I have a few friends who are serious cinephiles. Some of it rubbed off on me.

 

Dear Sir Trunkie-

What are your thoughts on Nikon using a CMOS image sensor in the new D90 over the CCD in the D80?

 

Well, let me preface this by stating I'm color blind. As such, video displays, cameras, crap like that. . . there's only so much I'm willing to invest time, money, and knowledge. . .


That said, it really depends on the size bank of the CMOS. It could be a massive win for Nikon, as they would probably own the Intellecutal Property outright, be able to do version upgrades as bugs were found, and cut down on tooling costs.

As to whether it'll actually help the consumer, I have no farkin' idea.

 

If I may, I was wondering the same thing, through the miracle of the internest...CCD sensors, as mentioned above, create high-quality, low-noise images. CMOS sensors, traditionally, are more susceptible to noise.
Because each pixel on a CMOS sensor has several transistors located next to it, the light sensitivity of a CMOS chip tends to be lower. Many of the photons hitting the chip hit the transistors instead of the photodiode.
CMOS traditionally consumes little power. Implementing a sensor in CMOS yields a low-power sensor.
CCDs use a process that consumes lots of power. CCDs consume as much as 100 times more power than an equivalent CMOS sensor.
CMOS chips can be fabricated on just about any standard silicon production line, so they tend to be extremely inexpensive compared to CCD sensors.
CCD sensors have been mass produced for a longer period of time, so they are more mature. They tend to have higher quality and more pixels.

 

So it seems semi-puzzling that the D90, D700 and almighty D3 all use CMOS sensors, whereas the older and less expensive D80 uses a CCD

 

Product development lifecycle. The D80 is older, and possibly at a time when CCD's may have been cheaper, or offered a better product at the price-point.

 

Trunki, Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?

 

I just tried to pay attention to stuff in High School.

Alas, I placed 114th out of 400 when I graduated. There again, I went to an academic sweatshop.

 

Unkie Trunkie, were you a highschool honor's graduate?

 

We'll play SAT/GRE show and tell sometime when we are feeling blue