Subscriber Discussion

CMOS Now Taking Over Analog As Well

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Sean Nelson
May 22, 2013
Nelly's Security

What was once a dominate CCD industry for the past few years. There are now a lot of analog cameras that have some excellent quality CMOS sensors, We have some 600 TVL versions that I actually prefer over any 600 TVL CCD. And now there are some 700 and even up to 900 TVL (I know, 900 TVL cant be achieved with analog) cameras coming out. The sample images I have seen on some of the brand new CMOS sensors being released this month show better images than the Sony Effio CCD. Another thing is the prices are way more competitive that comparative CCD's. I have some samples on order to test further.

Seems that more emphasis has been put on CMOS lately for analog. I suppose since the popularity of their use in IP cameras, the economies of scale has allowed for more research for these to be used in analog as well.

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Brian Karas
May 22, 2013
Pelican Zero

CMOS has been taking over the D1 space for several years now. I think a lot of people are still hung up on the CMOS vs. CCD stuff of the 90's.

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Sean Nelson
May 22, 2013
Nelly's Security

The cheap 420 TVL CMOS cameras have been commonplace for Analog for years in the boxed Qsee, Lorex, etc systems, but they are complete crap and wasnt really referring to them. If you wanted good quality, you would have to get CCD. in a matter of fact, I cant think of any analog camera that has a CMOS sensor on it from a major Brand.

It wasnt until within the past year or so when good quality 600 TVL CMOS sensors were introduced and became very popular. If these 700 and "900" CMOS sensors prove to be better than the Effio, then I see it dominating the market. Right now, analoggers love the Effio for some reason.

MI
Matt Ion
May 22, 2013

People get all worked up about CCD vs. CMOS, I point out that Canon uses CMOS exclusively in the DSLRs (vs. Nikon using CCD) and most of the time are considered the best cameras for low light (not counting the constant leap-frogging of technologies that goes on). Canon has even made models (the older EOS 20Da, and more recently the 60Da) specifically designed for astrophotography... using CMOS.

Which of course, doesn't prove that CMOS is always better... just that the whole argument is really silly.

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Brian Karas
May 22, 2013
Pelican Zero

"I cant think of any analog camera that has a CMOS sensor on it from a major Brand."

Anything Pixim-based would be CMOS, and there have been many many major-brand Pixim cameras. Maybe not the volume of a common Sony camera, but decent. I'm pretty sure there are others, but they don't come to mind because it's not something that I've cared about in selecting a camera in quite a while.

Matt put it well though, why are people still talking about this silly topic? If it produces a good image, does it matter that technology the sensor is based on?

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Sean Nelson
May 22, 2013
Nelly's Security

Woops, didn't even realize Pixim was CMOS. Always ASSumed CCD. I'll be a son of a gun. Was checking out Pixim's website and seen this interesting article

Why are we talking about this? Only reason I am talking about it I "nerd out" on industry topics such as this and just thought it was interesting. I am the same, I don't really care which sensor it is, as long as it produces a great image.

sS
sundar Subramanian
May 23, 2013

CMOS analog cameras have their own disadvantages as well. In low light conditions you can observe lot of noise over image which generally not observed while using CCD

MI
Matt Ion
May 23, 2013

sundar, read my post above: some of the best DSLR cameras for low-light use CMOS. It's not a failing of the chip technology itself.

JH
John Honovich
May 23, 2013
IPVM

Sundar, same pattern is happening now in IP/HD cameras. All the top tier low light performers are now CMOS (Axis lightfinder, Bosch's new stuff, Sony's 6gen etc.).

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