Digital camera back
Some backs, primarily older ones, require multiple exposures to capture an image; generally one each for red, green, and blue.
Virtually all backs can still be operated in tethered fashion, which allows convenient previewing of images on a large monitor by several people at the same time, sophisticated control of camera functions, and convenient storage for the large image files produced.
Modern high resolution backs that push the limits of data storage and transfer technology still are able to make use of a tethered configuration to offload gigabytes of data to cheaper external storage mediums such as hard drives, instead of the more expensive integrated flash memory.
Non-scanning backs have a sensor similar to that used in most other digital cameras, a square or rectangular array of pixels.
[comment 1] The Leaf DCBI (Digital Camera Back I), nicknamed "The Brick", offered resolution of 4 megapixels (MP) in a 2048 × 2048 pixel format.
Resolution was 6 MP and the physical size of the CCD was full-frame 35 mm, however the back was designed to be used on Hasselblad 500-series cameras.
[1] As of 2014 Phase One has a large market share with their own camera manufacturing and the IQ series digital backs that offer 80, 60.5 and 40MP resolution respectively.
[2] During the first decade of the twenty-first century the digital back market began to change and consolidate quickly.
Sinar is now a subsidiary of Leica and are continuing developments of high technology digitisation with more spectrally accurate systems [5] and optional image size output from a fixed sized cameraback for increased speed The early digital camera back market was dominated by scanning, rather than single-shot, models.
Early digital camera backs created more data than could be stored on the relatively small storage devices of the time that could be built into them, and had to be connected (tethered) to a computer during capture.
Later, one-shot digital backs, which can work at all shutter speeds even on motorized medium-format cameras, were produced.
Images are stored on fast high-capacity plug-in memory cards, making tethering to a computer unnecessary so that the backs could be used wherever film can be used.
Users with large investments in existing camera equipment can convert it to digital use, both saving money and allowing them to continue to use their preferred and familiar tools.
Exposures longer than several minutes are obscured by image noise when captured with a 35 mm digital SLR, but exposures of up to about an hour at room temperature and as long as 17 hours in extremely cold situations can remain noise-free on a digital camera back.
The Sinar eXact creates images in excess of 1 GB in multi-shot mode from a 49 MB sensor.
[10] An actual flatbed image scanner can be used as a camera back if fast operation and short exposures are not required.
This stitching method is used to also give overlaid red green and blue pixel recording as well as increased resolution.
Sinar continued their development of the step and repeat system of extending the CCD capabilities (macroscanning) with the arTec camera which creates a panoramic image with stitching technology.
Other recent innovations are built-in LCD viewing screens and the inclusion of all processing within the camera back, with output in open DNG file format, as in the Sinar 65.
The Pentacon Scan 7000 scanner camera was introduced at the photokina 2010 show in Cologne, Germany.
