going dSLR camera, chip density and Moore's Law

I have to confess that I predicted the death of film-based camera when I bought my first digital camera (Sony DSC-85) back in year 2000. I was impressed with the ease of checking what I took picture of at the very instant. So I sold all my old "analog" Canon A5 camera (it's believed one of the best optical SLR camera) and its gears altogether.

Yes, my wild prediction came true. Nobody in their right mind are doing film cameras any more. (There are a few exceptions. Even in my SE team in SunKorea, I have a guy who still believes film camera is way better than digital equivalent).

Strange enough, I started to miss SLR : the body, the ability to change lenses, and finally the sound and feel of real shutter. That's why I started to search for good quality digital SLR which is truly light (I hate heavy stuff).

Last Saturday, my wife bought me a dSLR - Nikon D40. Look here for product details.  Sooner or later I will share with you about what I like and what I don't like of this D40.

What digital storage media did I buy? 4GB SD card !!!

How many picture can I take with this? Over 4000 pictures at JPEG 6M pixel basic mode. I remember I bought 128M Sony memory stick for my first digital camera. At that time, I paid about $150 if my memory serves me right. I paid only $50 for 4GB a few days ago.

Chip density is flying over time. 128M in year 2000 being compared to 4GB in year 2007. It's roughly 32 times increase over 7 years. It closely matches Moore's Law that says you'll see doubling of chip density every 12-24 months.

It'll be interesting to see the continuous increase in resolution(mega-pixels) and  chip density. Fun part : In order to make this article more interesting (or to make it a controversy), I make another dare prediction into the future.

• mega-pixel will increase but will stop at around 20-40M pixels. Technology will enable higher resolution, but you won't need higher ones for practical applications. (this resolution will be good enough for very large print)
  
• storage density will increase over time but it will stay at around 64-256GB per card even though technology will allow much higher density. Much higher density will be used only for 'digital video camera'
  
• how long will it take until we hit into quite stable(not increasing) resolution and density? in 6 to 8 years. or year 2013 to year 2015
• when's the best time to buy a digital camera? wait for the better camera (wait for another 6 years if you want to see the technology fully mature) or buy it today and have fun with it (and forget about about technology) in taking picture of your lovely family members and great landscape.
  

Posted at 09:02오전 5월 29, 2007 by myungjong in Sun  |  Comments[1]