That link didn't work for me. I did a search on their site and found this:

www.iis.fraunhofer.de/fhg/iis/EN/bf/bv/ksbs/microHD.jsp

Today I have receive answer to my email.
They redirected me to this site:

Please contact.... ( I have edited this part because of personal email adress)
www.easylooksystem.com

I will ask this other person for details about this camera, and to join us on this forum.

Today I have receive email from easylooksystem. They are very interested to yoin us here, and i hope very soon we will find out more about their camera system.

Here it is, prices and basic info. Definetly not for home made guys. Broadcasters are probably they target market. Real live HDSDI video is what this camera gives out. No RAW. Its 18,500€.

Approx $50,000 USD? Is there something wrong with them? You can buy 3 red cameras for that price.

Last couple of days I have receive some more info about this camera:

"The MODULA HD CAM is capable of providing RAW data. The RAW data output is not implemented yet, but we are planing to provide 12 (!) bit raw data over HDSDI link and to store it in open exr (http://www.openexr.com/) file format
We are shipping the MODULA HD CAM already. Our customers right now are "early adopters" with special applications. We also got some interest from indie film makers, who are considering to substitute their S 16mm camera with the MODULA. We are trying to get all the info (details, sample clips and stills) you and and other interested parties are asking for and to put it on the new web page. The web page relaunch is scheduled to be ready for the NAB in Las Vegas."

Denis:
18.000€ is about 23.600$
http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?amt=18000&from=EUR&to=USD&submit=Convert

Igor,

I have to ask, the www.arecontvision.com products, they sound very similar to Elphel product, do you know if they are they using Elphel open-source designs?


Thanks

Wayne.

Here is an 2000*850 frame at 85% Jpeg quality, from over at the Elphel thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=642407&postcount=544
http://www.buysmartpc.com/333/333framecc.jpg

Amazing what can be achieved with even an cheap sensor.

Wayne, I will ask them.

Hello everyone,

A couple of weeks ago I found this forum and decided to take a shot into creating a bayer field recorder software application for Mac OS X. I have already some experience in writing field recorders for audio, see:
http://www.vosgames.nl/

In any case I've looked around for cameras for around a week and it seems like the Pike 210 from Allied Vision Tech is a pretty good contender. As this is a Firewire 800 IIDC camera the maximum resolution at 24 fps and 16 bits (14 bits + 2 bit padding) is around: 1786 x 760 (2.35:1) or 1920 x 654 (2.75:1).

I have also looked at the GigE cameras, but I can not find the specification of the protocol, so I've decided to go for IIDC for now. I've bought a cheap IIDC camera, called fire-i, to start experimenting.

The plan is to let OpenGL do the heavy lifting: dead pixel repair, black image subtraction, pixel sensitivity compensation, and reordering the pixels for better compression. The plan is to lossless compress the bayer image so that it will be possible to record on a single external SATA disk.

The OpenGL pipeline will also be used for previewing: demosaic, color conversion, false color (zebra patterns on steroids), HDR rendering, zooming for focus, more stuff I can think of.

I am not there yet of course, I currently can view (using OpenGL) a grey scale live-image from my fire-i camera.

I've been going round in circles for the last week; should I pre-process the raw data or not. pre-processing would yield better compression, doing these later could potentially give more freedom to choose a different algorithm.

As I already need to process the images in real time to show the camera operator what he is looking at... You can still record unprocessed images by using the NULL calibration settings, which is also the way to capture calibration data.

Cheers,
Take

At last an professional. Take, thanks for turning up and doing this, if you know of other people that might like to do an open camera capture format feel free top invite them. The only professionals we have had here have done commercial products we can't afford (SI and Cineform).

To answer your question on preprocessing, what about both. Some people will want to leave it to last, some will want noise processed out for optimal compression first, others will want it all left to last. I think that, for optimal quality at optimal compression, that pre-processing out the noise is best. For those that want to do it cheaper, pre-processing the colors on the shoot might be desirable (documentary). Cineform allows the colors to be nominated separately from the data (they have lookup table I think) which is an strategy that could also work rather than pre-processing them. AS you are, assumably, using the latest OpenGL GPU acceleration, you should have significant reserves of power to do this, particularly if Apple supports next generation chips in up and coming products.

I would like to point you to an few people that you might like to communicate with: Rob Scott, who is back here developing his own capture program, Keith Wakeham, that has been developing an HDSDI film recorder (with an Bayer mode in mind) and the Elphel 333 camera thread, where we have been discussing a number of bayer compression techniques, including FPGA compression.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=63677

An interesting side note, Intel has an Direct X 10 part for Ultra Mobile PC's, and some rumor that Apple has an ultra-mobile PC concept. The Intel stuff is coming from Power VR technology.

Wayne.

If you look at machinevision.org (I think) they would probably be able to refer you to GIG-E protocol, or people like Silicon Imaging.

Hey, Steve from Silicon Imaging here. Still keeping an eye on this forum since there is some guts and gore development being talked about.

Take, some thoughts for you. First, watch the rolling shutter artifacts if you run the camera at 24fps. Second, consider your edit workflow. A quick look at the Cineform RAW workflow will show you what I mean.

And lastly, your camera will only be as good as the sensor. On this forum, SI started with Micron sensors which at the time were better than the Cypress/FF IBIS parts. We have moved to Altasens now and there is no going back. The latitude goes from 7-8 stops on the Micron to 11+ on the latest Altasens. True 12 bit capture, low noise. If your goal is a basic camera at a basic cost, a cheap firewire camera can get you going for an amazing price. If you are going to shoot your first feature, do you want to be limited in quality by the capture?

Right now we have set the entry level at $12500 for a Mini with recording software. The edit suite is $2400 with Prospect 2K, Premiere and OnSet. You can use low cost c mount lenses. We are discussing the cash poor indie market - maybe we can announce something at NAB. We will see.....

Sorry, that got sales pitchy - I'm just excited about what we are doing. Last suggestion - don't try to make your software be everything to everyone at first. Pick a resolution, workflow and interface that is doable and focus on completing that.

Steve

Hello everyone,

Thank you all for your comments.

Steve, I can certainly understand your excitement. I seem to want to get in a little bit lower price market than you.

From what I understand the Pike 210 has a progressive CCD chip, it doesn't say anything about a rolling shutter (I thought rolling shutters was only on CMOS).

As for the workflow I think: capture -> openexs(bayer) -> proxy -> editing -> EDL -> openexs(RGB) -> color grading. But I would love to take away the proxy and edit directly in a RGB format, I have to find out how, I have a little bit of experience in writing QuickTime components.

As for CPU time, right now I am reading an 8bit 640 x 480 @ 30 fps greyscale image and displaying it, it takes 1.8 % CPU time.

I am using libdc1394 to capture the image and call glTexSubImage() to update the illumination texturemap. A texturemap in OpenGL can now have any size (not just power of two) and I am using that. I am hoping I can simply send a raw16 bit image to an opengl texturemap without doing any conversion or copying on the CPU.

Next step will be creating a small fragment program to change the picture.

Cheers,
Take

Take,
I checked the Pike data sheet - they don't say what CCD sensor technology so I don't know if you will have issues with shuttering or not - ask them.
I'm glad to see you understand the workflow issues.
If you go to the full sensor size it can be hard to find 1" lenses that don't vignette. Try either a 35mm adapter and SLR lenses (you will get a magnification factor) or these Fujinons:
http://www.fujinoncctv.com/lenses/index5.shtml
Another thing to check is whether, when you go from 8 bit to 12 bit on the data path whether the 12 bit data is packed or sent as 16 bit. Even Firewire 800 will be tight on bandwidth above 8 bit.
Sounds like a great project.
Steve

Hello Steve,

They indeed talk about having slight vignetting, my plan is to capture a 2:35.1 image which will me slightly smaller than the full 1920 width. In the same paragraph they say that you can ask for something other than a C-mount (maybe a direct F-mount?).

Firewire can only send padded 16 bit data, so it is not packed 14 bit data. The Pike has a 14 bit AD converter.

They also allow adding multiple images together to lower the noise, but I have not calculated the internal bandwidth if it would allow such a thing at 24 fps. Of course I have no idea if an image that is build up like this is acceptable for a moving image.

Firewire 800 is indeed pretty tight, in isochronus mode you do not even get the full 800 Mbit/sec, more something like 700 Mbit/sec.

The technical manual you can download from their site shows how to do all the calculations, the FAQ of libdc1394 shows the same calculations. I am not sure how fast the camera reacts on mode changes, but it may allow smooth transitions from over to under cranking.

As for the advice to start simple, that is the same thing I did with Boom Recorder, start with the minimum feature set to record audio. The video recorder may be even easier.

Well, I am off to read the OpenGL orange book (GLSL) and implement a simple bayer decoder without interpolation (grey scale -> red only, green only and blue only pixels)

Cheers,
Take

Hey Take,
Go with c-mount, especially for testing. You can use Nikon F, PL mount, Canon FD lenses and many more with mount adapters. If you special order Pike 210 with f-mount you are stuck with that. You'd also miss out on some cool lenses like the 1-inch F0.85 Fujinon c-mount I have (blazing fast!)

Steve, the AVT Pike 210 uses a kodak KAI-2093 CCD sensor. It has global shutter. It's actually recomended for use in "Video Production".

Nice to see someone new involved here. Looks like you are fairly knowledgable in programming, best of luck in your project.

- Solomon

Also, I would prefer capturing 8-bit with LUT instead of 14-bit. Mainly because of the sensors usable dynamic range, increased framerates, easier post production and some other considerations. 2.35:1 aspect at 14-bit sounds nice though if it is possible.

- Solomon

I think packing would be an special arrangement outside of the standard. Cameras with memory buffering is another way to bring the interface bandwidth requirements down, in this way you can adjust the exposure, readout time without it affecting the data rate.

IBIS will outperform Micron, and also offer many more stops, but only if implemented properly, and not using the internal DAC. But, there are too many Ibis cameras poorly designed or with only some of the refinements.

The two sensor companies I recently mentioned (27 stop latitude, and that high sensitivity through quantum effect) are probably worth looking at (as well as that firewire Foveon X3 one).


Re-edit:
Take, Kodak is an nice sensor company.

I've read the documentation, stacking of two images @ 48 Hz to reduce noise is only possible with this sensor with a maximum of 600 lines. A 1920 x 600 image is 1:3.2 aspect ratio, I think that is a little bit too wide.

Take -- welcome. I don't recall a Pike camera being used on here, so this is a useful addition to these efforts towards low cost (but ambitious) HD solutions. When you get going you might like to start your own thread for it. Is it easy to get Firewire 800 into a Windows laptop: I haven't seen it specified -- though I haven't looked lately. Or does the camera use an onboard frame grabber?

All the best,
John.

Hello John,

I will be using a MacBook Pro for capture, it has a firewire 800 port. I will use the ExpressCard/34 slot to put in a eSATA card to connect to a nakid harddisk.

The camera only has a small internal buffer to for just a couple of frames.

I will look into creating my own thread abut the camera.

Cheers,
Take

Hello John,

I will be using a MacBook Pro for capture, it has a firewire 800 port. I will use the ExpressCard/34 slot to put in a eSATA card to connect to a nakid harddisk.

The camera only has a small internal buffer to for just a couple of frames.

I will look into creating my own thread abut the camera.

Cheers,
Take

Yeah, I would recommend starting a new thread. There are separate threads for most projects on here, like the Sumix camera, Elphel 333 camera, etc.

I'll start a new thread for my own camera system.

But one more thing which is more generic. Has anyone experimented with cooling their camera? Most astronomers who buy a camera head for their sky photography try to cool their camera to below freezing point.

A couple of degrees will remove a lot of noise from the CCD sensor. The fan needed for this makes noise which the sound person wouldn't like, but maybe you can disable the fan and peltier during the take and cool the camera in between takes.

http://www.outcastsoft.com/AstroImages/Cheap_Peltier_Camera_Cooler_MJA.pdf

Cheers,
Take

See other digital cinema camera thread, but it went nowhere.

Here are also 2 links for cooling with peltier and liquid:

http://www.pk3.org/Astro/do_it_yourself.htm

http://www.konradhorn.de/seite4.htm

Daniel

Hello Solomon,


Go with c-mount, especially for testing. You can use Nikon F, PL mount, Canon FD lenses and many more with mount adapters. If you special order Pike 210 with f-mount you are stuck with that. You'd also miss out on some cool lenses like the 1-inch F0.85 Fujinon c-mount I have (blazing fast!)


I was wondering, the F-mount is larger than a C-mount, so wouldn't a F-to-C-adapter cause vignetting itself? Or would such an adapter be fine on a 1" sensor?

The F0.85 you mention are out of production, from what I read their website. I've been looking around for C-mount lenses, but there are only a few that would qualify for such a large sensor and new or second hand they are also quite expensive. And I wonder if a Super16 lens would be large enough for a 1" sensor (they also almost never appear with C-mount either)

If I look at ebay-like sites there are a lot of SLR lenses available for little money, so I can create quite a collection of those. The size of a 35 mm lens probably also makes it easier to focus than a small c-mount.

Does any one have some ideas for what I should do, I am planning to buy the camera quite soon, so I need to know if I should go for a direct F-mount or if a F-to-C-adapter would work good enough with a 1" sensor.

Back from the defunct. After my computer crashed and I lost the main drive, and the backup drive, I have been very sick for weeks, and am still restoring my system and past couple of years of camera related project information.

Take, there are lists that give you actual sizes of film and sensor formats on the web. If you google around and try wikipedia you might be able to find something.

This is an very old idea I had from years ago, early 90's, looks like Apple is trying to patent it:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/05/11/apple_ipod_control_patent/

It is really the best innovative way for simple out of the way control and many of my devices where unfortunately planned to use it. It is not my last control technology by far. I think I might know of somebody that also publicly had an similar idea.

I have been applying these control technologies to Digital Cinema camera designs as well.

This sort of thing has happened many times before, and with Apple to. Shame having all the talent and no money or health to take advantage of it.

When they make an device using this with an camera, it will be interesting.


The new fastest laptop drive:
Travelstar 200GB 7K200
http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/10/hitachis-2-5-inch-travelstar-7k200-200gb-7-200-rpm-bulk-encr/
http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/menuitem.9958814a08a37d75797ecae2eac4f0a0/
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=Travelstar+200GB+7K200&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Zolt, over at the Elphel 333 cinema camera project thread is offering up his RAW lossless compression project to anybody that is interested. I think it is both software and FPGA fro use on the Elphel 353 camera with internal hard disk, but I guess it can be made to work for any camera.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=686023&postcount=683

It is an bit crazy over there, lots of people doing different things, but where it is going still hasn't panned out yet. The camera is available the projects are not finished yet. Still, this is looking more and more like the sort of camera system everybody talks about of needing, customisable, FPGA, and cheapish. Unfortunately, they are still using Micron Sensors, and an better sensor would be nice, though an Micron should be as good or better, than many pro-sumer cameras. The Micron sensors today are more advanced than the ones we started with though.

If anybody is interested, please contact Zolt.

Here is an multiple lens 3D 1.1Mp camera sensor (Is that right?).
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=18772

Here is full video at 1 Lux sensor, for low light shooting:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=94917
Sounds similar to that previous sensor I mentioned a while ago.

As you may all know, Sony is bringing out an lower cost prosumer XDCAMHD camera, and previously released the V1 into the prosumer price slot. They are lobbing one in our direction. It will have half inch chips, undoubtedly good noise characteristics, and latitude combined with the 35mb/s codec should give an number of Digital Cinema camera manufacturers an run for their money. I predicted this, because, at those prices it doesn't really hurt them, but it steals away sales from $20K cameras. In the mid range we have solutions that record low compressed from prosumer cameras, which hurts sales of mid-ranged digital cinema cameras, but still a bulky exercise that make an prosumer camera look attractive. On the other end of the scale there are the low cost 720p pocket cameras. While not an great threat to an $20K, or mid range cameras, it still discourages sales of cheap digital cinema cameras. Just as importantly, these initiatives discourage people from developing cheap digital cinema camera solutions. Sounds very much of, attacking where they are weak, and appearing where you are not expected.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=91594

Naivety has ruled the market, and the crunch time is probably coming, but sales may remain adequate at all levels for the remaining companies, with the cheap end probably do the best in numbers. What was needed was price points that would really hurt the established competition, price points they cannot match without collapsing their businesses. 20K is good for threatening $100K+ cameras, but that is only a small portion of the business, assuming you can get an substantial portion. $10K you start really hurting everything above it, and an good portion of the business. $5K you start hurting an lot of the professional/prosumer business. At under $2K-1K you can effectively start collapsing businesses, as the consumer business now comes under substantial threat. The point at which companies might come under threat, due to inertial costs, is when the prosumer comes under threat.

$279 720p Pocket Camcorder with h264,
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=93488

Not the best, consumer, but fairly good consumer for the price, better than the Sanyo HD1. Expect better cameras will come with a quality similar to some HDV cameras.

Me, I await an camera, Elphel, Panasonic H264Intra, JVC? single chip pro sumer, XDCAM HDe, Samsung, we will see. The ride has been interesting, but the bull has not started really bucking yet (and many have already fallen off).

Take has been working on recorder software for his Firewire camera, and is advancing, here is his thread here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=89837

In recent discussion this subject came up, and I decided it would be good to post it here and share it.

It can be done for $200, I have been trying to find somebody to make it (anybody interested message me, if you don;'t get an reply an spam filter has conquered it, email dvinfo to let me know). It does not use Intensity, an PC, or cineform though, but wavelet, or H264 intra. I guess cineform or another codec is possible if anybody has an FPGA design, or hard codec.

The market is quiet large if you add camera control, for examples recording directly to hard drive (or computer through USB etc):

Normal camera + POV + security cameras:
HDMI/component/video, sound + fire-wire/USB camera control/serial

Digital Stills:
HDMI/component/video, sound

As an universal Industrial USB/Fire-wire/GigE video recorder:
Camera interface (sound external)

Web-cams:
USB

As an Personal Video/HD video Recorder:
HDMI/component/video + sound +fire-wire for control

As an long line Link, put two together.

On top of this an micro-controller can control an external interface (to hook to external camera controls) and control buttons for an few dollars.

As you can see, the one basic design can have interfaces built around that allow it to service many different markets. Your market now goes to hundreds of thousands an year (considering that use as an long haul link for home theatre might not be much of the market).

http://www.altasens.com/Products%208M.htm

Cool, so when will Silicon Imaging have them? I see they have advanced Dynamic Range control, lower light etc, at last somebody listened, and combined advance tech on the same chip. Thanks Juan, let us know when more performance detail is available?

Now for somebody to do an camera based on the new Foveon sensor technology.

High Dynamic Range:
http://www.altasens.com/AltaSensBitsDReamPressRelease.pdf

Lower dark current and noise again.

Looks like the 1/2inch sensor is out, and over "HDV" sensors.

http://www.altasens.com/ap7.html

I don't know of any Foveon sensor available with a decent framerate and megapixel count......

As with other companies they do custom designs. They have other designs planned from reports, and have one that will do 720p presently. I wonder if there will be new HD cameras with Altasens or Foveon.

I've read about these ideas before, where an card that fits an normal USB port also has another card interface at the other end. In future I hope they give up on all these different card standards and settle for an general interface like USB2.0/3.0. For me, in embedded design, it makes life an bit easier.

Initial max capacity is 8GB, going to 2TB theoretical max, so enough for an movie (maybe one day).

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/02/202206
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&articleId=9022598&taxonomyId=19&intsrc=kc_top
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/06/pretec-shows-off-first-micards/

I often come across people that that Linux is the be all, and end all of operating systems, and even good for camera HD acquisition. Even though it can be done with proper programing this article I found today is an interesting read.

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20070726/136821/

Reading an article on Tron in the 80's, when it came out, was one of the original things that influenced my path in operating system design, putting em on the right path, so to speak. Other things were really talented people in embedded and froth programming.

You may not recognise Tron, but iti is one of the popular real time embedded OS's you will find in DVD players, CD players, washing machines, fridges and microwave ovens, all the sorts of places you don't find quirky desktop crashers that require oodles of resources to do the same thing. From memory, the task scheduling from Tron was also chosen as an replacement in Windows CE by Microsoft.

It would not surprise me if you could find cameras, and webcams, programmed in Tron.

Ooh, the youth and the enthusiasm, there is an new DIY cinema camera project thread. Lots of new interesting hardware links fro different components to make up an recording system:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=96349

If I have missed any other threads please feel free to post them here.

An comparison of next generation display ports:
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33161/135/
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33161/135/1/1/

I didn't know that Display Port was based on HDMI, I thought it used an competing technology, it also uses an data packeting format that appears to allow any sort of data to be sent with Audiovisual. Not quiet USB3.0, but theoretically you could have an monitor with up to 20 or so full speed USB2 ports going though display port.

As many people may know, I am retired from project life, answering the odd question, posting the odd update here, and there. So I still welcome your emails, though some take several hours of re-research to answer. If I am of significant help, remember to keep me informed and feel free to send me an free sample of your commercial product ;).

You may notice that Sony has just announced an cheap shoulder mount pro camera, and that I have previously posted, somewhere, about an similar planned shoulder mounted Pana pro-line camera. The competition to DIY/alternative is finally heating up, and I wonder what price the XDCAM HD EX will come in at.

Silicon and Red still struggle to achieve market penetration, finally on the production road, not to mention the other alternatives. People have not yet realised the market that HV20, Sony and Pana cheap shoulder mounts are aiming at, the under $5k market that we could have been in. It is all about customers and what they might decide to buy instead of us, even if they have to lug an big uncompressed recording computer around with them, or if more upmarket, buy the expensive name brand quality camera, instead.

However, the day of the cheap cigarette packet sized cinema camera is definitely an possibility now days.

Speaking separately from the cigarette packet thing, for our amusement:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?p=732904

Does anybody know of these things?

I saw an release of an 3 chip web cam sometime in the last year. I have been spending many hours trying to find it by google, but can't. I forget the resolution, but it could be 1280*960 Sony CCD sensors, it could be VGA. Any three chip web cams for comparison would do.

I first dismissed this, but now think I might be able to get some constructive use from it.

If anybody knows of any good web cam sites, forums, and stores, web cam quality recording software, that might be able to help, please let me know.

http://www.tilera.com/products/processors.php

As you might know I am fond of these low power high performance processing array solutions, this one programmable in C. Ambarella also has an camera/sensor control chips using this sort of solution, but as yet, they never have confirmed where ever it can be re-programmed (to say Bayer compression) with me. So, keep an eye out for solutions like these.

Then again, I might have posted an link to information about an company making development software, that can take C and adjust it for parallel processors systems, or FPGA.

I've never heard of a 3-chip webcam! I have seen a couple of HD webcams though, and apple's latest iSight is HD.

I'm getting some datasheets and devkit info from foveon in about 10 mins. They gave some very reasonable prices over the phone. (I'll update my sensor chart once I get it).

I can't see the need for a three-chip web cam. Better to stick with single-chip using an RGB filter. It's the same color accuracy, plus a larger sensor for better low-light performance (one large sensor being less expensive than three small ones).

I can't see the need for a three-chip web cam. Better to stick with single-chip using an RGB filter. It's the same color accuracy, plus a larger sensor for better low-light performance (one large sensor being less expensive than three small ones).

Chris, as you know, it is extremely difficult to get an complete answer around here, unless you ask enough people. So I posted my question in the general discussion board, as well as here, hoping somebody might have heard of it too, as there are many more different people there. But somebody removed it. Is it possible to get it back, I have spent several hours looking already and (read more than seven)?

I am interested in this device, as it would be an cheap way to do my pixel shifted uncompressed HD solution, like Andromeda, until the single chip three color solution I have been waiting for arrives. I am interested in what Solomon has quoted, but they are very reluctant to deal with small outfits, let alone charge an price less than thousands, let alone less than the hundreds.

Thanks.

After all this time Wayne you should know that we don't allow cross-posting to more than one forum. Thus the removal. Where do you want this, and I'll move it.

I've never heard of a 3-chip webcam! I have seen a couple of HD webcams though, and apple's latest iSight is HD.

I'm getting some datasheets and devkit info from foveon in about 10 mins. They gave some very reasonable prices over the phone. (I'll update my sensor chart once I get it).

It does/did exist, and as you can see from my last post, I have an devious little DIY experimental use for it. Always interested in the cheaper solutions, it would be good for at least prototyping an pixel-shifted recording solution, which has some of it's own advantages over single chip. But tell me, roughly what prices were Foveon quoting, for what type of equipment. Unless the chips can be had for hundreds or less, or cameras for less than an thousand, it might be too expensive for my use.