CCD vs. CMOS

Interesting article. I think I'll shoot film for another year .

http://www.discover.com/dec_02/featphoto.html

Take care,

Jose Suro
Tierra Verde, Florida

This is based on Foveon. Despite the hype, the reality of Foveon technology has been very limited. The basic problem, and this is a big issue when it comes to astrophotography, is quantum efficiency. The best astro-specific CCD images have a peak QE of around 90%. Foveon QE is much, much lower, so you can't acquire much signal in a reasonable period of time - but noise will acculate as quickly as it always does.

These facts are particularly ironic given that the slogan from Foveon is "use all the light." They simply don't come close to that - yes, they use all the colors (sort of, but that's another story), but they lose most of the light. A more honest slogan would be "use most of the colors but sacrifice everything else." The comparison image at the top of the article is also very deceptive; it is not comparing apples to apples at all.

So it will be much more than a year - if ever - before this particular technology becomes useful in the astro arena. It's quite disappointing to see such biased press coverage. I used to be a newspaper reporter and editor, and that has all the hallmarks of being written directly from a Foveon press release.

Ron Wodaski