Digital camera vs Video camera CCD

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Is there any significant difference in the CCD element used in a digital
camera versus the one used in a video camera? Some video cameras use three
CCD's but the good digital cameras seem to get fantastic results with one
CCD. Am I missing something?

Thanks, Don and Liz

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

"Don and Liz Campbell" <castles@yestertronics.com> writes:

> Is there any significant difference in the CCD element used in a digital
> camera versus the one used in a video camera? Some video cameras use three
> CCD's but the good digital cameras seem to get fantastic results with one
> CCD. Am I missing something?

Still cameras need immensely higher resolution. This leads to greater
and greater problems keeping multiple CCDs and beamsplitters in
alignment, so that multi-chip cameras are essentially unfeasible for
still use.

The single-chip still cameras use a horrible hack called the "Bayer
filter" -- there's a color filter matrix over the sensor, so each
pixel is sensing only one color (usually one of the RGB triad; and G
twice as much as the other two for various reasons). It turns out,
however, that human vision actually has very similar properties --
higher resolution in B&W only, color at lower resolution -- so the
results work out very nicely for human vision. That is, it's not a
horrible hack at all, it's a sensible application of knowledge of the
human visual system.
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