Status of current research on digital and analog photography

Photo Engineer · Jul 1, 2006

A few weeks ago, Timester posted a thread purporting to support analog over digital, and included some very wrong or shaky science.

Since then, I have been trying to read up on the digital advances to let you judge digital for yourself. This is NOT a digital post, nor a diatrabe against/for digital or analog for that matter (you all know where I stand).

Here are some digital facts:

1. New sensors are being designed in which the R/G/B sensor array is not side-by-side, but rather stacked in a manner similar to the layered structure of analog film. This may reduce "grain" and improve sharpness of digital imaging. It will eliminate aliasing. (many publications have been written about this and a few new products available now use this technology)

2. The invention of the superlens, which uses metamaterials (Pendry and Smith, Physics Today, Vol 57, #6, pp 37-48, June 2004.) allows materials to have a negative index of refraction. This means that a sensor array element can be constructed with a size smaller than the wavelength of light used to create it. This is not theory, it has been reduced to practice and is coming.

The point is not to enhance the image (pun alert) of digital, or run down analog, as stated above. This is a factual statement of two major fields of digital R&D which will change the playing field wrt digital vs analog, and it is coming in our near future. The major companies are all alert to this and it is governing their actions in both areas of work.

As I said in an earlier post, it is very hard and expensive to perform analog photographic research as it is a mature science, but with digital, it is on the upslope of a typical exponential curve observed in a 'young' science. You get more 'bang' for the bucks invested in digital.

The most recent analog research example is the 25,000 speed reversal thermally developed film invented by Gilman et. al. Otherwise, there is little real research in this field, it is mainly small improvements in existing technology.

So, here are some facts for you to mull over. I don't want to foster controversy, just alert you to the state of current digital research and answer some absurd science posted previously regarding this subject.

Analog forever is my motto regardless.

PE

Roger Hicks · Jul 1, 2006

Dear Photo Engineer,

Oh, you quaint, old-fashioned thing! Fancy believing that zealots (a) understand science or (b) care about it.

Your point about new and mature fields is well made and well taken. I'd only add that we still don't have the radically new bicycle with one, three or more wheels. As soon as the number of wheels changes, it ceases to be a bicycle.

Silver halide may not be as far from digital photography as a unicycle or a tricycle is from a bicycle, but it's still far enough that I'll cheerfully echo your 'Analog forever' (or at least 'Analogue forever' -- I am British, though my wife Frances Schultz was born in Rochester and her uncle David was for many years a Kodak pilot).

Cheers,

Roger

Greg_E · Jul 1, 2006

So the Foveon still lives. I was wondering about it and/or similar designs.

Photo Engineer · Jul 1, 2006

Greg, yes it lives and thrives.

Roger, I probably flew with him when I used one of those planes to get around. And, enough people caught the errors or should I call them atrocities in Timesters many posts that I figured that they did care and were knowledgable. I care. Thats why I took the time to do the reading. And, there are more engineers and chemists here than you know.

PE

HerrBremerhaven · Jul 1, 2006

Hello Photo Engineer,

I really have to wonder about your statement implying digital imaging research yielding better bang for the buck. One look at the trail of camera companies struggling to generate profits, or shutting their doors, and it seems profits are elusive. Perhaps the chip companies are making some profits, but somehow past that stage most other companies down the line seem to be losing their collective a$$es.

Just for one nice aspect of the industry, it is really nice to see Fuji introducing new films. I have heard from an engineer with Eastman Chemical, in a brief conversation last year, that whenever a new film gets released, it should mean eight to ten years of usuable products. Maybe that is not exactly true, but when I see a new film, especially anything E-6, I feel okay about film producers.

Ciao!

Gordon

JohnArs · Jul 1, 2006

Fuji is working on a new 3 RGB layer chip like there films, just read it in german mag!
So my next Fuji S4 will have it I hope!

Photo Engineer · Jul 1, 2006

HerrBremerhaven said:
Hello Photo Engineer,

I really have to wonder about your statement implying digital imaging research yielding better bang for the buck. One look at the trail of camera companies struggling to generate profits, or shutting their doors, and it seems profits are elusive. Perhaps the chip companies are making some profits, but somehow past that stage most other companies down the line seem to be losing their collective a$$es.

Just for one nice aspect of the industry, it is really nice to see Fuji introducing new films. I have heard from an engineer with Eastman Chemical, in a brief conversation last year, that whenever a new film gets released, it should mean eight to ten years of usuable products. Maybe that is not exactly true, but when I see a new film, especially anything E-6, I feel okay about film producers.

Ciao!

Gordon

Gordon;

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I did not mean more company profit per research dollar. I meant more scientific advances in the field of digital photography, as a research dollar does not directly relate or translate into to company profits.

Also, digital is highly competetive, easy (relatively so) to get into and is really not a commodity as film is, so profits are low and hard to come by.

The comment about a new product creating other products is almost entirely correct. A new film such as one using 2 electron sensitzation has generated a whole host of new chemical products made by EK suppliers.

This includes the couplers, support, gelatin and etc used in manufacture as well as the organo-osmates used in the new sensitization. <- yes, you saw here a generic name for the 2 electron sensitizers for the first time by me. I have not named them at all before IIRC, but they have been disclosed in patents and at the ICIS conference in May. The 2 electron sensitizer has opened up a whole host of new chemistry for conventional products derived from a pent-cyano-osmate coupled with a type of dye or electron transport agent. Fuji has introduced Tellurium sensitization in their new paper. And so the round of new chemical development continues.

I'm glad. It shows that new R&D for analog is going on apace.

PE

Ed Sukach · Jul 1, 2006

Photo Engineer said:
..
2. The invention of the superlens, which uses metamaterials (Pendry and Smith, Physics Today, Vol 57, #6, pp 37-48, June 2004.) allows materials to have a negative index of refraction. This means that a sensor array element can be constructed with a size smaller than the wavelength of light used to create it. This is not theory, it has been reduced to practice and is coming.

A "negative index of refraction" .... I've got to think about this one. At first blush ... why not? ... But ... wouldn't that mean that a concave-concave lens would act as a convex-convex? .... Must be something escaping me ... somewhere, somehow.

Now the possibity of "Constructing a sensor array element smaller than the wavelength of light used to create it ..."??

Huh? What wavelength are we talking about? The length of a single wave of visible - "white" - light is approximately 0.000 020" -- twenty millionths of an inch (apologies for using "English" units). That is teeny-tiny. Who is going to get the task of connecting these puppies, and what tweezers ae they going to use?
I suppose we would be talking about laser beams? ... But there we have the "heating effect" caused by minor inperfections ... therefore the usual use of crystal lenses with higher than glass indices ... or would magnetic fields be used ... a la' Electron Microscope ... not physical, optical lenses ...???

I would LOVE to have access to these articles. Let me guess ... there i$ a charge for us mere mortals without endless monetary resources...

Photo Engineer · Jul 1, 2006

Ed;

Today, many digital manufacturing devices use X-rays to inscribe or etch the images onto the substrate. Current X-ray lensing requires that the size of the image formed is larger than the wavelength of an X-ray, but with this method it can be at or less than the wavelength of an X-ray. Tiny indeed! This would allow sensors to be built in the size range of current silver halide grains rather than the relatively 'huge' size they are now built at.

With a positive index of refraction, if you stick a pencil into a liquid such as water it appears to bend. If water had a negative index of refraction, the pencil would seem to stick out of the water at an angle determined by the index of refraction.

This article is reprinted in laymans language in the July 2006 edition of Scientific American, including illustrations to help understand the issues involved.

Have fun.

PE

Donald Qualls · Jul 1, 2006

Negative index of refraction must be a mathematical fiction of some sort -- on the face of it, it would imply that the speed of light in the material in question is faster than in a vacuum, which any Einsteinian physicist will tell you is impossible (and never mind the soliton trimming experiments that have light pulses exiting a medium before entering it -- they haven't yet managed to carry information on those pulses at supraluminal velocities, and IMO never will; wavefronts that form an image do so by carrying information, and so cannot travel faster than c).

HerrBremerhaven · Jul 2, 2006

Hello Photo Engineer,

Thanks for the clarification. Regarding the developments in film, I have seen some interesting AGFA (parent company, not AGFA Photo) developments for use in commercial printing. While these don't use daylight for exposure, the results and spot control are pretty amazing. I would think the commercial printing world might get a little more R&D effort than photographic films. However, it seems like some of that technology could trickle down to photographic films.

I recall the 2 electron films being mentioned, though I do wonder just a little about viability of such items. It seems there is more of a limit in printing images than in capturing them. Until we scale up or enlarge by significant factors, the benefits of higher resolutions seem unused. I would rather see better colour response, like being able to print those yellows that E100VS captures.

Too often internet discussions hit upon resolution. What I need for work, and the reasons I use several different films for varying subjects, is to have a better choice of colour pallettes. Then I need to be able to print those, either chemically for my fine art images, or commercially by adding or substituting Pantone inks.

Ciao!

Gordon

JBrunner · Jul 2, 2006

It is interesting what we as different photographers value. I find I take film resolution for granted. It's the lattitude I need and love.

bjorke · Jul 2, 2006

Materials with negative refractive index are genuine, there have been lots of proposed uses for them, including using them to make objects disappear (at certain wavelengths) for military purposes.

No fundamental physical laws were broken in the creation of these materials.

Ed Sukach · Jul 2, 2006

I agree with Donald Qualls.... In some way, the velocity of light would have to be increased - but ... wouldn't the effect of a negative index of refraction be to make "the pencil in the water" bend in the opposite direction, rather than "jump out of it"?

Come to think of it ... the "Critical Angle" - linked inseparably with the index of refraction - .... as it is exceeded, light is no longer refracted, but reflected. If the critical angle was zero (actually 90 degrees from the surface of the glass), we would have a perfect mirror.
"Less than zero" ... ???? ... Hard to imagine. Light bouncing all over the place, like one of those "Disco Mirror Balls".... ??? I can't even figure a way to set that up for measurement...

This is like saying, "Once we reach a temperature below absolute zero ....".

jd callow · Jul 2, 2006

JBrunner said:
It is interesting what we as different photographers value. I find I take film resolution for granted. It's the lattitude I need and love.

Resolution isn't the holy grail for me either. I love the palette, grain, relationship with paper (how the paper resolves the neg) and the process. I just did some copy work with a DSLR. My copy skills leave something to be desired, but using the dslr was a life saver.

Photo Engineer · Jul 2, 2006

Donald Qualls said:
Negative index of refraction must be a mathematical fiction of some sort -- on the face of it, it would imply that the speed of light in the material in question is faster than in a vacuum, which any Einsteinian physicist will tell you is impossible (and never mind the soliton trimming experiments that have light pulses exiting a medium before entering it -- they haven't yet managed to carry information on those pulses at supraluminal velocities, and IMO never will; wavefronts that form an image do so by carrying information, and so cannot travel faster than c).

Donald;

They have indeed carried information.

On a PBS program last year, they showed just that. Music was transmitted at 8x the speed of light (IIRC).

However, this methodology that I mention does not require that the speed of light be exceeded. Read the popularized article to get a feel for it.

PE

Petzi · Jul 2, 2006

Photo Engineer said:
Donald;

They have indeed carried information.

On a PBS program last year, they showed just that. Music was transmitted at 8x the speed of light (IIRC).

I don't know what a PBS program is, but this sounds like the experiment that was made by Prof. Nimtz of Cologne several years ago. He modulated microwaves with Mozart and sent them through a tunnel. The music passes through the tunnel faster than light. They say it passes through the tunnel in no time at all. The price for this is that the signal gets very weak.

http://www.ph2.uni-koeln.de/Nimtz/

naturephoto1 · Jul 2, 2006

Petzi said:
I don't know what a PBS program is, but this sounds like the experiment that was made by Prof. Nimtz of Cologne several years ago. He modulated microwaves with Mozart and sent them through a tunnel. The music passes through the tunnel faster than light.

http://www.ph2.uni-koeln.de/Nimtz/

Petzi,

Sorry, PBS is an American abbreviation for Public Broadcasting System- a non-profit TV and radio system that makes its own programming- much of it educational. Some of it with the BBC as well as broadcasting some old BBC broadcasts and UK TV including at least in the past Monty Python, Dr. Who ....

Rich

Photo Engineer · Jul 2, 2006

Petzi said:
I don't know what a PBS program is, but this sounds like the experiment that was made by Prof. Nimtz of Cologne several years ago. He modulated microwaves with Mozart and sent them through a tunnel. The music passes through the tunnel faster than light. They say it passes through the tunnel in no time at all. The price for this is that the signal gets very weak in the tunnel.

http://www.ph2.uni-koeln.de/Nimtz/

Petzi, I believe you are right. It was done in Germany.

A US team later duplicated this work, but could only achieve about 2x light speed.

So, it has been done.

Thanks for the information. I could not remember the details. I'll have to look up that URL.

BTW, PBS is Public Broadcasting System which is the free US educational and entertainment network.

PE

srs5694 · Jul 2, 2006

Petzi said:
I don't know what a PBS program is,

PBS = Public Broadcasting Service

This is a TV network in the US that's funded mostly by viewer contributions and corporate sponsorship, rather than traditional TV ads (although there are a few short ads between programs). They carry mostly educational programming (for both children and adults), news, and more "literary" dramas (as opposed to, say, "Dallas" or "Star Trek").

but this sounds like the experiment that was made by Prof. Nimtz of Cologne several years ago. He modulated microwaves with Mozart and sent them through a tunnel. The music passes through the tunnel faster than light.

I believe I saw the program to which PE alludes, and this sounds like the same thing. I distinctly recall the experiment was conducted in Europe. I've not been following this topic closely, nor am I a physicist, so I can't really comment further.

Petzi · Jul 2, 2006

Photo Engineer said:
Thanks for the information. I could not remember the details. I'll have to look up that URL.

The list of papers on that site may be interesting:

http://www.ph2.uni-koeln.de/Nimtz/pub/paper-list.html

Greg_E · Jul 2, 2006

If you are riding on a photon traveling at the speed of light, and your friend is traveling on another photon (again at the speed of light) coming straight towards you, what is the closing speed with reference to one of the photon riders?

If you are riding on a photon and you look forward (the direction of travel) can you see anything? What about if you turn on a flashlight (and point it forwards)?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Photo Engineer · Jul 2, 2006

If you are travelling facing backwards at the speed of light and sneeze, what happens?

Ok, all of these involve the square root of minus 1 (-1^1/2) which also involves time. This is why Einsteins theory rules out travel in this universe at superluminal speeds, but does not rule out time travel.

There is an article that describes faster than light particles called tachyons which have the speed of light as their lower limit and their mass is imaginary. They might travel forward or backwards in time. In fact, there is a current theory that postulates antimatter is regular matter travelling backwards in time. This is reasonable under Einsteinian physics.

And then there is quantum chromodynamics. Aww, don't get me started on the 11 space theories and 'branes and other stuff. It gives me a headache.

PE

Donald Qualls · Jul 2, 2006

Greg_E said:
If you are riding on a photon traveling at the speed of light, and your friend is traveling on another photon (again at the speed of light) coming straight towards you, what is the closing speed with reference to one of the photon riders?

This one of the common counter-intuitive special relativity puzzlers -- in the example above, the closing speed cannot exceed that of light. More generally, NO object or signal can, with respect to any observer, exceed the speed of light (though it's possible for geometric considerations to produce what appears, at very great distances, to be supraluminal motion -- an object traveling at a sizable fraction of lightspeeed, at an angle between perpendicular and toward the observer, may appear to have a perpendicular velocity component at a speed greater than light because of the appearance of time compression due to the closing velocity component).

I'd question whether the modulation on a signal in the tunnel effect experiments can be confirmed to have exceeded light speed -- you can't begin to build a tunnel on Earth that's long enough to require a significant modulation cycle to traverse even at 1x lightspeed. The phenomenon in which energy leaves a waveguide "before" it was injected is well known, but that energy carries no modulation. If someone has proven they transferred, not just energy, but information at a speed greater than that of light, then all of special relativity is due for a ground-up rewrite. I'll be at the library tomorrow, I'll have to sit down with the July SciAm.

Meantime, if looking from air or vacuum into a negative index material, the effect would be like looking *out* of a common positive-index material into air or vacuum -- that is, the view would be compressed so that 180 degrees of view is seen with a cone of arc-cos theta half-angle (though in this case you'd have to use the index of the air relative to the negative-index material rather than that of the glass or water relative to air for theta). Outside that critical-angle cone, total internal reflection would reign (or, in this case, total *external* reflection). A sphere of such a material would be transparent at the center, and reflective at some horizon before you get to the limb -- but with more than 180 degrees (I'd have to think about how much more -- at some index, it might reach 360 degrees) of view compressed into whatever angle you can see inside the TER horizon.

Ack, this makes my head hurt in much the same way as visualizing how things look close to the event horizon of a black hole... :confused:

Ed Sukach · Jul 3, 2006

Donald Qualls said:
-- that is, the view would be compressed so that 180 degrees of view is seen with a cone of arc-cos theta half-angle (though in this case you'd have to use the index of the air relative to the negative-index material rather than that of the glass or water relative to air for theta).

Say whut?

Status of current research on digital and analog photography

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Roger Hicks

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Status of current research on digital and analog photography

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