Very good is not good enough.

After delivery of the first D3 cameras one year ago and extensive experience in the field from our customers we have reengineered our Seitz D3 digital scan back, the D3 camera hardware and the Seitz Roundshot D3 software.

A team of specialists has looked again at sensor design, electronics, software and camera hardware to translate customer feedback into reality.

The objective: introduce a generation 2 back which brings our technology close to perfection.

The first generation 2 backs will be delivered immediately after photokina in October 2008.

• Redesign of D3 imaging sensor for overall quality enhancement and increase of sensor yield

• Additional image quality

• New sensor calibration method

• Higher ISO/ASA sensitivity (now up to 800 ISO/ASA)

• New laser-guided precision mounting

• Improved sensor alignment and sharpness 

• New ultra-thin optical filters

• Improved edge-to-edge sharpness (especially for wide-angle lenses)

• New electronic shutter within digital scan back

• On-the-fly calibration for longer exposure times
  (now up to 10s)

• New shielding within digital back and new back casing

• Reduced noise, also at longer exposures

• New digital back reset button for factory settings

• Possibility for hardware reset in the field

• New nodal bench holder and clamp (Roundshot D3) and extended optical bench for longer focal lengths

• Greater stability for camera rotation, especially for faster exposure speeds

Benefits

• New raw conversion (demosaicing) - reducing digital artifacts significantly 

• Improved image quality and reduced need for post production

• Definition of DNG as raw image format and possibility to use camera raw (Photoshop) and Lightroom for raw conversion

• Possibility for photographers to use advanced raw conversion options and filters of Adobe

• Upgrade of Seitz Roundshot D3 camera control to a raw conversion software

• Possibility to use super fast and high quality demosaicing algorithms specifically designed for Seitz D3 sensor layout

• Adoption of USB GPS device with automatic reading and saving of GPS coordinates into image metadata

• Useability and data mining, allowing easy retrieval of GPS position in metadata software

• Extension of Seitz Roundshot D3 software from English + German into additional languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Simplified Chinese

• Useability and customer convenience
  

• Various software improvements (5 releases in 12 months) based on customer feedback, including improvement of white-balancing options, favourite lens list and data, automatic exposure feature, fast-image and 8-bit image workflow, image metadata, histogram and histogram stretching options, etc. 

• Useability and customer convenience