A Great Idea!!

[renormalised (Carl)]

I was talking to my brother just now and the topic of conversation wandered onto CCD chips in cameras (he noticed a piccie of one in my assignment). He said can you swap out the CCD in a camera and I said no, they're usually soldered in and can't be changed. He said it was a pity because as new chips came out, you could upgrade your camera.

Now, wouldn't be a brilliant idea if that's exactly what you could do. When a new chip came into production, you could lift the old chip in your camera out of its socket and replace it with a brand new chip. Just change the firmware on the camera's MB and away you go!!!!. It would mean that there'd have to be industry standards that the camera manufacturers would have to adhere to and it might make the manufacturing and eventual operation of the cameras a lot easier if things were standardised. Would probably even make them cheaper in the long run, as well.

[NorthernLight (Max)]

Hi Carl,

what a wonderfull world for us that would be!

BUT:

the camera manufacturers don´t produce CCDs or CMOSs. most of them by them of either kodak or sony. the result of your idea would be the end of all camera makers as there would be over a few years probably enough bodies on the market that can hold a new sensor. so they are not gonna do it.

Also, it is not just done with the sensor and a software upgrade. the sensor talks to some surrounding electronics first and they are a team that wouldn´t work with a new sensor (even pretty standardised PC´s with ZIF sockets for the CPU don´t accept a new processor just like that). so you would have to change the whole motherboard (or what is called in camera).

and since a new board would in many cases and for various reasons need a different mounting or just more space, you would have to also exchange the housing. different housing and different sensor probably means different cooling stage connection as well and so on...

BUT:

I would love to get myself the new Canon 120 Mpixel sensor and mount it in my 450 for a couple of houndred bugs

the idea at least has some sustainability aspects

Cheers!

[netwolf]

Ok its not a impossible idea, just requires some sort of joint working group to be setup to set a industry standard.

Given each sensor has a diffrent layout you need some sort of inbetween adapter to adapt any sensor to a basic Standardised Camera Interface. So possibly the Astronomy groups could decide and develop what should be the common Input Output interface and features of the Camera and then manufacturers of sensors just provide an Adapter board to fit there sensor to the body.

So you would perhaps have one adapter board for Kodak sensors of the same size and type, and anohter for a larger format Kodak sensor. Then you would have adapter boards for Sony sensors etc etc. But the basic Camera body would not change and would provide a standard for developers to build adapters boards on top of.

[kinetic (Steve)]

It's been done for years to a lesser extent Carl in the modded webcam
community. It's not impossible.
People have changed out the RGB ICX098 colour CCD (640x480) and
placed the mono version of this chip.
Because it has no on chip microfilters you see a huge increase in
sensitivity and can use the full chip resolution to do LRGB time exposures.

I have swapped an inferior 640x480 CCD in one of my modded webcams with a
Sony ICX-098 and saw a big decrease in the noise floor.

There is even a thread her which details a swapout of the CCD in
an Imaging Source camera with a far improved chip with successful
lower noise images etc.

Another aspect people have hacked into is the onboard EPROM
within webcams that determines the compression stream of the
camera output.
http://www.burri-web.org/bm98/soft/wcrmac/index.htm
By uploading a different macro into this memory they have bypassed
any onboard sharpening and compression and the camera spits out
pure uncompressed...brilliant stuff.

These people I see as unselfish, brave pioneers who share the results and improve
our imaging as a whole.....I'll see if i can find the link and
update this post.http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=58087

Steve