Canon Unveils 120-Megapixel Camera Sensor

Barence writes "Canon claims to have developed a digital camera sensor with a staggering 120-megapixel resolution. The APS-H sensor — which is the same type that is used in Canon's professional EOS-1D cameras — boasts a ridiculous resolution of 13,280 x 9,184 pixels. The CMOS sensor is so densely packed with pixels that it can capture full HD video on just one-sixtieth of the total surface area. However, don't hold your breath waiting for this baby to arrive in a camera. Canon unveiled a 50-megapixel sensor in 2007, but that's not made it any further than the labs to date." It's probably not going too far out on a limb to say that the any-day-now rumored announcement of an update to the 1D won't include this chip, but such insane resolution opens up a lot of amazing possibilities, from cropping to cheap telephoto to medium and large format substitution. Maybe I should stop fantasizing about owning a full-frame 1D or 5D and redirect my lust towards 120 megapixels.

Comments

Noise/Light Sensitivity/Optics

[Greymist]

I'm just curious what this would be like in low light settings, cramming that many pixels into such a small space has got to have some effect on sensitivity.

Re:Noise/Light Sensitivity/Optics

[Peeteriz]

In principle, you get the exact same result or worse as with a cheaper sensor with less resolution where each pixel is simply 4 times larger and gets 4 times the light for the dark areas, and the bright parts will be maxed out anyway. And HDR usually means a much larger exposure difference than simply 4 times - say, 10 stop difference is a 2^10 ~= 1000 times more light for the dark parts.

Re:Noise/Light Sensitivity/Optics

[GlassHeart]

It's not possible to get more range out of a single exposure, because the range is inherent in the capture based on how much light you choose to let in, and how sensitive your sensor is to that light. Dynamic range refers to the difference between the brightest and the darkest pixel the sensor can distinguish in that exposure. Beyond the bright end of the range, they all look the same white to the sensor. Beyond the dark end of the range, they also all look the same black.

Here's how HDR works, oversimplified. We take a shot where we meter the bright part, so that it'll be properly exposed, deliberately sacrificing the dark parts. All dark pixels will be black in this exposure because we didn't let in enough light for the sensor to make out the difference. We then take another shot where we meter the dark part, sacrificing any somewhat bright parts. All bright pixels will be white because we let in too much light for the sensor to make out the difference. If we then combine the two images by throwing away the dark parts of the bright shot and the bright parts of the dark shot, we get an composited image that has more range than either image alone, i.e., HDR. Note that no averaging is involved.

The alternate solution ceoyoyo is talking about requires a different kind of sensor. Imagine if you had two kinds of pixel sensors, one sensitive and the other insensitive. You'd alternate them on your sensor, perhaps in a checkerboard pattern, but basically pairing adjacent sensitive/insensitive pixels. Now, if your sensitive pixel registers too high a value, then it's probably blown out so use the value from the insensitive one (which is by definition not as bright). If the insensitive one registers too low a value, then it's probably too dark, so use the sensitive one (by definition not as dark). The crucial difference here is that you choose one over the other, and never average. If all you did was average, then the result is the same as using a single kind of pixel sensor with a sensitivity in the middle, and would not improve your dynamic range.

Need some sharper glass... or better physics

[BWJones]

Canon had better come up with some sharper lenses with a sensor like this. I shoot shoot with APS-H sensors on the Canon 1D and many of the lenses that Canon, Nikon and Sigma among others make are not nearly sharp enough to deal with many more pixels than are on say... the Canon 1Ds. Zeiss makes some sharp glass, but with the pixel density Canon is talking about with this new sensor, I'd worry about noise in low light conditions like those on my last embed on the USS Toledo (world's first embed in a strategic nuclear submarine). Any sort of low light, high ISO images will be truly challenging environments for such small pixel imaging sites.

It might be a great technology demonstrator or even a specific use CMOS chip for longer exposures, but I doubt it will have any applications in consumer or professional cameras unless some additional technology (or physics) comes into play.

Also, one would have to come up with some new strategies for moving all of that data around. As it is, on the latest Canon 1D Mk IV, they are pushing 16.1 MP around at about 10 fps. With this new sensor, just the readout would prevent this sensor from being used in any but the most specialized of applications.

Re:Need some sharper glass... or better physics

[localman57]

Plus, sooner or later the general public is going to realize that megapixels aren't everything. A the output of a 6 megapixel Nikon D40 will amaze your non-photographer friends, while the 14Megapixel Samsung compact you just bought at walmart will most definately not.

Still Cool

[lymond01]

45 MP photo to zoom into:

Dubai

Uses

[MBGMorden]

I'm sure the professionals would love such a critter, but as a person who likes to just take personal stills, to me the megapixel war is over. At this point in time I have a hard time getting excited over anything more than 10-12MP. They print just fine to photo sizes that I'd be interested in, and the truth is that MOST of my photos I keep digitally anyways where anything that has more pixels than my monitor is a waste (particularly with the ballooning size of these photos).

I'm far more interested in seeing higher quality photos within our current megapixel options than seeing that particular number go up and up - afterall, there's a HUGE difference between your typical DSLR at 10MP and a $100 point and shoot at 10MP. That metric doesn't define the quality of the image.

Definitely need better physics

[delta407]

A more substantial problem is that diffraction limits the effective resolution of an optical system to well above the size of each of these pixels. This is a problem with current sensors at narrow apertures; lenses exhibit a measurable loss of sharpness, typically f/11 and up, because the airy disks expand as the aperture contracts. With hugely dense sensors like this, though... plugging some numbers into a website that explains the whole situation suggests that you'd need to shoot with apertures than f/1.8 to get circles of confusion smaller than the size of a single pixel.

That's right--even "fast" f/2.8 lenses are limited by physics to never being able to project detail onto individual pixels. You could potentially add a deconvolution stage in software to recover additional sharpness, but not in hardware.

Another thing. Do the math: the pixels are 2.1 micrometers square. Compare to trichromatic human vision, which detects red light peaking at 564 nanometers, 0.564 micrometers. The size of a pixel is within a factor of four of the wavelengths they measure. Staggering.

Glass isn't the problem. We need new laws of nature, since we're near the edges of the ones we have now.

Re:Size doesn't matter

[Bryansix]

That article is OLD and he is not saying that Megapixels don't matter. He is saying that to see a difference you need to quadruple the megapixels and also that other things matter a lot like light sensitivity, pixel to space ratio, ISO performance and the like. He then goes on to say you would need a 25 megapixel camera to meet 35mm uality and that such a camera is not feasable. Well I have to give him a Bill Gates because it is moronic to say anything is not technically feasable because in 10 years you look like a fool.

To get to the POINT, I own a Canon 5D Mark II which is a 21 Megapixel sensor. I have shot plenty of 35mm film and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that this sensor blows 35mm film out of the fucking water! You can see the images I take here. http://shezphoto.zenfolio.com/ and www.shezphoto.com Those are not even full res (although you can buy some of them full resolution). I have blown up the images to 24" x 36" and all the detail remains intact. I'm sure I could go larger but I just haven't.

Dynamic Range,

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I wish they would spend more time on improving the dynamic range than to just play the megapixel count wars.

Instead of total pixel count, get one set of pixels to shoot at the equivalent of 100 speed, and the adjacent set of pixels to shoot at 200 speed etc etc. Then process the pixels to get details in dark regions and to scale the brightness. I would like a dynamic range (brightness ratio of the brightest to dimmest pixel) to be a million or more, not the present 1000. Human eye has a dynamic range of about 1 million (only in the fovea, not in the peripheral vision).

Re:Size doesn't matter

[danpbrowning]

Ken Rockwell is to photography what a goatse troll is to Slashdot. (In fact, if you read his alien abduction pages, you'll see some similarity with goatse).

It's like saying "Computer specs don't matter. Unless you're folding proteins, a 486 is just as good as i5." While it's true that sharpness and resolution are not the most important factors in a photograph, it's misleading as their benefits do in fact contribute to most styles of photography, just as a faster computer can contribute to a better experience for most computing needs.

For example, most people feel that for an 8x10, there is no benefit to pixel counts above 6 MP, but in fact it takes a 24 MP before all the possible gains are realized, most importantly counteracting the loss in contrast from the anti-alias filter. (Many more MP would be required to hit full color resolution at Nyquist, but few natural images benefit from that, despite what the Foveon advocates claim.)