Three major bottlenecks in digital imaging technology

The rapid development of digital imaging technology is indeed unforeseeable. In just five or six years, digital cameras, scanners and printers have emerged in an endless stream. The quality of technology has continued to increase, and prices have continued to decline. It can be believed that the development potential of digital imaging is very large. However, in a short period of time, digital imaging technology is still difficult to achieve breakthrough development, because digital imaging technology still has three major bottlenecks. The three major bottlenecks are: image quality, processing speed, and market price, and these three are interrelated and affect each other.
First, the price of digital imaging equipment Let's take a look at digital cameras. At present, the portable digital camera for civilian use has reached a level of 3 million pixels, but the image quality of photographs taken with a traditional 135 camera is still not comparable, but the price has reached more than 7,000 yuan; although the number of pixels of a professional SLR digital camera has reached The 6 million level is comparable to the traditional 135 camera, but the price is surprisingly high, but the price is astonishingly high, reaching more than 200,000 yuan. Although the quality of the digital camera back can be compared with the image quality of the traditional 120 camera. But prices are also unacceptably high, generally between 100,000 and 400,000. There are not many such digital cameras in the country.
Let's take a look at the scanner. Although the image quality of flatbed scanners for scanning pictures is still available, and the price is not high, the price of a slightly better negative film scanner is more than 10,000 yuan. And as long as it can scan 120 film high-resolution scanners, whether it is a dedicated film scanner or dual-platform scanner, the price is more than 50,000 yuan. It is difficult for such a scanner to enter the homes of Chinese people. Photographs of negatives scanned with scanners over 50,000 yuan still cannot be compared with those photographs that have been traditionally magnified, and those with quality significantly higher than traditional photographs are amplified with a laser magnifier. Photographs, the price of the scanner is between 300,000 and 1,500,000, and the price of the amplifier is between 500,000 and 2 million. Such prices are simply astronomical for the Chinese market. With the exception of the well-funded large-scale photo clubs, it is difficult for several Chinese companies to afford them.
There are three major types of printers: inkjet, laser, and thermal sublimation. The prices of laser and sublimation printers are relatively high, ranging from two or three thousand to several hundred thousand yuan, depending on the size of the web; most of the current printers are inkjet printers. Inkjet printers are mainly divided into large-scale commercial and small-format homes. Although inkjet printers for home and office use are relatively cheap, the cost of consumables used to print photos is too high. The cost of printing an A4 page is about 10 yuan. The cost of consumables for large-format printers is relatively cheap, but the price of the printer is between 100,000 and 500,000, and the slightly lower price is also above 50,000 yuan.
In view of the above, due to the price issue, it is still too early for digital imaging equipment to enter the family, especially in China, it will take time. According to the statistics released by the National Bureau of Technical Statistics, at present, the number of computers owned by Chinese households is about 18 million units, and the amount of home ownership of various types of printers, scanners, and digital cameras is the number of computers owned. 42%, 5%, and 0.4%. The main reason for this is the price, the lower the possession of equipment, the greater the gap between the actual price and the expected value. For example, according to the statistics of Tsinghua Unisplendour, the current popular digital cameras are generally accepted at prices between 2,000 and 3,000 yuan, while the actual prices of digital cameras are between 6,000 and 7,000 yuan, far exceeding the majority. Human tolerance. The actual price of the film scanner is far from people's ability to bear. However, due to the high technical content of digital imaging equipment, its early development costs and the later manufacturing costs are very high. If the market sales go up, the price will be difficult to lower, and it will be difficult to increase the price if the price falls. This contradiction is precisely the bottleneck of the development of digital imaging technology.
Second, the image quality of digital images At present, in addition to the image quality of tens of millions of photos taken on the back of Qin, the image quality of the photos taken by the traditional 120 cameras is achieved, and the image quality of the photos taken by the digital back is statically scanned. Exceeding the quality of images captured by traditional 120 cameras, the image quality of photographs taken by most of the civilian portable digital cameras and professional SLR digital cameras is not as good as that of traditional cameras. Scanners In addition to the scan quality of the 4,000-plus 135 film scanners from the Microtek 4000T and the Polaroid 4000T, the scan quality of the 135 film can be compared with that of a conventional 135 film. Other scan quality with a scan resolution lower than 4,000dpi cannot be directly compared to the conventional 135 film. Compared with the image quality of the magnified photograph, it is more difficult to compare with the image quality of the traditional 120 magnified photograph directly. Compared with the image quality of the traditional 120 directly magnified photographs, and it only exceeded the large-scale drum scanner.
Although, if you do not consider the price factor, the image quality of high-end digital back and large drum scanners can be completely comparable to the image quality of traditional images, even more than the image quality of traditional images, but it still has a still difficult to solve. The paradox is that its high-quality images require a very large data space. Currently, a high-resolution digital back shot takes 50M to 600M files, while a roller scanner scans 120 negatives or 4×5 negatives, and the file size must reach 200M to 1200M. With such a large volume of documents, a single disc can only store 1-12 digital back shots. To store high-resolution photos scanned by a roller scanner, only one disc can be stored, or even two. Only two or more discs can be stored to store a photo. The digital image above 1000M can store only less than 40 sheets even if it is the largest capacity 40G hard disk. The sharp contradiction between image sharpness and its capacity is currently the biggest bottleneck for digital image development.
Third, the digital image processing speed compared with traditional image, another bottleneck of digital image is his processing speed.
Let us first look at a digital camera. Taking a picture with a civilian digital camera always requires a delay after the shutter is connected. This is called a “shutter delay” for a digital camera. The shutter time lag of a good digital camera is short, but it has a shutter time lag. This obviously has a certain impact on photography. It will take some time for the digital camera to store images, especially high-definition digital photos, which will last longer. This is a big obstacle to fast continuous shooting.
Let's take a look at the scanner. It takes about 5 minutes or more for a high-definition film scanner to scan a film (including pre-scanning). Some are even slower and the fastest is more than 2 minutes. The cost of a fast scanner is its price. For example, scanning a negative film with the MICROTEK 4000T scanner for 4 minutes, plus installing the film and pre-scanning time, the total time for scanning a film is at least 5 minutes. The Kodak 3570 scanner scans a film in only 20 seconds, plus the time it takes to install the film and the pre-scan time. Scanning a film is all about 1 minute. However, the price of the Microtek 4000T scanner is only 13,000 yuan, while the price of the Kodak 3570 scanner is as high as 60,000 yuan. It takes at least 10 minutes to scan a 120-by-6x9 film at a resolution of 2500dpi with the Microtek 42500 scanner. Although it can scan multiple negatives at the same time, the price of more than 50,000 yuan is prohibitive. Scanning accuracy and average single-sheet scanning time of large-sized drum scanners are much better than those of ordinary dedicated scanners, but prices of hundreds of thousands to over a million yuan are nearly astronomical for general units and individuals.
The speed with which a computer processes images is also very slow. Do not say that modifying the image or doing some special processing means that it takes a long time to open an image with a slightly larger file size. We do not say that the PIII series that was just out of date is the latest PIV 1.5G machine that is currently on the market. It takes more than ten seconds to open a 1000M image. It will be even slower if you have to do something slightly more complicated. For example, if you want to change the color of a 200M file, it takes about one minute. It takes longer for other complicated work. It can be said that for computers used in homes, businesses, and offices, the configuration requirements for processing images on computers are the highest, and the requirements for the main frequency, memory, hard disk, display card, and display are high. Even so, the current maximum configuration is still just meeting the requirements.
Look at the printer again. At present, a small-format home printer prints an A4-format color photograph with a resolution of 1440 dpi, which takes 8-12 minutes, and the price of printing paper and ink is high. Although the print speed of large-format commercial printers far exceeds that of minicomputers, printing large-format, high-resolution photos is still quite slow. For example, to print a 1×1.5 1200M image with a resolution of 1440 dpi, it takes at least 4 hours.
From the above discussion, we can see that whether shooting, scanning, processing or printing a high-resolution photo, digital images cannot be compared with traditional images in terms of speed.
In summary, the three major bottlenecks in digital imaging technology, image quality, processing speed, and market price, affect each other and restrict each other. Image quality and processing speed are directly related to the capacity of the computer's memory and hard disk. However, digital imaging equipment and computer are all information technology products. Their development follows Moore's Law, which means that their capacity and speed will double every 12-18 months, and the price of products will continue to drop. Therefore, it can be predicted that in the near future, the three major bottlenecks of digital imaging products will break through one after another. At that time, whether the image quality, processing speed or market price, digital imaging equipment will greatly exceed the traditional imaging products. The spring of digital imaging technology will come sooner or later.