Canon Shows the Most Sensitive Camera Sensor In the World 218
An anonymous reader writes "Canon announced today that it successfully developed a super high-sensitivity full-frame CMOS sensor developed exclusively for video recording. The new Full HD sensor can capture light no other comparable sensor can see and it uses pixels 7.5 larger than the best commercial professional cameras in existence today."
There doesn't seem to be a gallery of images, but the video demo (direct link to an mpeg4) makes it seem pretty sensitive.
Re:That "full moon" "after" shot... yeah... no. (Score:5, Informative)
Err, of course the sky is blue under moonlight: it's just reflected sunlight, after all (but see below).
The problem is that the Moon is much fainter than the Sun and thus the overall light level is low. So low that it doesn't significantly activate the colour-sensitive cones in the human eye, meaning that you only really see with the rods in black-and-white.
But take a long exposure with a camera (or a video frame rate with this Canon sensor), and the blue will most definitely come through.
(Actually, the moonlight-illuminated sky is slightly bluer than a sunlight-illuminated one, as the Moon's slightly brown-ish colour first imprints its spectral dependence on the sunlight which bounces off it. That light is then Rayleigh-scattered off the molecules in the Earth's atmosphere, imprinting the well-known 1/lambda^4 dependence which makes the sky blue).
Mo it is 7.5 time larger larger (Score:5, Informative)
The newly developed CMOS sensor features pixels measuring 19 microns square in size, which is more than 7.5-times the surface area of the pixels on the CMOS sensor incorporated in Canon's top-of-the-line EOS-1D X and other digital SLR cameras.
I guess this is to collect more photons in low light conditions. Of course this means that sensor is physically larger, but that's not a problem for Canon, they have made medium format cameras in the past.
Re:Mo it is 7.5 time larger larger (Score:5, Informative)
It's a 35mm full-frame sensor.
It's also explicitly intended "exclusively for video recording" and mentions "full HD". Which would mean - assuming I'm reading between the lines correctly - that the resolution is 1920x1080 - ie. 2 megapixels.
You are confusing it with dynamic range (Score:5, Informative)
Sensitivity and dynamic range are separate things. You can have an extremely sensitive sensor, pushing an equiv of ISO 12800 or even more, but dynamic range may only be 8-10EV
Even the best of the best have around 13EV of dynamic range(eg Nikon D7000) at ISO 100. As you increase ISO, the dynamic range suffers, and noise increases. Getting to above 14-15EV is very very difficult. You can do it in post processing(HDR combination of multiple exposures)
Re:Mo it is 7.5 time larger larger (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but then you would need special lenses. This sensor works with 35mm (full-frame) lenses.
Re:Mo it is 7.5 time larger larger (Score:4, Informative)
That's the comparison you saw in the video. Binning is generally how the down-sampling is done.
Re:That "full moon" "after" shot... yeah... no. (Score:4, Informative)
Moonlight is just reflected sunlight, you just need more of it to make the colours come out.
E.g. see http://www.flickr.com/photos/dansdata/3074862610/ [flickr.com] for an example - this photo was taken under a full moon, 30 second exposure.
Re:Mo it is 7.5 time larger larger (Score:4, Informative)
By "larger width" lens are you meaning larger aperture, smaller focal length or larger image circle?
All of these things have effects on the image and have practical limitations. (for example change the image circle area to be larger and you need a new format, all the old 35mm lenses they have can't be used for the larger frame unless you like black edges).
Re:Mo it is 7.5 time larger larger (Score:5, Informative)
They use another trick to take care of this, though: "microlenses", miniature optics in front of each pixel that channel light away from the insensitive regions (the data paths) and onto the actual light-sensitive pixels. A recent advance is "gapless microlenses", where nearly all of the light incident on the sensor winds up falling on some pixel or other.
Re:Mo it is 7.5 time larger larger (Score:5, Informative)
After size, the big advantage of using 35mm is simply being able to use the overwhelming piles of 35mm lenses out there. If you have some big fancy camera you're going to need big fancy lenses. But if you can put the big fancy sensor in a normal camera, then you've got a whole new market there; people who can afford or already have 35mm lenses but can't afford all the kit for a bigger, more expensive camera. That's who this sensor is for. I can't help but think that it would be an excellent thing to sell to schools at only a nominal profit. Then students could buy an SLR-format camera with the same sensor and accepting the same lenses as what they learned on, when they graduated. Get a sort of Apple-like function going on.
Re: pixels 7.5 larger (Score:4, Informative)