I am kind of confused about CCD vs. CMOS. From what I can tell online, most places say CMOS sensors are cheap and don’t collect much light. Their big benefit is low power consumption. They say that all the good sensors are CCD.
This seems to not be borne out by camera manufacturers who put CCDs in the point-and-shoot cameras and CMOS in the big expensive SLR cameras.
What?
What is going on here? Why do we use different ones in different cameras and why does it not match up with what other sites say?
I can’t really help much except to say that when CMOS sensor first became available they were definitely inferior. I never kept up with the technology but AFAIK, CMOS sensor are, or can be, quite good. Take for example the Canon 5D. The body alone is over 2 grand and it uses a CMOS sensor. For a high end model like that, they aren’t going to use an inferior sensor just because it sips less power.
Yes, this is exactly my point. If anything, the one that sips less power I would expect to find in the small point and shoot cameras, but those have CCDs.