After five years of research and development, Foveon Corporation may have finally developed a digital camera imaging sensor capable of obviating 35 mm film. At last February's Photo Marketing Association (PMA) conference in Orlando, Florida, Foveon formally announced a single chip CCD that could find its way into the first truly affordable film-quality digital cameras.

Founded by microchip pioneer Carver Mead as a joint venture by National Semiconductor and Synaptics, Foveon's new F7 image sensor with X3 technology will capture up to three times more information per pixel than today's digital at similar megapixel resolutions.

Meaningless megapixels

While current digital cameras capture only one color per pixel, Foveon's new CCD will capture red, green, and blue in each pixel location. How does it do this? The answer lies in the basic properties of silicon. Because photons across the light spectrum penetrate silicon at different measurable depths, Foveon has developed an imaging assembly that can capture all the RGB information at each individual pixel. By contrast, current digital cameras utilize a mosaic filtering process that approximates adjacent pixel color combinations of RGB to create realistic images. This process of interpolation not only slows down the speed of image rendering, but reduces the accuracy and clarity of image captured.

Foveon claims that its new imaging sensor can grab nearly triple the amount of information on the same amount of silicon, reducing both file sizes and chip costs. Although Foveon's F7 image sensor is only rated as a 3.53-megapixel camera, it captures images that are comparable to 7-megapixel equivalents in regular digital cameras. Looking at sample image photos produced by the F7 sensor, it was difficult for our LabRats to differentiate between regular 35 mm color 8x10 prints and the results of the Foveon images.