From your note, you want to pursue this thread further - http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/showthread.php?t=15826

The best idea is to make a new thread.

 

There has been a lot of stuff done regarding DIY raw cameras.

A company called RED makes and sells these, but there are hacks on doing what you want.
The images a digital camera displays/produces is only a fraction of what it COULD do.

You will find that the image sensors in many cameras are the same.. weather its a $900 dollar camera or a $99 dollar camera.

The difference is what is the quality of the optics put in front of the sensor, AND the "quality" of the image processing and data compression in the "back" of the sensor.

There are open source video packages that allow you to edit in RAW formats.

This is NO JOKE type stuff.. For 720p 30fps stuff, you need to be able to transfer a few GIGS a second, BUT, if you have the money to get/build the harddrive array, then the rest of the project is not that complicated.

You can learn alot about this by reading the adult swim cartoon forums.

There are quite a few people and forums that talk about this exact topic.