a nikon question (blush)

Does anyone know if nikon publish technical reports of their cameras ,similar to canon's white papers?
I've tried searching but no luck so far

Specifically i want to find out details of how nikon's latest sensors work.Canon go into great detail in their white papers to explain their noise reduction techniques.I'm wondering if nikon use similar ideas in theirs?

ron chappel wrote in post #7701496
Specifically i want to find out details of how nikon's latest sensors work.Canon go into great detail in their white papers to explain their noise reduction techniques

These "great details" are on the level of tabloid papers, without giving any useful information.

CMOS sensors are inherently more noisy than CCDs (but they do have important advantages), thus on-chip noise reduction is a must; of course the Nikon CMOS sensors too are doing that.

However, you have to be careful around this "noise reduction". It is nothing comparable to the noise reduction after the fact. Some call this "noise avoidance", with justification. In contrast to any noise reduction in later stages, this step does not deal with the context of the pixel and it does not lead to loss of details. It cares only for the "cleanness" of a single pixel value.

Panopeeper wrote in post #7701688
These "great details" are on the level of tabloid papers, without giving any useful information.


CMOS sensors are inherently more noisy than CCDs (but they do have important advantages), thus on-chip noise reduction is a must; of course the Nikon CMOS sensors too are doing that.

However, you have to be careful around this "noise reduction". It is nothing comparable to the noise reduction after the fact. Some call this "noise avoidance", with justification. In contrast to any noise reduction in later stages, this step does not deal with the context of the pixel and it does not lead to loss of details. It cares only for the "cleanness" of a single pixel value.

Uh... You've got it backwards. CMOS is inherently less noisy than CCD. Nikon is phasing out their cameras with CCD sensors (D40 and D60 are all that are left). Canon is also using CMOS and used it long before Nikon. Some say CCD is better at low ISOs and that might be true, but the overall flexibility of a CMOS sensor is awesome.

foxesamu wrote in post #7702193
Uh... You've got it backwards

Semiconductor design is certainly not in my reach, so I rather turn to a more reliable source (even though I discredited it just before, though not for being incorrect, but for being worthlessly superficial). Following paragraphs are from the White Paper, Chapter V, WHY CMOS?:

CANON'S FULL-FRAME SENSORS: THE FINEST TOOLS FOR DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Transferring voltage requires almost no power compared to transferring a charge, which must move mass. So even with a larger CMOS sensor, power consumption does not change as long as the number of channels is not increased. CCDs, on the other hand, transfer output charges ”as is,” consuming power for the horizontal reading. The bigger CCDs are, the more power they consume. Making them faster also requires more power. A Canon in-house comparison of CCD and CMOS power consumption found that with the very small sensor in point-and-shoot digital cameras, the CCD consumes 50% more power than CMOS. In the case of an APS-C size sensor, used in DSLR cameras such as the EOS Digital Rebel XT, EOS 20D and 30D, the CCD consumes more than twice as much power. With full-frame 35mm sensors, CCDs consume about three times more power as a baseline.

Because CMOS sensors have a converter at each photodiode to transform the charge to voltage, each row of photodiodes can be read separately, and multiple channels of sensor data can be read out simultaneously at high speed.

Now, listen:

CMOS sensors generally have the disadvantage of generating more electrical noise than CCDs, which can result in poor image quality. There are unavoidable fluctuations in the performance of the millions of photodiodes and amplifiers incorporated into [SIZE=2][FONT=MetaNorm​alLF-Roman]
a CMOS sensor, and the tiny differences in performance result in noise in the output image. To overcome this problem, Canon developed on-chip technology to record the noise of each pixel before exposure, and automatically subtract such noise from the image when it is created. The incorporation of noise reduction enables the reading of a noise-free signal. This on-chip circuitry can be added only to CMOS sensors, not CCDs, because of the differences in the way the two are manufactured.

Panopeeper wrote in post #7701688
These "great details" are on the level of tabloid papers, without giving any useful information.


CMOS sensors are inherently more noisy than CCDs (but they do have important advantages), thus on-chip noise reduction is a must; of course the Nikon CMOS sensors too are doing that.

However, you have to be careful around this "noise reduction". It is nothing comparable to the noise reduction after the fact. Some call this "noise avoidance", with justification. In contrast to any noise reduction in later stages, this step does not deal with the context of the pixel and it does not lead to loss of details. It cares only for the "cleanness" of a single pixel value.

Depends on how you look at it actually. CCD are sharper and don't need microlenses, but noise reduction is questionable. CMOS can amplify signals on per pixel level, column, and or row levels depending on the design, while CCD has less options. Since the amplification is spread out over the entire sensor, less heat builds up, and less chances for hotspots (though d3x somehow still gets this horribly wrong). Other than those things, CMOS is usually cheaper to make and draws less power, CCD is usually easier to manufacture for high densities.

I agree that sensor design is not really noise reduction, but certain hardware functions like the amp idling in the mkiii are actually quite useful and very much a noise reduction measure even if it is preemptive.


And white papers are never useless, they let you know specifications that you would otherwise not get, and usually acts like a condensed user manual. No reason to bash it, especially when the alternative is to not have one like nikon, and never know anything about the camera until they decide to update their specs page with something useful.

basroil wrote in post #7702282
Depends on how you look at it actually

Maybe it depends on how you look at that, but I don't subject objective findings to my look.

Unmitigated rubbish.

Added

I was thinking about how you came to this claim. I guess you read about MFDBs, most of which do not have microlenses (there are exceptions), nor AA filter. Due to the lack of the AA filter, the images are inherently sharper (and inherently prone to moire).

However, this is not the question of CCD vs CMOS.

Please let me know as soon as you make some actual use of that information.

OK.. so besides arguing about everything (and most of you getting something fundamental wrong), does anyone have links to descriptions of nikon's CMOS noise reduction ??

You might try asking your question in a Nikon forum like Nikoncafe or Dpreview (Nikon section). This is a Canon forum and I'm sure most of us wouldn't have a clue about this.

its not much Ron but it might help a bit in your quest:

http://www.nikon.com …technology/core​/index.htm

i will try to find more for you...

Jon_Doh wrote in post #7703570
You might try asking your question in a Nikon forum like Nikoncafe or Dpreview (Nikon section). This is a Canon forum and I'm sure most of us wouldn't have a clue about this.

Absolutaly jon_doh, i should have at least asked if any1 knows of nikon forums.Thanks for that!

also thanks for the link Blonde checking it out now.