phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) (03/23/91)
I would like to find out what the current state of the market is (I know
for certain the technology exists) for ways to do digital photography.
1. Do any of these digital video still cameras have a direct digital to
digital interface so that you can load the photos you took directly
into the computer WITHOUT a video step along the way?
2. Are there any digitizer/scanners that can work directly from 35mm
slides (again, not via any video)?
I want color images to be in an RGB format, i.e. so that I can do my own
processing on them. I do NOT want to be stuck with some program that
someone else thinks everyone wants. I want to process the images with
tools like PBMPLUS. B&W grayscales systems are OK, too. The higher the
resolution the better. 640x480 is an absolute minimum. 1280x1024 would
be nice. The equivalent of a 8x10 photo enlargement scanned at 300 DPI
would be really great (from the slide).
--
/***************************************************************************\
< Phil Howard -- KA9WGN -- phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu >
\***************************************************************************/andy@research.canon.oz.au (Andy Newman) (03/24/91)
In article <1991Mar22.234502.4783@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) writes: >I would like to find out what the current state of the market is (I know >for certain the technology exists) for ways to do digital photography. > >1. Do any of these digital video still cameras have a direct digital to > digital interface so that you can load the photos you took directly > into the computer WITHOUT a video step along the way? > The Canon Still Video System stores images as analogue video recordings so there is no digital version available. To get the images into a machine you need a framegrabber. Don't know about other systems. >2. Are there any digitizer/scanners that can work directly from 35mm > slides (again, not via any video)? > >I want color images to be in an RGB format, i.e. so that I can do my own >processing on them. I do NOT want to be stuck with some program that >someone else thinks everyone wants. I want to process the images with >tools like PBMPLUS. B&W grayscales systems are OK, too. The higher the >resolution the better. 640x480 is an absolute minimum. 1280x1024 would >be nice. The equivalent of a 8x10 photo enlargement scanned at 300 DPI >would be really great (from the slide). \begn{advertisment} The Canon CLC500 can scan from slides and negatives. The CLC500 is mainly marketed as a colour photocopier although it is described as an image processing system. The CLC is really a colour scanner and printer hooked together with an optional computer interface called an IPU -- Intelligent Processing Unit). Canon sell an IPU that allows scanning and printing via an IEEE-488 or SCSI port, Adobe have a colour PostScript IPU based on the MIPS R3000. The Canon IPU's give you lots of control over the size of the image you want to scan/print and let you do things like gamma correction on the image inside the unit. The still video system can also be connected to the IPU letting you grab images and print them, this applies to both real video and the still video cameras. The CLC is quite expensive (i.e. many tens thousands of dollars) but provides quite useful functions. The quality of the scanner and printer is good enough to use it to produce blow ups of slides and negs. \end{advertisment} -- Andy Newman (andy@research.canon.oz.au) Canon Info. Systems Research Australia "X: 2. An over-sized, over-featured, over-engineered window system developed at MIT and widely used on UNIX systems." from the jargon file.
tonyb@titania.juliet.ll.mit.edu ( Tony Berke) (03/26/91)
The major thing you didn't mention is how big your budget is. I've worked with Electronic Pre-Press systems that cost several million dollars that would probably suit you just fine. (Most big-budget ads and many magazine photos you see are produced/tweaked from a combination of hand-drawn art, medium-to- large format positive photographic material, and computer-generated text and lines). Assuming you have at least a couple of grand to blow, I can suggest a couple of vendors -- try Polaroid for slide scanners, and, more interestingly, output devices. The cheapest (from a hardware standpoint) way to get your processed images back onto paper (assuming you want to) is to get it back onto film and blow it up conventionally. Ouput devices: The Canon color photocopy machine has OK ouput but costs mucho $$$. It's advantage is that it also gives you the scanning end of things. Polaroid has a couple of new versions of their 'Palette' product that sound pretty cool, and can give you something like 2400 pixels per line. Scitex corp just bought out a firm I used to work for, Iris Graphics. Iris' product is this amazing full-color ink-jet printer that uses some trick physics to get 5-6 bits of intensity control for each of 4 colors (CMYK) at 300DPI. Some local dithering that is not particularly noticable gives a pretty good imitation of 8-bits-per-pixel. The wild thing is that these printers are available all the way up to E-sized (32x40 INCHES!!) The big ones cost $100,000+, but I think they are introducing one that makes 11x17's for $30k. The consumables cost for the machine is practically nothing (paper). Input Devices: Try Polaroid. I believe the Palette products are part of a mid-priced Desk- Top Publishing line that focuses on corporate presentation graphics, and I'm pretty sure that they have an 'affordable' scanner as part of it. Their idea is that you use their instant slide film to take the pictures, scan them in, mess with them, and shoot the stuff back out onto more of their instant slide film for presentation to awe-struck corporate types. Polaroid had a prototype electronic camera years ago, but their marketing people are so whimpy that they have never marketed it -- they seem determined to make the exact same mistake as Ampex did with the VCR. Bozos!!! If you have $30,000 to spend on a scanner as well, Scitex has something called the SmartScanner, which will give you up to 8000 pixels/line, regardless of the size of the original (I think it will scann up to 4x5 inches, but I'm not sure). I've been told that 8000 pixels is better than the film-grain of Ektachrome 50 in 35mm format, so you should be safe. But bring a really big disk-drive to the party. I don't know if these products are way out of line with what you had in mind, but the're all I know about. I've just run into these products while doing software consulting work for the three companies whose products I mentioned (except Cannon). I'm not a professional EPPS person, so please don't take these comments as gospel. Tony Berke (email: tonyb@juliet.ll.mit.edu)
twakeman@Apple.COM (Teriann J. Wakeman) (03/27/91)
In article <1991Mar22.234502.4783@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) writes: >I would like to find out what the current state of the market is (I know >for certain the technology exists) for ways to do digital photography. > >1. Do any of these digital video still cameras have a direct digital to > digital interface so that you can load the photos you took directly > into the computer WITHOUT a video step along the way? Yes, there as a few didital cameras on the market. Canon makes a couple. They image to a small floppy disk. You insert the disk into a reader that is connected to a Macintosh as a SCSI peripherial & save it onto a hard drive. Then you can open the picture into a photographic editing package such as Adobe Photoshop, Digital DarkRoom or Image Studio. You can edit your picture if you wish, print it or place a copy into a desktop pubishing application. > >2. Are there any digitizer/scanners that can work directly from 35mm > slides (again, not via any video)? > There are several on the market that will work with a Macintosh computer. I have been playing with a 35mm slide scanner made by Eastman Kodak. I think it is an exellent product. Nikon makes one, Barny makes one {Barny Scan}, and Microtek is coming out with one this spring. Microtek's MTS-1850 will be the low cost solution. It will list for less than $4000, and may have a street price in the high 2000s or low 3000s. >I want color images to be in an RGB format, i.e. so that I can do my own >processing on them. I do NOT want to be stuck with some program that >someone else thinks everyone wants. I want to process the images with >tools like PBMPLUS. B&W grayscales systems are OK, too. The higher the >resolution the better. 640x480 is an absolute minimum. 1280x1024 would >be nice. The equivalent of a 8x10 photo enlargement scanned at 300 DPI >would be really great (from the slide). >-- > > /***************************************************************************\ >< Phil Howard -- KA9WGN -- phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu > > \***************************************************************************/ TeriAnn Wakeman
fontenot@rice.edu (Dwayne Jacques Fontenot) (03/27/91)
In article <50815@apple.Apple.COM> twakeman@Apple.COM (Teriann J. Wakeman) writes: >In article <1991Mar22.234502.4783@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) writes: >>I would like to find out what the current state of the market is (I know >>for certain the technology exists) for ways to do digital photography. >> >>1. Do any of these digital video still cameras have a direct digital to >> digital interface so that you can load the photos you took directly >> into the computer WITHOUT a video step along the way? >Yes, there as a few didital cameras on the market. Canon makes a couple. They >image to a small floppy disk. You insert the disk into a reader that is >connected to a Macintosh as a SCSI peripherial & save it onto a hard drive. >Then you can open the picture into a photographic editing package such as >Adobe Photoshop, Digital DarkRoom or Image Studio. You can edit your picture >if you wish, print it or place a copy into a desktop pubishing application. >> The image data is stored internally (on the 2" floppy) in an *analog* format that was developed ~10 years ago by a consortium of electronics corporations. After the image is taken off the CCD, it is no longer digital -- if you want it in digital form, you have to *digitize* it. The analog step involves quite a bit of degradation of the image data. I think the first poster and I are looking for the same thing; a digital camera that stores the images in DIGITAL form on the internal floppy, and, (this is the important part) has an RS232 port on it. That way, you could hook up you DB25 strap cable directly from the camera to your computer's serial port -- no expensive, quality-degrading peripherals required. I cannot afford $700 for the camera *plus* $xK for a (useless for anything else) disk drive or a frame grabber card. Also, I refuse on principle alone to buy anything so stupidly obviously built-in-planned-obsolescence designed (i.e. there is *NO* reason, at least no good reason I have heard, for these cameras to still be using ugly, messy analog technology). So what if I can only get half the current number of images on a disk, I would gladly make that tradeoff. Or, more likely, I would pay more for higher density disks, since they are reuseable. Well, I really didn't mean to get on a soap box about this; just inform you that the current "digital" cameras out on the market (at least all the ones I have seen and read about) are still really analog where it counts. Thank you for your time, Dwayne Fontenot (fontenot@comet.rice.edu) Rice Advanced Visualization Lab (RAVL)
sgombosi@isis.cs.du.edu (Stephen O. Gombosi) (03/27/91)
>phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) > 1. Do any of these digital video still cameras have a direct digital to > digital interface so that you can load the photos you took directly > into the computer WITHOUT a video step along the way? Hasselblad and Rollei both make digital imaging interface backs for their (VERY EXPENSIVE) medium format SLRs. The Hassy back IS currently available (it's in last year's catalogue), I think the Rollei is still in the 90% complete phase. Either of these will cost you the GNP of a good-sized country to buy. Kodak (of all people) demonstrated a similar device for the Nikon F-3 at Photokina (it was reported in Pop. Photography a couple of months ago). It came with a shoulder pack containing the computer and disk drive. Quality was supposedly equal to 35mm (although some of the posters here would doubtless greet that claim with various snide remarks about the quality of tiny negatives :-). This was strictly a prototype (I think) and was mainly targeted at large news organizations (i.e. $$$). I don't think any of the still video cameras offer anything comparable. I have no idea what kind of output you get from the aforementioned gadgets - too expensive for me (besides, I LIKE the smell of hypo...).
jacobson@cello.hpl.hp.com (David Jacobson) (03/30/91)
In article <1991Mar27.015600.21812@rice.edu> fontenot@rice.edu (Dwayne Jacques Fontenot) writes regarding a previous query about digital video: > The image data is stored internally (on the 2" floppy) in an *analog* format > that was developed ~10 years ago by a consortium of electronics corporations. > After the image is taken off the CCD, it is no longer digital -- if you want > it in digital form, you have to *digitize* it. The analog step involves > quite a bit of degradation of the image data. > [stuff deleted] > Also, I refuse on principle alone to buy anything so stupidly > obviously built-in-planned-obsolescence designed (i.e. there is *NO* reason, > at least no good reason I have heard, for these cameras to still be using > ugly, messy analog technology). [more stuff deleted] Underlying this posting seems to be the assumption that at some point the image was digital, and the manufactureres are turning it back into analog. Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs) are inherently analog devices. In most video systems the image never is digital. I don't think there is anything malicious going on here. -- David Jacobson
fontenot@rice.edu (Dwayne Jacques Fontenot) (03/30/91)
In article <1991Mar29.173328.23660@cello.hpl.hp.com> jacobson@cello.hpl.hp.com (David Jacobson) writes: >In article <1991Mar27.015600.21812@rice.edu> fontenot@rice.edu (Dwayne >Jacques Fontenot) writes regarding a previous query about digital video: > >> The image data is stored internally (on the 2" floppy) in an *analog* format >> that was developed ~10 years ago by a consortium of electronics corporations. >> After the image is taken off the CCD, it is no longer digital -- if you want >> it in digital form, you have to *digitize* it. The analog step involves >> quite a bit of degradation of the image data. >> [stuff deleted] >> Also, I refuse on principle alone to buy anything so stupidly >> obviously built-in-planned-obsolescence designed (i.e. there is *NO* reason, >> at least no good reason I have heard, for these cameras to still be using >> ugly, messy analog technology). [more stuff deleted] > >Underlying this posting seems to be the assumption that at some point >the image was digital, and the manufactureres are turning it back into >analog. Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs) are inherently analog devices. >In most video systems the image never is digital. I don't think there >is anything malicious going on here. > > -- David Jacobson Yes, several people have informed me that CCDs are not digital devices. You are right and I was wrong...about *that* part. Perhaps the only semi-malicious thing going on here is the fact that these devices are said to do "digital photography". I think that term applied to these devices is misleading many people. The main point I would like to make is that I think the image data should be digitized as soon as posssible; inside the camera before it is stored on disk. Once you have your data in digital form degradation due to signal attenuation and noise stops. I think this is well within the capabilities of today's technology, and at a reasonable price. It is true that images in digital form take up more space than analog, but storage technology has increases many times over what was available 10 years ago. We now have 2" hard disks that have >60Mb capacities, as can be found in any self-respecting notebook computer. I guess it all comes down to marketing. The cameras did not take off when they were introduced and perhaps companies are afraid of getting burned if they spend a great deal of money to R & D a completely new-technology product in this area. (By this area I mean at a price level that would be accessible to many people, not just labs with $5-10-15 thousand dollars to spend). Thank you for your time, Dwayne Jacques Fontenot (fontenot@comet.rice.edu) Rice Advanced Visualization Lab (RAVL)
dpi@loft386.uucp (Doug Ingraham) (03/31/91)
> I would like to find out what the current state of the market is (I know > for certain the technology exists) for ways to do digital photography. > > 1. Do any of these digital video still cameras have a direct digital to > digital interface so that you can load the photos you took directly > into the computer WITHOUT a video step along the way? Not yet. They will eventually. The current systems record the data on the floppy using analog techniques or as pulse width encoding (Still analog). > > 2. Are there any digitizer/scanners that can work directly from 35mm > slides (again, not via any video)? Nikon makes a wonderful unit that has 4096x6144x24 bits resolution. Its about $10,000. I wanted one of these pretty bad, but for home use, I couldn't justify it. So a friend of mine and I are building our own. Total parts costs are about $300. We are using my Bessler enlarger to project the Slides/Negatives onto a front surface mirror that is mounted on a stepper motor. Using 2 12 bit D/A converters we can microstep the stepper motor to rotate the image across a linear ccd array. The ccd array we are currently using came from an abandoned cannon scanner and has 2592 bits. We are converting the output of the ccd array using a 12 bit A/D converter. We don't have everything working yet, but all the remaining problems are with software. The hardware is working well. I am getting the Utah RLE package running and will use that as the storage format until I find something better. This is not fast. It takes about 12 minutes/pass so about 36 minutes for a full color image to be scanned in at 2592x3888x36. The image is increasingly noisy from the left to the right because of the speed at which we scan, so we discard the least significant 4 bits to eliminate the noise. This problem will be solved when we obtain an A/D converter that is faster than 25us convert. I am looking at several parts, but am waiting until everything else is working before I pop for a new part. Also, we will probably get a larger ccd array at some future time. NEC and TI both make larger units. > I want color images to be in an RGB format, i.e. so that I can do my own > processing on them. I do NOT want to be stuck with some program that > someone else thinks everyone wants. I want to process the images with > tools like PBMPLUS. B&W grayscales systems are OK, too. The higher the Exactly! > resolution the better. 640x480 is an absolute minimum. 1280x1024 would > be nice. The equivalent of a 8x10 photo enlargement scanned at 300 DPI > would be really great (from the slide). This is currently 324dpi at 8x10 resolution. Eventually, I might offer to scan images in for people. I dont know what I would charge. This is a lot of data and real images dont compress all that well. Something like 30mb per image is a lot of data. -- Doug Ingraham (SysAdmin) Lofty Pursuits (Public Access for Rapid City SD USA) bigtex!loft386!dpi uunet!loft386!dpi
suitti@ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti) (04/02/91)
In article <1991Mar30.060743.25275@rice.edu> fontenot@comet.rice.edu (Dwayne Jacques Fontenot) writes: >In article <1991Mar29.173328.23660@cello.hpl.hp.com> jacobson@cello.hpl.hp.com (David Jacobson) writes: >>In article <1991Mar27.015600.21812@rice.edu> fontenot@rice.edu (Dwayne >>Jacques Fontenot) writes regarding a previous query about digital video: >> >>> The image data is stored internally (on the 2" floppy) in an *analog* format >>> that was developed ~10 years ago by a consortium of electronics corporations. >>> After the image is taken off the CCD, it is no longer digital -- if you want >>> it in digital form, you have to *digitize* it. The analog step involves >>> quite a bit of degradation of the image data. >>> [stuff deleted] >>> Also, I refuse on principle alone to buy anything so stupidly >>> obviously built-in-planned-obsolescence designed (i.e. there is *NO* reason, >>> at least no good reason I have heard, for these cameras to still be using >>> ugly, messy analog technology). [more stuff deleted] Standards. Ten years is a long for technology these days. I don't complain about how slow VAX 780s are any more. I don't complain about how expensive they are to maintain any more. We ditched ours. >Yes, several people have informed me that CCDs are not digital devices. You >are right and I was wrong...about *that* part. Perhaps the only semi-malicious >thing going on here is the fact that these devices are said to do "digital >photography". I think that term applied to these devices is misleading >many people. Audio CDs have taught many, for good or ill, that "digital" means "perfect". It's a lie. It was always a lie. If anything, "digital" means "flexible". >The main point I would like to make is that I think the image >data should be digitized as soon as possible; inside the camera before it >is stored on disk. Once you have your data in digital form degradation due >to signal attenuation and noise stops. I think this is well within the >capabilities of today's technology, and at a reasonable price. It is true >that images in digital form take up more space than analog, but storage >technology has increases many times over what was available 10 years ago. >We now have 2" hard disks that have >60Mb capacities, as can be found in >any self-respecting notebook computer. I guess it all comes down to marketing. >The cameras did not take off when they were introduced and perhaps >companies are afraid of getting burned if they spend a great deal of money >to R & D a completely new-technology product in this area. (By this area I >mean at a price level that would be accessible to many people, not just >labs with $5-10-15 thousand dollars to spend). My guess is that the cameras did not take off because they were/are such poor quality. Let's say that the CCD in the camera can be arbitrarily large. The Hubble Space Telescope is said to have an 8Kx8K CCD. Note that 35 mm has an aspect ratio of about 3:2, rather than 1:1. Let's say that the disk speed is 2 MB/second for uncompressed data (no processing). Let's say that the disk is 72 MB (1 MB=2**20). Let's say that 24 bit color is considered OK. CCD size Data size Recording time Images/disk 8Kx8K 192 MB 96 sec 0.375 (Hubble Space Telescope) 4Kx6K 72 MB 36 sec 1 2Kx3K 18 MB 9 sec 4 1Kx1.5K 4.5 MB 2.25 sec 16 512x768 393216 0.1875 sec 192 Can the CCD hold an image for 36 seconds? 9 seconds? Can the user wait that long? Maybe 1Kx1.5K is the right size. You could put some 5 MB RAM into it so you could take two shots rapidly. It could end up costing more - so you make the RAM an add-on option. No matter what you do, users will complain it costs too much. Or maybe 512x768 will be better, since 4 MB RAM could buffer 10 rapid fire images. How much is a 72 MB disk drive going to cost? With power supply? How much would a 4Kx6K CCD cost? 2Kx3K? Can the disk drive survive the jerking that many cameras must survive? Maybe the camera should have a 4Kx6K CCD, but allow the user to select the resolution each shot. I don't know when such a camera might be built & marketed. I do know that large companies, such as Kodak, Canon, etc., do spend money on R&D. Lots of things that are only available to labs, etc., because they are > $10K are still profitable. Medicine & War are examples. Stephen suitti@ima.isc.com Disclaimer - I don't speak for Interactive, or Kodak. Any statistics should be computed for yourself. Any hand waiving should be waved for yourself. "We Americans want peace, and it is now evident that we must be prepared to demand it. For other peoples have wanted peace, and the peace they received was the peace of death." - the Most Rev. Francis J. Spellman, Archbishop of New York. 22 September, 1940
levay@stsci.EDU (Zoltan Levay) (04/02/91)
In article <1991Apr01.182950.14843@ima.isc.com>, suitti@ima.isc.com (Stephen Uitti) writes: > Let's say that the CCD in the camera can be arbitrarily large. > The Hubble Space Telescope is said to have an 8Kx8K CCD. Note > that 35 mm has an aspect ratio of about 3:2, rather than 1:1. The WF/PC (CCD cameras) on the Hubble Space Telescope uses four 800x800 pixel CCD chips in a two-by-two array, resulting in a mosaic of 1600x1600 pixels. (Remember that this is relatively old technology--the original launch dates were early 1980s.) Each pixel in the resulting images has a depth of 16 bits (two bytes) so we're talking ~1.22MB per chip. A given exposure is monochrome, but there are filters aboard that allow fields to be exposed in different colors and multi-color images to be constructed. -- Zolt "f/8 and be there!" Bill Garrett