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Comment by gaudat | Hacker News Reader

The design is pretty modern. But what is with the choice of the Kodak CCD sensor? CCD cameras got a resurgence in Chinese communities with second-hand camera prices increased like tenfold.

Also see Apertus Axiom where they also used the Zynq but used one hell of a CMOS sensor that can do 4K 300FPS.

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He explained it in this Video at 13:02 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkfzjmY9cF8&t=13m02s

> Why use CCD instead of CMOS?

> Well let's say I started this project before the recent CCD camera hype so that's not the reason. Part of me just wanted to be special and fullframe CCD is kind of special.

Being a small manufacture means you go to the bottom of the list for the vendors of the sensors. I'm sure the best sensors are pretty much already spoken for, and the lower quality ones are what's available to any one not the likes of Sony, Canon, Nikon, etc. Any other reason is pretty much an excuse.

We could just go back to full sized cameras with 3 CCDs. j/k

CCD sensors render differently than CMOS sensors and, if their strengths are what you are looking for they could still make sense. Compared to CMOS they require more light, but when you are capturing an image properly they do a really good job of rendering colors and details. CCD sensors also introduce less noise as part of their pipeline (though again, the ceiling on how sensitive they can be is much lower than CMOS).

Basically there has always been a community of photographers who like the "CCD look" and it's not surprising to me that someone who's geeky enough to make his own camera went with one.

That sounds like the stuff you read on audiophile websites where they are trying to sell you a special "audio-tuned" ethernet cable for thousands of dollar. The sensor simply converts photons into electrons binned into colors based on the bayer pattern, how can they "render" colors differently? That's a function of the digital processing pipline.

Also I don't understand how a CCD can introduce less noise than a CMOS, but is less sensitive at the same time? Light sensitivity is largely governed by the noise floor of the sensor I would say.

I don't really know either. My understanding is that the process of increasing ISO (i.e. boosting signal) works a lot better in CMOS, but also that because of how CMOS works read noise is higher overall. So a CCD will give you a cleaner record at base sensitivity (generally iso 100) or slightly elevated iso, but as soon as you get away from that CMOS sensors will do better. Whatever read noise they introduce is less impactful than the fact that they are much better at amplifying the light you did detect in a clean(er) way.

You are also welcome to dismiss me as a goofy photophile. I am not trying to sell you anything, just reporting what I understand people think. Maybe this article seems less snake oil-y[1]?

[1] https://petapixel.com/what-is-ccd-cmos-sensor/

Sorry if it came across like it, I didn't mean to accuse you of snake oil pandering. I just read the article and I think you misremembered, the article states CMOS has in fact a significantly lower noise floor (I wondered about this, because I remember when the next gen CMOS sensors came out in the pentax K5 and the Nikon D400(?) it was possible to push the shadows so strongly that you could essentially take a completely black photo and push it up to the same as if you would have taken with higher ISO). CCDs have a "more pleasing/film-like" nonlinearity, but I believe if you shoot raw a linear response is always better, because it gives you more flexibility for post processing.

IIRC the author scored a few trays on local equivalent of eBay. Obsoleted Kodak/OnSemi KAF line of sensors are rare kind of large film-sized sensors with public full datasheets; most manufacturers don't even confirm or deny existences of sensors in public.

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