by many one of the best entry-level DSLRs...

So why are they pushing the MP race to the crazy levels? Response is - that is what MOST customers are looking for... most customers started with p&s digital cameras, where MP was the main differentiating factor. My two-cents...

SONY makes the chips for most P&S cameras today, including Canon. I
am really annoyed with Sony constantly shoving more mega pixels into
these super tiny chips. It's very disturbing for a serious user like
myself.

12MP is already overkill, 15MP is purely criminal. All Nikon's pro
cameras are topping out at 12MP today. And for most printing needs,
12MP at 4000 pixels wide is totally sufficient. And here we're
talking point and shoot, not pro stuff!!!

It's really just stupid to use the Mega Pixel race as a marketing
strategy. There is no reason at all that a 15mp jammed packed into a
tiny 1/1.7 or 1.8 or 2.5 can be more useful than a 4000 pixel wide
12MP. There is really no reason for this in consumer P&S cams. None!

I wish Sony would simply set the limit at 12MP and work instead on
making these sensors better. Come up with brands to distinguish
between 12MP sensor grades.

You know the credit card industry uses the same plastic, but they
color them differently to distinguish class. Sony can do the same,
you can have a 12MP I, or 12MP III, or 12 MP Super IV-Extreme. They
can use their massive marketing and branding budgets to come up with
really cool designations for these chips. So not all 12MP sensors
appear the same.

The engineers at Sony: please STOP this madness, stop shoving,
pushing more MP into tiny chips just to force the consumer to
"upgrade" and buy new cams every year or two. Make the chips better
instead and bringing them back by upping the quality. S

--
***
http://www.shahramshiva.com

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Noogy

 

[Maverick_]

I agree consumer's look at the MP rating sticker in the front of the camera. But part of me thinks, many of them already know that a 10MP is more than sufficient for their needs. 15 is criminal, on a chip the size of the finger nail on your pinky. S

--
***
http://www.shahramshiva.com

 

[TonyinJapan]

please STOP this madness, stop shoving,
pushing more MP into tiny chips just to force the consumer to
"upgrade" and buy new cams every year or two.

Nobody forces anybody to buy anything. There are two side to everything, and, in my opinion, the consumer should take responsibility in understanding whether updating their camera every year or two for more MPs is actually worth their hard earned cash. I think consumers will eventually get to the point where they realise: ‘hey, why do I need 16mp/20mp if I am just printing 10x15cm snapshots prints?’

The best game changer is to simply: DON’T BUY OR SUPPORT THOSE COMPANIES WHO ARE DRIVING THE MP GAME!

Support those who are going to use larger sensors in P&S/compacts. No need to name which companies, but September should be the ideal time to see a game changer. wink wink

Then you have no reason to ‘rant’.

--
Regards,
Tony

--------
“To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.” – William Blake –
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/26154011@N07/

 

[PhotoTraveler]

You didn't read a thing I said did you? I'm not saying more pixels is good. I'm saying it can't be avoided.

Lets go to a great parallel, cars.

Do you think any mid size family car needs say 250HP? The answer is no, not even close. And if you go back 15 years, we were much less on average, like half. So if we don't need 250HP in those cars, why do we have it, and how did we get here?

Simple marketing and survival, same as cameras. Car makers have to keep bringing new models. For new models to sell, they need to offer more than the last model, and they need to be competitive with the competition. A primary metric driving this is HP. Car makers didn't do 125HP to 250HP over night. Nor did they really set out to get there, it just happened. They bring a new model, it has 4 more HP than the old one. The competitor brings 5HP more, another one did only 3HP more, but on their next update they did 6HP more, so they pulled back ahead. And so it went, a tiny number of horses at a time over time, and boom, 250HP. Just like MP going up a half or hole pixel at a time. The goal wasn't to hit new power heights, it was to be a bit ahead of the competition because coming out a bit on top on the numbers game keeps you alive.

Now during this time, someone raises their hands and say "we don't need this, why don't you just stick to 125HP, and make it really nice and get great mileage". The car makers all respond "no, we don't want to die". Bringing out your mid size car and being 125HP today (as your top engine), when everyone else has 250HP for the same price basically means you won't sell a car, except to a few random people. Doesn't matter, you go bankrupt. It's the same for all parts of cars. Every model gets a bit more powerful, an extra gear, more legroom, a bigger trunk, a bit bigger on the outside, more cup holders, more speakers, etc every generation. Adding more is progress for buyers.

You can't just stop and say no as a manufacture, even if everything you know about a car says it's not needed. This goes for just about everything about cars, make to radical of a change, especialy one that appears backwards and you have just doomed yourself.

At the same time, this all has a silver lining. As that model of car gets "improved" with every generation, it moves away from where it stated. In time the gap gets so big the introduce new models which often get you back to where you started. Pickups are a great example. Start in the 1930s/40s and work up. You go from small trucks that were basicaly cars, and work up, progressively getting bigger and bigger. As that happened, companies kept back filling with "compact trucks" and then even those trucks grew bigger (see Tacoma, Colorado, and others for example of the compacts getting bigger), and at the top end the big trucks just got Giant (new Tundra). Cars are the same. New models keep getting introduced at the smallest sizes, and those cars just get bigger and bigger. In time a new small one comes out.

But all these new models can pull from the lessons learned on the bigger stuff and make the new stuff even better. The race for more power had wonderfull output for engines. Getting more power for the same fuel consumption or less consumption and low emissions drove the technology to improve. Otherwise those big HP cars and trucks couldn't happen. And everything they learned their flows into new small engines to make them better. Without the drive to try and make super reliable super clean, good mileage 500HP engines, we wouldn't have stellar little 2L engines for econocars. We would have just stuck with good enough.

If they never pushed hard, hybrids may never have happened, as little 4 bangers would have done the job, consumption wouldn't have gone up and there would have been little drive to make a super econo car. You have to push to make improvements.

You make a new generation of your car, it's got the same basic look, same HP, same number of gears, and and all around the same, but market it as getting a bit better mileage, maybe handles a bit better, maybe a bit more reliable. You just aren't going to sell a car. You have to be able to see/feel/hear the improvement.

 

[PhotoTraveler]

You want better ISO, that's fine, plenty of people will. But how are you going to market that. You think you have a remote chance of selling a person a 6MP P&S in a store with a wall of 10, 12, 14MP P&S behind it for the same price, or even less (as those cameras out number yours in production volume). How are you going to do it? Bulk of the people coming in have no idea what ISO is. And when you explain it, it means nothing to them still. You can't show them the difference, the camera is in a box, and or has a play unit tethered to a pole. Can't see a difference on the rear screen. The person keeps pointing out how the other one has more MP so it's better, you think you have a chance to change what they think?

SLRs are on the same path, MP keep going up, 6, 10, 12, 14, 15, 21, 24 and coming in late 2009 or early 2010 we will be over 30. Yet we keep seeing improvements in output, even with higher res. Canon has made a more extreme move than anything Sony has done, they went 10 to 15 over night, no fundamental change (CCD to CMOS like Sony did), they did it with one of the smallest SLR sensors, and yet claim improvements over what the 10MP unit did. They wouldn't have been able to do this without improving their technology, and by pulling it off, they get ahead of the 12 and 14MP stuff out there. This will just continue till they can't make it work any more. And when they get there, lets say when APS gets mid 20MP, they will stop, take what they learned, go back to say 12MP, and have a better 12MP sensor than we have ever seen, and would have never seen if they hadn't pushed into the 20s. This happened in Computer Processors, It's happening to some extent in cars, it happens with peoples spending habits, it will happen with cameras. The path must blow up in the makers and or consumers face before they reshift. Intel got there when they were building miniature Stars for processors, and people got tired of molten laptops on their lap and wind tunnel sized fans. So they reset. Camera makers aren't there yet.

 

[Kenneth Margulies]

Canon and other companies ORDER the chips from Sony. If Sony does not sell teh chips they want--and they want high megapixels--then Canon et al will simply buy from another manufacturer...

BTW--some of the new high Megapixel point and shoots are pretty damn impressive...the Sony DSC-W300 is one of the best made.

SONY makes the chips for most P&S cameras today, including Canon. I
am really annoyed with Sony constantly shoving more mega pixels into
these super tiny chips. It's very disturbing for a serious user like
myself.

12MP is already overkill, 15MP is purely criminal. All Nikon's pro
cameras are topping out at 12MP today. And for most printing needs,
12MP at 4000 pixels wide is totally sufficient. And here we're
talking point and shoot, not pro stuff!!!

It's really just stupid to use the Mega Pixel race as a marketing
strategy. There is no reason at all that a 15mp jammed packed into a
tiny 1/1.7 or 1.8 or 2.5 can be more useful than a 4000 pixel wide
12MP. There is really no reason for this in consumer P&S cams. None!

I wish Sony would simply set the limit at 12MP and work instead on
making these sensors better. Come up with brands to distinguish
between 12MP sensor grades.

You know the credit card industry uses the same plastic, but they
color them differently to distinguish class. Sony can do the same,
you can have a 12MP I, or 12MP III, or 12 MP Super IV-Extreme. They
can use their massive marketing and branding budgets to come up with
really cool designations for these chips. So not all 12MP sensors
appear the same.

The engineers at Sony: please STOP this madness, stop shoving,
pushing more MP into tiny chips just to force the consumer to
"upgrade" and buy new cams every year or two. Make the chips better
instead and bringing them back by upping the quality. S

--
***
http://www.shahramshiva.com

 

[PhotoTraveler]

That's where you think wrong, none of them know 10MP is more than enough. The bulk of them probably just expect things to go to 100MP and onwards.

Also remember, very few people realize the sensor in there is a tiny little thing. The typical P&S buyer thinks the thing inside is the size of the film they used to put into their camera. I have yet to meet a single person who realized the sensor is small. Only those who go and start to read up and dig into things begin to realize this. Your walk into the big box store and buy a camera and has never read up on sensors and sensor sizes and so forth has no idea. They just think the film go swapped out.

People are often shocked when I explain how small the sensor is, they had no idea.

Have you ever been looking through some photos taken by a friend, family member or co-worker and noticed lots of noise, or some other issue and made some comment on it, and there response is how they think they need a new camera and they think they need more pixels to solve it? That normal people thinking. I've had to correct bunches of folks. They buy a camera, they aren't happy with the results, to they go and buy another one with more pixels in an effort to fix it. When that doesn't work, they will buy another one, probably a different brand. Instead of the Sony 14MP super tiny thing, they buy the Canon 14MP super tiny thing, they don't know it has the same sensor inside. Why would they, one is a canon, it has a canon sensor, the nikon has a nikon sensor, the olympus has an olympus sensor to them.

 

[David Banner]

Is it not true?

My D200 -> D300 got me 2 more MP. I didn't see any noise degradation. In fact the D300's noise is much more pleasant. And 2MP is nice when I crop which is all the time.

My only complaint is the filesizes. Until lightroom has a "replace with JPEG" button I'm stuck with gigs of raw files that I don't need.

 

[GodSpeaks]

We would not have ANY progress at all if it were not for R&D. R&D by it's nature involves pushing the envelope and yes, that includes packing more pixels onto the surface of that sensor.

Bottom line is that if you do not like the number of pixels in a given camera, then just do not buy that camera. Period. Very simple really.

But you cannot stop R&D and you cannot stop progress. Without R&D we would still be at noisy 2 and 3 MP cameras, and I would think the digital camera market would be almost nonexistant.

So instaed of complaining, why don't you just enjoy the benifits of what is available. No one is forcing you to go out and buy a high MP count camera. Forgetaboutit, just go out and take photos using the equipment you already own.

--

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler

 

[GodSpeaks]

My only complaint is the filesizes. Until lightroom has a "replace
with JPEG" button I'm stuck with gigs of raw files that I don't need.

If you think that is true, then why are you shooting raw in the first place?

--

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler

 

[Maverick_]

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http://www.shahramshiva.com

 

[Maverick_]

There are lots of good points here. And I read your previous note by the way. and granted consumer is to blame as well. so are the companies who order/demand these chips from Sony. Also if Sony made a crappy 14.7mp P&S sensor chances are Canon wouldn't touch it. But check out Panasonic. They released their LX3, which is their top digicam and they kept it at 10MP with an improved sensor. How brilliant is that?

I don't think that mega pixel in cameras relates to Car HP. HP/Torque relate to speed and pulling power, towing capacity and so on. super large MPs on tiny chips actually slow down cameras and after 12MP they tend to be useless (only talking P&S). For decades 35mm film remained the standard, it just got better, but it was 35mm. We know print sizes and we know what it takes to print well.

Today on the consumer compacts we shoot for two reasons, for print and for viewing on the web. For print 10MP is overkill and for the web 6MP is overkill. So, hence my point about topping out the consumer chips at 12MP and work on making them better by eliminating noise, granting low-light performance and so on. S

--
***
http://www.shahramshiva.com

 

[Maverick_]

For decades 35mm film remained the standard, it just got better and faster/more vibrant, but it was still 35mm. We know print sizes and we know what it takes to print well.

Today on the consumer compacts we shoot for two reasons, for print and for viewing on the web. For print 10MP is overkill and for the web 6MP is overkill. So, hence my point about topping out the consumer chips at 12MP and work on making them better by eliminating noise, granting low-light performance, faster performance and so on.

Panasonic makes their own small chips, they just put out their premier P&S the LX3 and kept it at 10MP. However, it's an improved sensor. Improvement doesn't have to be jamming more MP into tiny chips, does it? As I said, all we shoot is based on 35mm anyway. Which remained the same in size for decades and now is the standard for DSLRs.

I think just like Pana and Fuji, we can do without 15mps on super tiny chips... But Canon being the king of digicams, like you said, is probably maintaining market share by winning the MP race.... lost cause?
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http://www.shahramshiva.com

 

[Maverick_]

I hear you, the more the better with the uneducated consumer. but I hope we can reduce their ranks a few people at a time. then again Canon just shipped their 100,000,000 digicam.
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http://www.shahramshiva.com

 

[Richard Katris]

have you priced a used F30 Fuji lately? do. and good luck at finding one. I checked a few weeks ago, and choked on the $500+ price tag associated with it.....has to be the high ISO capture quality as it is a pretty basic camera in other ways.... 6 meg, 3x zoom..... but better quality at 800--1600 ISO than anything currently available in a PS.... still can't hold a candle to a good DSLR, but it is pocketable, and in many ways I find mine supperior to the G9 I also own...

I would pay more for an 8 meg PS with VERY good shutter lag and high ISO capability than I would for an average 10 meg camera or more as currently offered..... (6 meg is a bit light on MP)
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Richard Katris aka Chanan