Several manufacture will catagorize the camera into CCD and CMOS,how should the customers choose from these two cameras?which one is better?

Let's begin with what is CCD and what is CMOS.
CCD-is short for Charge Couple Device
CMOS-is short for Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor

1)CCD is current mainstream imaging equipment,maily divided by:
(1)R-G-B primary colour CCD: this is the most widely used CCD in camera.
(2)C-Y-G-M complementary colour CCD:at the early age,part of nikon camera adopted this complementary CCD.
(3)R-G-B-E four colour CCD:This is the latest released CCD and it's just get a extra E(Emerale) colour  compared with RGB primary colour.
2)Super CCD:is the patent technology in Japan Fuji,with the Chinese name “super CCD”,it's envolved from CCD and current version is the 4th Generation.
3)CMOS:it apeared as digital camera imaging components in a short time and developed in a extremly high speed,it becomes a competitive oponent to CCD.There is no essential difference in basic pixel align method in its basic structure  between CCD  and CMOS.Canon is the main support in CMOS Camp.
4)Foveon X3:the essence is also CMOS while it has quite a difference in structure from CMOS,it can reach 5.0 MP to the highest.

3.How is the camera imaging?
a)The light pass through the lens ,cast to the surface layer of sensors
b)The light is divided into different colour tone by the filters on the surface layer.
c)The light can be sensed by corresponding sensor unit in each filter,and produce different strength of analogue electronic signal,and then be collected by sensor conponents circuit .
d)The analogue signal will be transferred to digital signal through digital-analogue converter,and then be processed by DSP and restored to digital image.
e)The digital image will be transimitted to storage card and saved.

4.What are the features of CCD?
CCD technology is mature with good imaging quality,after all,it is current most widely applied imaging conponents.However each coin has two sides,it has some defects:
1)Big power consumption.The early stage digital camera got a “lame reputation”of “power tiger”,one of the main reasons is from CCD.Although nowadays some low power consumption  conponents such as LTPS(low temperature poly-silicon)  is adopted and reduced the power of the camera,the CCD is still the real battery hog.---Once CCD starts up,it will stay in working status,quite a large quantity of electricity is wasted.
2)The artwork is complex and the cost is high.CCD's complex structure leads to the complexity of the manufacturing process flow,as a result,till now,CCD can only be produced by a few electronic industry magnates .
3)Hard to improve the pixel.The previous two defacts of the CCD directly lead to another defect,the improvement of the pixel can only use two ways:First,increase the CCD area keeping the sensor elements's unit area staying the same,integrating more sensor elements in big area CCD.However,this mathod will lead to low rate of finished products,high manufacturing cost and bigger power consumption,which will make it impossible in civil fields.Second,decrease the unit area of sensor element,integrating more sensor elements in current level of CCD area.However,this method will decrease the unit sensor area of the sensor elements and cause decrease in the whole sensitivity, dynamic range of CCD and the imaging quality.

5.What are the features of CMOS?
CMOS got a quite good development velocity this few years,and it becomes the competitive rival of CCD—Even both of the current top class DSLR(Digital sigular lens reflex) Kodak DCS 14n and Canon EOS lDs adopted CMOS imaging.
Compared to CCD,CMOS get 2 most outstanding advantages:
1)low price,simple manufacturing process.The CMOS can be produced by normal semi-conductor production line,unlike the CCD which requires special production process,so the manufacturing cost is much lower.What's more,there is no so much limitation in size and rate of finished goods of  CMOS products while CCD get quite a lot limitation.
2)Low power consumption.Although there is no big difference in filters layout between CMOS and CCD,the sensor unit circuit structure between CMOS and CCD is quite different. Every sensor element in CMOS possess a independent electron/voltage transformation circuit,and can independently examplify the eletronic signal after light-electricity convert process and output---It is much faster than the CCD collected all signal and then examplify&output.Besides,CMOS sensor elements only work when photographic imaging,so it will be power-efficient.The CMOS also get some defects,if there are too many the imaging activities when using a digital camera,the CMOS will produce heat due to the variable current during frequent start up,this will cause noise wave and impact imaging quality.We can see from the working principle of two photoreceptor,the CCD is good in imaging quality with complex manufacturing process,only a few manufacture can master this technology and make the cost hard to be reduced,especially fairly expensive price for big size CCD.At the same time,in recent years,CCD developed from the very beginning of 0.3 MP to current 6.0 MP,the pixel is improved to a limitation.

The differences between CCD and CMOS:
Ask:After knowing above features of CCD and CMOS,I think you got a certain quantity of knowledge between the them,generally speaking,CCD is relatively mature imaging equipment,CMOS is regarded as the future imaging equipment.
For the same resolution ratio,the CMOS is much cheaper than CCD,however the imaging quality of CMOS equipment is lower than CCD.Till now,most cosumer-grade and high-end digital cameras use CCD as sensor,CMOS sensor is used as low-end products applied in some camera.If a camera manufacture use CCD as camera sensor,the manufacture will spare no effect to promote this feature ,and entitle it with “digital camera”.At a time,whether equiped CCD sensor become the one of the standard criterias for people to judge camera.

The CMOS image sensor possess the advantage of lower power consumption than CCD,CCD can provide excellent image quality and the only take high power consumption for exchange,if you are to make the electron transimission successful and reduce the noise,you need to use low dropout to improve the transimission performance

One of the advantages of CMOS image sensor is lower power consumption than CCD,CCD sacriface high power consumption for excellent image quality,besides,to reduce noise and keep flunent electron transmission,the CCD use high-low  difference to improve the transimission perforance.However,CMOS image sensor convert every pixel electron to voltage and amplify it before reading,which means it can be drived with only 3.3 voltage,the power consumption is lower than CCD.Another advantage of CMOS image sensor is excellent integrity with peripheral circuit,and can be integrated with ADC and signal processor,which reduce the dimension significantly.For instance,the CMOS image sensor only requires one set of power while CCD requires 3-4 sets of power,and since the process of ADC and signal processor is quite different from CCD,it's hard to reduce the dimension of CCD.However,the first issue  the CCD is about to solve is how to reduce noise,the technical development in the future is the key to whether the future CMOS image sensor can change the fate of being hold back by the CCD.

The main difference in the manufacturing process of CCD and CMOS is CCD is integrated in semi-conductor single crystal material while CMOS is integrated in the so-called metal-oxide semiconductor material.There is no essential difference in working principle.The CCD technology is only mastered by the very few manufactures such as sony and panasonic.Besides,the manufacturing prcess of CCD is complex,it comparatively expensive to adpot CCD camera.Actually,after technical development,the current gap between actual effect of CCD and CMOS has been decreased in a big scale.And the manuafacturing cost and power consumption is much lower than CCD,as a result,quite a lot of camera manufactures adopt CMOS as sensor element.As for imaging:under the same pixel circumstance,the CCD imaging permeability,sharpness is excellent,the colour reproduction and exposure can be basically accurate while the CMOS products possess normal permeability and worse performance of colour reproduction and exposure.With the physical property of their own,the imaging of CMOS is no as good as CCD while with the low cost and high integrity,CMOS is widely used in camera field.

With the development of technology,CMOS image sencsor in every market field ,developing its technology with the application requirements,has exceeded the specific object  required in market segement.The advantages are embodied in manufacturability,low power consumption,easy to be integrated,low cost and recently emergied high quality imaging.In every market field,these CMOS technical developments have already reached&execeed the market requirement of this field market requirement.The CMOS advantages render OEM the ability to improve finished camera products.However in the data transimission process,the CMOS sensor possess amplifier for every pixel,it's hard to maintain balance in amplifying effect and therefore cause noise.Besides,the CMOS is not as good as CCD in sensitivity,resolution ratio,noise control aspects.

As for the CMOS performance development,you can refer to the article we published before”The performance of CMOS sensor is fast developing