The 1D and CCD

[Carl_Laskin]

FWIW, my concern regarding the 1D relates to the CCD. Firstly, who makes it for Canon? Won't the CCD have the same dust problems present in the Nikon D1x? At the end of the day, I'll wager the CCD will end up being the weak link in this camera. Just a guess; I'd be delighted to be wrong.

[ThomasSapiano]

From what it looks like, the 1D's CCD is basically a larger version of the D1H imager. Rob's article alludes to this, and the specs make them look similar (same pixel size, 200iso base, etc.). Not sure if there was ever any official source, but I have heard from various different places that the Nikon imager is made by Sony.

However, remember that there is a lot more to the image quality than the imager chip itself. Amplifiers, ADCs as well as all of the other processing and interconnection stages involved in the chain. If the imager is in fact similar to the D1H chip, the basic image quality should be very similar to the Nikon - however both the imager and the other stages have several months on the D1H which should give them marginally better performance.

As for the dust problem, with a cell size the same as the D1H it won't be any worse than the H. The D1X has a more apparent dust problem because its pixels are half the size of the H cells. It also has to do funky interpolation, so the dust particles could be amplified.

However, being 4 megapixels one always has the choice to downsample to ~3mp and average out the noise while still having more resolution than the D1H. Either way, this camera should give us a good sample of both companies relative capabilities in digital camera design with a common central component [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[LesSchofer]

I have shot with a Canon DCS1, which is a 6 megapixel CCD camera (Kodak 460) for 5 years, and have shot with a D30 for the past year. After doing some side-by-side comparisons, I believe that equal resolution shots with the CCD can deliver noticeably better sharpness than the CMOS. For that reason, I pull the old workhorse out occasionally. In all other respects, though, the much more recent technology employed in the D30's CMOS chip, deliver a higher quality image than the 6+ year old technology in my old CCD camera.