It took them a while to get there, but once they crossed paths, Boyle and Smith quickly got to working on our beloved CCD image sensors, changing our digital photographs forever. And one day, as the rest of the world had their eyes on the moon in 1969, they finalized their device, which would let us capture images of it.

Williard Boyle had a brief teaching career after his stint in the Royal British Navy and earning his BSc, MSc, and PhD from McGill University. He then moved on to join Bell Labs, working up to being director of the Space Science and Exploratory Studies department where he provided "support for the Apollo space program and help[ed] to select lunar landing sites." After some time away from that, he "returned to Bell Labs in 1964, working on the development of integrated circuits." All the while it was remarked that he truly was a modest and "self-effacing" man, almost a stereotype of the quiet genius.

While we don't know whether he was cocky or modest, George E. Smith followed a vaguely similar path: he served in the US Navy, then earned a BSc from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from the University of Chicago, where he did in fact write a dissertation a mere three pages long. He, too, then joined Bell Labs and began to research lasers and semiconductor devices.

Yes, with their beginnings in space exploration and lasers, it seems almost obvious that these two were bound to come up with something incredible, but I doubt that they even dreamed about inventing something that we would use or see results of on a daily basis.

Dearest Williard, beloved George: Today we thank you for your inventions and congratulate you on your Nobel prize. After all, without you, our porn wouldn't be the high-quality digital video we so enjoy. [Digital Photography Review and Wikipedia and Wikipedia]

The Nobel Prize for physics is the award in question, and it was actually split between two winners this year.

The first, Charles K. Kao, is the man most responsible for making fiber optic communication the force it is today. Whenever you fire up FiOS next, give thanks to Kao.

The second winner is actually two people: Willard Boyle and George Smith. These two chaps invented the CCD. No, not the Catholic classes your parents forced you to go to when you were a child, the CCD device that's used in countless thousands of digital cameras and other similar gadgets.

Of course if you combine the two breakthroughs you get digital porn, for which, as far as I know, there is no Nobel category. Regardless, lots to be thankful for today. [DPRReview via CrunchGear]

Apparently, flash memory cells are highly receptive to light and capable of creating a completely digital image. A focused beam of light directed at sector on the chip becomes a pixel, no analog-to-digital conversion required. Flash memory sensors are up to 100x smaller than current CCDs, too. By my math, that means I could have a 200 megapixel camera in my pocket right now.

The drawback: small pixels are less receptive to light, which could mean problems as pixel density increases. The data also only comes in as binary, so grayscale is tricky. Regardless, the researchers are already achieving better grayscale and low-light performance than seen in CMOS sensors.

Edoardo Charbon and the rest of the team at the Technical University of Delft hope to have a working prototype by 2010. We're still waiting for response from Canon on the rumored, memory-sensor-based D40 Pico. [New Scientist via Wired]

If the rumor is true, Canon will be adopting sub-35mm dSLR sensors (APS-C sized CMOS, or what you see in entry level dSLRs like the Rebel) into their elite camcorders. It's not a completely new idea. The Red One has long used a CMOS chip to record 4k video, and Canon makes use of a CMOS in the $1000ish Vixia. But with Canon choosing CMOS for a pro-level camcorder, it pretty much means that CCD (the preferred video chip format of the last several decades) is dead. (Once we saw dSLRs shooting 1080p, we knew this day wasn't far off.) As for the mystery cam itself:

The sub-$8,000 camcorder is said to resemble the XL-H1 (above), accepting EOS lenses and featuring a 12.1MP CMOS that can film 1080p video at 60fps/120hz—that's MPEG4 encoded at a max rate of 56Mbps. We're not sure how the camera will record this much data though the Red One offers CompactFlash, RAID and SSD options. There's also word of a 12bit video RAW format that will require a $4,000ish IO box providing SDI and USB 3 output.

And for the first time in some time, Canon's prosumer camcorders are exciting again. [canonrumors]

When a digital camera captures a photo, the camera creates each pixel using a charge-coupled device—a microchip that is made up of millions of capacitors that get electrical charges depending on how intense the lighting is in a certain spot. Each of these capacitors has a lens and a color filter that creates one single pixel from a mosaic made up of red, green and blue filters.

The colors and brightness levels that we can physically see in our digital pictures are created by a demosaicing software, which is custom built for every camera model due to each camera's individual specs and subtle differences. Because of this, a certain camera model will generate distinct pixels—and unique relationships between its neighboring pixels—which can pinpoint the exact make and model of the camera.

Knowing this information could greatly help forensics teams since each digital camera has a shelf life of about 18 months, which would significantly narrow the pool of where and when it was sold. Although it is not perfect, early tests have shown this technique has proven to be 90 percent accurate, which is still an A in my book! [New Scientist via Slashdot]

[Tech On]

CMOS chips have traditionally been great for still cameras, but analog master CCD has long ruled the video world. And CCD has traditionally been better in low light situations, especially. So why fix what's not broken? CMOS is cheap. Real cheap. And it's good to see the video being used in applications other than the surprisingly effective point 'n shoots with video.

And this Nissan system looks pretty neat, too. [fareastgizmos via gearfuse]

Unfortunately, it still just a prototype and we don't know if it will ever make it to consumer or professional video gear. Or what could be its potential use, for that matter. Any good ideas? (and no, it's just too big for that.) — Ad Dugdale

Press Release [Olympus Japan through Google Translate via Akihabara News]

Dalsa is one of the pioneers of digital cinema cameras, where its 4K Dalsa Origin (pictured here) was the first ultra-high-def video camera to begin challenging the primacy of 35mm motion picture film in 2003. But this latest 111-megapixel CCD won't be used for digital film production, at least not yet. In fact, it's not even the biggest image sensor in the world. That honor goes to Fermilab's 500-megapixel Dark Energy Camera. Wonder what they'll be taking pictures of with these unwieldy imaging devices? If the Dark Energy Camera is any indication: galaxies far, far away. – Charlie White

Want ultra-high resolution pics? Get the 111 megapixel CCD from Dalsa [MobileMagazine]