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HISTORY The first digital camera back was introduced by Leaf {Link without Title} (now part of Kodak) in 1991. The Leaf DCBI, nicknamed 'The Brick', offered resolution of 4 million pixels (MP). It took another 4 years of development to then introduce the 2nd digital camera back; the DCBII, which included a live-video view. Two years later, in 1996, Leaf expanded to include the first 6 MP digital camera back; the Leaf Volare. From 2002, new models were introduced yearly, with rising resolution and sensor sizes, achieving today resolutions of 33MP for the new Leaf Aptus family of digital camera backs, and 39MP for Phase One and Hasselblad. USES Early digital camera backs were only used in a Studio to take pictures of still objects. Because they created huge amounts of data relative to the available storage mediums at the time, they had to be tethered to a computer during capture. They were using linear array sensors which could take seconds or even minutes for a complete high-resolution scan. The linear array sensor acts like its counterpart used in a Flatbed Image Scanner by moving vertically to Digitize the image. The latest one-shot digital backs, however, can keep pace with the speediest motorized medium format cameras, and they are for all practical purposes without limitations to the available shutter speeds. The availability of high-speed, high capacity memory cards have made modern digital backs into self-contained units, which makes them practical for use outside the studio as well. Many of these cameras could originally only capture Grayscale images. To take a color picture, it requires three separate scans done with a rotating colored filter. These are called multi-shot backs. Some other camera backs are using CCD arrays similar to typical cameras. These are called single-shot backs. TECHNICAL FEATURES Since it is much easier to manufacture a high-quality linear CCD array that has only a few thousand pixels than a CCD matrix that has millions of them, very high resolution linear CCD camera backs were available much earlier than their CCD matrix counterparts. For example, you could buy an expensive camera back with an over 7,000-pixel horizontal resolution in the mid- 1990 s. As of 2006, you can buy a comparable CCD matrix camera of similar resolution, in the Phase One P45, and in the Leaf Aptus 75 digital camera backs. Many modern digital camera backs are using very large CCD matrices. This eliminated the need of scanning. For example, Fujifilm produces a 20-million-pixel digital camera back with a 52 mm x 37 mm (2.04" x 1.45") CCD in 2003 . This CCD array is a little smaller than a frame of 120 Film and much larger than a 35 Mm frame (36 mm x 24 mm). In comparison, a compact digital camera usually uses a so-called 1/1.8" or 7.176 mm x 5.319 mm CCD sensor. The 1/1.8" diagonal value is based on an archaic measurement originally used for TV picture tubes and doesn't even accurately identify the physical size of the sensor, hence the actual photo-sensitive area is much smaller. |
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