Occasionally I hear someone mention what I guess is the next series of processors i.e. Digic III.

Is it known that the next "big" upgrade will be Digic III?

And if so, what should we expect?

I'm just wondering if Canon is as closed-mouth about this as all their announcements, or if they have given us a hint of what is to come.

We should expect 128 MPPS ( Meg Pixel Per Second ).
The original Digic was 32 MPPS.
Digic-2 is 64 MPPS. ( 1D-2 runs at 8 fps, 1Ds-2 runs at 4 fps )
They need 128 MPPS Digic-3 to support 8fps on 16MP. And then, at least theoretically, you could unify 1D and 1Ds series into one.

Pondria is right, I suspect that processing / moving data quickly enough is the main problem for most camera manufacturers these days. The imaging engine is really critical and controls all sorts of things from startup times to white balance to processing AF and exposure info. The more advanced the engine becomes, the more the feature set can be refined and grow. If DIGIC III is a major advance all sorts of good possibilities exist but we are probably reaching a point of diminishing returns.

I wonder if we will see Digic III any time soon.

Thanks for the info. Now I'm getting the idea...I think.

But alas, another question:

Is noise a product of the processor, or of the sensor?

I think the next jump for me in camera bodies will be when Canon comes out with something that will handle ISO 6400 or above.

Noise is a product of the sensor, but there are processing techniques that can be used to suppress noise with varying degrees of loss of sharpness or quality. Whatever the next Canon processor might be, it will probably have better claimed noise reduction, however as you add pixels noise generally increases, meaning that ISO performance will probably remain relatively constant, barring a major technological breakthrough. If you really want ISO 6400, check out what people are doing with underexposed and pushed 5D shots. It's not all that pretty, but given what color film (or older digital cam shots) would look like pushed to that speed it's impressive. I would be surprised if the state of the art improves on that substantially within the next two years (but I've been surprised before by lots of stuff).

Back to the MPPS ... would it be possible to make a dual-Digic II that could then handle 2 x 64 MPPS = 128 MPPS?

I would also like to see lower ISO settings on future cameras. A true ISO 50 would be a good start.

Also ISO 25, ISO 15 and even ISO 6 like on the Kodak DCS 14/c. It would eliminate the need to use ND filters, and would be great if you want to use long exposures in brigher lighting conditions. Even if it was just a ISO expansion mode like with the current cameras and ISO 50 settings. ISO 6400 would be nice too.

EOS20 wrote:
I wonder if we will see Digic III any time soon.

I think we'll see it in the next full frame body. It might be as soon as Photokina in the fall.

It could be, But if the 1Ds Mk II is just a upgrade we may not see it till sometime next year.

I rekon we will see it when the 1D2n and 1Ds2 are made into one camera.

Rainer wrote:
Back to the MPPS ... would it be possible to make a dual-Digic II that could then handle 2 x 64 MPPS = 128 MPPS?


I think the 1-series cameras already use two processors, one for image work and one for AF and such things. Theoretically image processing could probably be done by two paralell processors (making it three in total).


On the other hand, there's som kind of "law" that states that processor speed and related things double in 18 months or something (although I think it gets harder and harder to archieve that because of physical limits). I don't remember when DigicII was announced, but my guess is that 18 months has passed and a Digic 3 is not far away.

Rainer wrote:
Back to the MPPS ... would it be possible to make a dual-Digic II that could then handle 2 x 64 MPPS = 128 MPPS?

Of course. It is more than "possible". They may be doing just that. However, they would still call it Digic-3.
Running multiple parallel processors in the control equipment is not a new thing.

Hmmm...I wonder if it would be possible to vary sensitivity ("ISO") across the sensor. You could create profiles and load them, mimicking NG filters of varying strength and location.

How nice for landscape photographers.

If canon is following other chip trends, Digic III will be 64-bit and MPPS should be 256 or better. (if I got the math right). There would need to be a bus speed improvement as well, which would increase memory speed (and capacity), and of course I/O speed to storage media. Also, a large bit depth would be supported. Maybe 16-bit per channel?