Originally posted by falconeye Ok, this famous 10x legend again. It is pure speculation from sources weaker than mine. You are correct for the reticle. But only because too few FF sensors are made to justify larger reticles.
My estimate was about what FF sensors would cost if made in quantities!
Illya Borg proved the sensor in the Nikon uber-expensive FF is stitched...
All agree... sorry this is just a fact of current production... The link I stated showed that Canon was not stitched but they have their own fab. Yes it could be done, no it isn't. Speculation is it won't be for the proximate future... Sensors go completely against the current chip trends... smaller. I stand by mine guess and that blog...
but neither of us will probably find out the real truth
IF it was so simple (and cheap) to do this I would assume Nikon would have done it already.. they sell the steppers you know..... and sell them to sony as well.
you mock my $3000 and tell Sean OK to $3500????? yeesh.......
current $300-450 per FF sensor is quite realistic from other sources as well. might as well ask Sean where he got his number from.
W/ APS-C prices and economies ect NOBODY, certainly not Pentax is going to order 30mil FF sensors to obtain some imagined economies of scale. From most reports these are already being produced on depreciated equipment. They are as cheap as there likely to get for awhile.
Prey tell why you think chipworks is a weak source?
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If you follow to canon's whitepaper:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/public_files/Canon_Full-Frame_CMOS_White_Paper.pdf Will you take Canon's word for it???????
$450 to $500, $1,000 or even $5,000. After several hundred process steps, perhaps
between 400 and 600 (including, for
example, thin film deposition,
lithography, photoresist coating and
alignment, exposure, developing,
etching and cleaning), one has a wafer
covered with sensors. If the sensors are
APS-C size, there are about 200 of them
on the wafer, depending on layout and
the design of the periphery of each
sensor. For APS-H, there are about 46
or so. Full-frame sensors? Just 20.
Consider, too, that an 8" silicon
wafer usually yields 1000 to 2000 LSI
(Large-Scale Integrated) circuits. If, say, 20 areas have defects, such as dust or
scratches, up to 1980 usable chips remain. With 20 large sensors on a wafer, each
sensor is an easy “target.” Damage anywhere ruins the whole sensor. 20 randomly
distributed dust and scratch marks could ruin the whole batch. This means that the
handling of full-frame sensors during manufacture needs to be obsessively precise,
and therefore they are more expensive.
Of course, there is more to this topic. For example, the circuit pattern of a fullframe
sensor is too large to be projected on the silicon wafer all at once; it requires
three separate exposures (See page 53). This means that the number of masks and
exposure processes is tripled.
For now, appreciate that a full-frame sensor costs not
three or four times, but ten, twenty or more times as much as an APS-C sensor. Here,