Has anyone heard if canon is goinge to put the digic 3 in a dslr?

Yes, wait for the PMA.

Finally. I've been trying to focus on faces, but never been able to distinguish them from trees before. I'm glad my camera will be able to now. :P

Nobody's heard, only speculation. This has been discussed before and I don't expect that D3 will have any breath taking advancements. I wouldn't NOT buy a body while waiting for it. Good luck.

The main feature marketed for digic 3 is facial recognization AF. I can imagine landscape shooters cursing their new 5D MK II as it locks onto face-like features among the rocks and fields...

Incidentally I played with my sister's new SD800 IS (digic 3) and couldn't find any diff in AF between it and my SD700 IS (digic 2). The only difference seems to be a slightly slower frame rate for the SD800 IS--probably due to the addition of 1MP of sensor rez--so I'm guessing the CPU processing speed ain't any faster.

I doubt that digic 3 is anything more than a blanket for core technology. By that reasoning I doubt that digic 3 (or 2) is the same from camera to camera... at least not between P&S and SLRs.

I would also be surprised if Digic 3 on the higher end cameras (1-series) doesn't increase throughput, meaning equal or faster frame rates from larger files.

Gochugogi wrote:
The main feature marketed for digic 3 is facial recognization AF. I can imagine landscape shooters cursing their new 5D MK II as it locks onto face-like features among the rocks and fields...

I'm not convinced that the AF recognition will focus on the eyes rather than the beak.

EB

justruss wrote:
I doubt that digic 3 is anything more than a blanket for core technology. By that reasoning I doubt that digic 3 (or 2) is the same from camera to camera... at least not between P&S and SLRs.

I would also be surprised if Digic 3 on the higher end cameras (1-series) doesn't increase throughput, meaning equal or faster frame rates from larger files.


I would agree. All face recognition on the P&S cameras suggests to me is that DIGIC III has processing capability to spare.

I'm not sure but I believe the Digic III is supposed to have less battery drain and be faster at processing information than the Digic II. I also remember reading somewhere about improved jpeg images out of camera from the III. Face recognization is for determining more of a skin color in images as well as the attention to focus. If included in the DSLR's I think it would be made to activate or de-activate by the owner.

I think Canon has reached a happy medium in megapixels and will be concentrating on better DR, faster and more accurate focusing and improved noise at high ISO. There will always be a need for high megapixels in some areas of photography but I don't think this is Canons big concern at present. I do think they will go to something just slightly higher than the current 16.7. Maybe 22 as many have previously mentioned.


Grant

Yes better dynamic range is what I'm looking for. I think we have enough MP to work with. Even 1D 4MP is good enough for 24x36 posters.

I agree with Xman,
only thing that would really make an updated processor worthwhile is a better dynamic range.

A few things you can be sure of:

- Face recognition (with the intent to assist focus) requires live preview. DIGIC III needs a live image to determine where the faces are and adjust focus accordingly.

- Real improvement of dynamic range is achieved by improving the image sensor itself. Each pixel needs to have a bigger difference between Empty and Full.

- Increasing the bit-depth of the output signal, and not just empty upscaling of the digital signal, requires better ADCs (Analogue to Digital Converters). These are also embedded on the image sensor itself, so again this would come down to improving the image sensor itself. This has nothing to do with the processing chip.

- DIGIC, as a concept, has always been a multi-purpose chip. It's built from the ground up to work with different sensors. The orignial DIGIC sat in dSLRs and in digicompacts alike, G3 and 10D for instance. DIGIC III sits in the Powershot G7, expect it in new dSLRs.

- DIGIC III has support for the newer DDR SDRAM. Use of DDR instead of SDR SDRAM will double the I/O speed to buffer. Oh, and DDR is cheaper than SDR nowadays. Another reason to put DIGIC III in new models.

As far as powerdraw and other benefits: You can expect (but that's not a guarantee) that Canon has been able to move to a smaller node in the lithography process. It would be very stupid to stay at a big production process. Smaller chips cost less to produce.

Just look at the processor industry, AMD and Intel: Moving from 350 nm to 250 nm to 180, 130, 90, 65 and 45 nm has increased performance per watt tremendously.

What Tentacle said. With one exception:

DDR SDRAM is not a new feature of the Digic III. It's supported by Digic II as well.

The 1D mkII camera models use DDR SDRAM. So does the 5D. Even the 30D has DDR-SDRAM. It's said that the 1Ds mkII also does, and that seems likely even though I haven't found anything official on it.

I'll also add for Russ's benefit that the Digic chip is not the bottleneck in frame rates. The Digic-II already delivers 8.5 frames per second on the 1D mark II cameras. The Digic chip can affect the number of shots that can be taken before frame rate slows down, but the maximum frame rate is determined by the shutter mechanism.

The maximum thoughput of current 1D xxx cameras is a bit below 70 Mega pixels per second: 1 Ds II 16.6 Mp x 4 fps, 1D II 8.2 Mp x 8.5 fps. This might be a limitation of Digic II. If that is a correct assumption, then based on normal semiconductor improvements, Digic III could have about double maximum throughput, i.e. around 140 Mega pixels per second.

Even if that would be correct, there is no guarantee that the other components of next generation 1D XXX cameras could produce such high data flows.

Doug Pardee wrote:
I'll also add for Russ's benefit that the Digic chip is not the bottleneck in frame rates. The Digic-II already delivers 8.5 frames per second on the 1D mark II cameras. The Digic chip can affect the number of shots that can be taken before frame rate slows down, but the maximum frame rate is determined by the shutter mechanism.

Doug-- I could be wrong, but I thought that Digic II WAS the bottleneck in cameras like the 1dsmk2. Otherwise, why would Canon limit the frame-rate of this camera?

I know how fast the 1dmk2 is, but files off of that guy are half the size as 1dsmk2 files.... and the 1dsmk2 has half the framerate. Why would Canon cripple their flagship camera?

No, I've gotta believe that the digic chip is a real bottleneck in the case of the 1dsmk2. Yeah, in the lower, non-1series, sure, Canon CHOOSES to slow them down so they don't compete with the top products.

What do you think?

Thanks for the correction Doug. I took the bit about DDR SDRAM from a Powershot G7 review, where they listed it as one of the improvements over DIGIC II. I copied their goof. The goof is understandable, because DIGIC II can take both. The 20D still uses SDR SDRAM.

Regaring fps: I doubt that the shutter or mirror is the limiting factor here. Effective bandwith or DIGIC throughput is more likely an issue. After all, the full frame EOS 1V can get 10 fps, so why would the 1D II, with it's smaller mirror, have any difficulties to get to 8? And why is the 1Ds II limited to 4 fps?

16.7 mpixel uncompressed RAW data, at 12 bit per color channel is quite a lot. 4 big ones every second amount to roughly 290 MB per second. (295.3 if you're overly accurate and use the 17.2 mpixel number.) The number for the 8.3 FPS burst of the 1DII is almost exactly the same. (310 MB/sec by Canon's numbers). The 5D hits "only" 171 MB/sec averaged sensor output.

Given that 300 MB/sec is peanuts for a simple reasonable 32-bit 66 MHz DDR bus (which would give a theoretical 504 MB/sec top bandwidth) I would assume that the I/O of DIGIC II is the limiting factor.

DIGIC is a throughput and processing chip. It's *NOT* buffer itself, it uses discrete SDRAM chips for that. The amount of SDRAM will dictate how many shots can be buffered. DIGIC itself, or possibly but not likely the RAM bandwith, is the bottleneck for the speed at which the buffer is filled.

I am hoping that Digic III will make bigger buffers possible which could encourage faster frame rates and more RAW file thru put.

As to the Digic not being the bottleneck for higher frame rates…

I confess that I was primarily thinking of the 5D, which is the camera that I hear the most complaints about frame rate about.

But I'm not smart enough to just leave it at that, so I'm going to go ahead and address the 1-series

The burst performance of the camera is pretty much uncoupled from the throughput of the Digic chip. What matters is if there's room in the buffer and how fast the buffer can be loaded with sensor data. I presume that there are limits in the Digic II as to the fastest memories that it can deal with, and the size of those memories, but I'd be disappointed if it was already "maxed out" in those regards just a couple of years after it was introduced.

But let's look at the throughput of the Digic chip anyway. It can process JPEGs faster than it can process Raw files. Both involve the same amount of data coming in from the buffer, JPEG files (almost certainly!) require a lot more internal processing than Raw files do, and yet on a 1D mark II N the buffer fills up with [about] 20 Raw files or 40 JPEGs. The bottleneck would therefore seem to be in writing to the flash card, where JPEG files are a fraction (1/2 or less) of the size of Raw files.

In fact, according to Rob Galbraith's flash speed tests, the best that the 1D2N can achieve on the CF slot is somewhere around 7 MB/sec (7-1/2 for Raw, 6-1/2 for JPEG). The SD slot is a bit faster, up to 8-1/2 MB/sec for Raw. For Raw files around 8 MB in size, the maximum sustained frame rate is therefore about 1 fps. For JPEG files around 3 MB in size, the maximum sustained frame rate is about 2.5 fps.

So the maximum throughput of the entire system is bottlenecked by the write to flash memory. The peak frame rate is determined by the shutter, the sensor readout, and the speed of the buffer. The maximum burst size is primarily controlled by the size of the buffer, although the system throughput affects it a bit.

But wait… the SanDisk Extreme III cards are rated at 20 MB/sec while the camera is only writing them at 7-8 MB/sec. It appears that there should be some room for substantial improvement in efficiency here, and that would seem to indeed be dependent on the Digic chip. Furthermore, the new SanDisk Extreme IV cards are rated at 40 MB/sec. If the (a?) new Digic chip is able to come close to using that 40 MB/sec speed, the throughput could go up to where it significantly increases burst size—perhaps even providing unlimited 8.5 fps burst for JPEGs.

Doug,

Interesting thoughts, but it still doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I'm missing something. What you seem to be talking about is how many images can be taken at maximum burst fps.

I'm not entirely convinced, but then again, I'm not entirely convinced digic is the bottleneck-- though I thought I've heard such things in the past... I'll try to look into that.

Thanks for your analysis... it is interesting.

Doug, check this out... just dug this up from the 1dsmk2 white paper

"The DIGICII Image Processor enablesthe EOS-1DsMarkII to write to card at speeds up
to 5.8 MB/sec, depending on the CFcard’swrite speed capability"

Sway2120 wrote:
Has anyone heard if canon is goinge to put the digic 3 in a dslr?
hey ken...you can bet your bottom dollar that the next 1 series dslr will have digic 3

Yeah, woah, I just noticed how off track I've gone on this digic 3 discussion. Tom is absolutely right, the next 1-series camera will definitely have digic 3. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if ALL new canon DSLRs announced in 2007 will have digic 3.

justruss wrote:
Yeah, woah, I just noticed how off track I've gone on this digic 3 discussion. Tom is absolutely right, the next 1-series camera will definitely have digic 3. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if ALL new canon DSLRs announced in 2007 will have digic 3.

I'd be surprised if they didn't. Putting DIGIC III in a P&S camera suggests to me that they don't intend produce more than one DIGIC version at a time.

Erhhh, Doug, what were we talking about here anyway?

This was about the maximum framerate, right? I took that to be shooting to buffer, untill said buffer was full. After that you're out of "maximum" territory.

If an EOS 1V can do 10 fps, then we can rule out the mirror escapement as a bottleneck.

What's left? Let's look at the data flow: The image sensor spits out its analogue signals to the ADCs (Analogue to Digital Converters). This gets done, as far as I can tell, on the image sensor itself. The 1DII and 1DsII sensors do this on 8 channels simultaneously, at 16 MHz. This gets send to the front-end processing circuit. The front-end processing circuit can either be on-sensor or on a discrete chip. I expect the latter because there is an additional chip between connector and DIGIC II chip. (See image in link below)

http://www.canon.com/technology/canon_tech/explanation/digic_slr.html

Again I have to guess here, but this should be the place where the Bayer pattern values gets translated into RGB pixel values. The website mentions that "each shot contains up to around 20 MB of image data." So DIGIC II receives what looks to be RAW data. I assume that this 20 MB is a worst-case image which performs poor in the lossless RAW compression.

WHOOPS, I was off by a long shot. DIGIC II gets 4 frames per second at about 15 MB each in a burst. Or 8.5 frames at 8 MB each. I think I've just ruled out the DDR SDRAM as a bottleneck. Less than 100 MB per second. That's a walk in the park for this kind of RAM. Or Canon babbles too much in their tech-talk corner.

(By the way, "up to nine frames in a sequence" and using a best-case RAW lossless compression of about 14.5 MB, you can guesstimate the buffer size at 128 MB. 2 chips, that means two 512 Mbit DDR SDRAM chips. )

As you can see in the diagram, there's a final leg of the trip, which goes from buffer, through DIGIC II to CF. This is where DIGIC III will have a chance to shine.

So, revised statement: I think I have to put my money on the front end processing unit. It's all a matter of the number of channels and the frequency at which the sensor is read.

1Ds II does 17.2 mpixel every 4 seconds: 69 mpixel/second
1D II does 8.5 mpixel every 8.3 seconds: 71 mpixel/second
5D does 13.3 mpixel every 3 seconds: 40 mpixel/second

That's about half for the 5D. But from the 5D white paper we know that the 5D sensor only uses 4 channels to read. That means that the frequency has been upped from 16 to 18 MHz.