Michael DeLuca's Posts
What Have You Done Lately?
What have you gotten done over the last three years?
Do you have a new job, or new friends? Are you still living in the same place, or have you moved? Did you finally get to those projects you keep putting off, or are they still waiting for you?
Three years ago, YouTube went online for the first time. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope, and John Roberts was named Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. And over the past three years, they have each done some pretty big things.
Me? I'm still trying to get my basement cleaned up.
NASA/JPL
There's something else that started three years ago - the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter left earth on a mission to study Mars. After a seven month trip and another six months of aerobraking to enter science orbit, the orbiter has been hard at work collecting information and making new discoveries about this planet.
And guess what - Kodak Imaging Technology is playing a key part in the success of the mission.
Two of the main imaging cameras on the orbiter - the Mars Color Imager and the Context Camera - are based on KODAK CCD Image Sensors that are also used for applications here on earth.
NASA/JPL-CalTech/Malin Space Science Systems
The Mars Color Imager looks at the planet in seven different wavelengths - 5 visible and 2 ultraviolet - to produce daily weather reports for the planet. What to know what the weather's like on Mars? Go check it out - it's updated every week. Pretty soon, this camera will have captured a full Martian-year's worth of pictures - giving scientists information on the spring, summer, fall and winter of the planet.
NASA/JPL-CalTech/Malin Space Science Systems
The Context Camera provides black & white images of the planet's surface at 6 meters per pixel (enough to detect a large pickup truck) over a swath 30 km wide, and is used to provide a context (get it?) for high-resolution analysis of key locations of the planet. So far, this system has mapped out over one-third of the planet's entire surface (that's over 1 trillion data points), and is also being used to evaluate potential landing sites for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory rover mission (we wouldn't want it to land on a big boulder - especially since that mission will have four cameras based on KODAK CCD Image Sensors).
So while I've been watching boxes pile up in my basement, KODAK Image Sensors have been helping to unlock the secrets of Mars, giving scientists information about the planet that was never available before. Which isn't bad for a couple of pieces of silicon.
I wonder how well they would do moving boxes?
PS - Today (Tuesday) is "Mars Day". In English, the name Tuesday comes from the Nordic god Tyr who, like the Roman god Mars, was the god of war. In Latin, Tuesday is Martis Dies -"Mars Day" - which then serves as the root for the name of this day in several Romance languages, such as Mardi in French, Martes in Spanish, or Martedi in Italian.
PPS - Today (July 29) is also the 50th anniversary of the founding of NASA, which officially began when President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. Happy Birthday, NASA!
50 Million
Fifty million of almost anything is a whole lot. Fifty million inches is almost 800 miles - about the distance from Chicago to Dallas. Fifty million people is more than the population of Spain. And fifty million grains of sand? Around half a ton.
In a camera, fifty million pixels is a pretty impressive number, too. That's enough to see something the size of a small notebook computer in a field 1.5 miles wide. Or resolve every individual hair in a portrait of a model. Or take your professional photography business to a whole new level.
Yesterday, Kodak announced the new KODAK KAF-50100 Image Sensor - at fifty megapixels, it's the highest resolution available for professional photography. Today, the current state of the art is at 39 million pixels (with the KODAK KAF-39000 Image Sensor). But in this market, image is everything - so having the pixels and the performance you need is critical to capturing exactly the shot you want. So now, 50 is the new 39.
The new sensor design - the KODAK TRUESENSE 6.0 micron Full Frame CCD Technology Platform - includes several new features that make possible the performance available from the new sensor. Pixel size has been reduced by almost 30% (from 6.8 micron to 6.0 micron) to enable the increase in resolution. A new four-output architecture was designed to manage the quantity of data available from the sensor - so even though there's so much more data, the frame rate has actually gone up compared to the current 39 MPix device. A new red color pigment provides a subtle but important improvement to color accuracy and fidelity available from the sensor. And a new global reset capability allows the entire sensor to be cleared using a single pulse - shortening the amount of time the sensor needs to be ready to take the next shot, and helping to reduce power (by not needing to clock out the entire sensor before each shot).
Developing a new sensor - and especially one that uses an entirely new technology platform, like the one used here - isn't something that happens overnight. To develop this technology, there was a lot of hard work done to not only come up with the concepts for the new pixel designs and structures, but also to run these new designs through our manufacturing facility in Rochester, test the prototype sensors that are manufactured, understand what is going on, and then make modifications to both the underlying design as well as the manufacturing process to optimize the final result. A lot of work, but also a lot of fun (how often do you get to trick physics to let you do something everyone said wasn't even possible?).
Fifty million is a lot - in seconds, it's about how long Kodak spent developing this new technology. So our fifty million (in time) made possible a new fifty million (in pixels) for professional photographers. And who knows what fifty million that will produce in the future?
What's your fifty million?