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Canon Develops 8 X 8 Inch Digital CMOS Sensor
dh003i writes "Canon has developed a 8 x 8 inch CMOS digital sensor. It will be able to capture an image with 1/100th the light intensity required by a DSLR and will be able to record video at 60 fps in lighting half the intensity of moonlight. There are already many excellent quality lenses designed to cover 8 x 10 inches, although Canon may develop some of their own designed specifically for their requirements."
what is the spectral response?
The article did not explain if this would be incorporated into a camera anytime soon. Also I wonder how it compares to the Hasselblad digital backs and cameras. http://www.hasselbladusa.com/
This sensor is going to revolutionize cam whoring. Today's cameras just don't show the nose pores, and pubic hair stubble like this will.
I can't wait
it's be great if it were something lame like 6 megapixel
I assume this means a would-be digital Ansel Adams will need to drag around a camera the size of a bread machine? I'm not too confident the market size is large enough for anything other than highly specialized scientific equipment. I don't see large format digital cameras even for professional photographers because of what it will probably cost to produce.
There is currently no information about the sensor's resolution.
Darn, that was my biggest question. Low light photography has always been one of my interests, so I would have a lot of fun with a camera based on this technology :D ... Actually, I'd be rather keen to have a try making my own... Maybe that's for another day though. ;)
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks
Moonlight on the earth surface or moonlight of the moon?
Taking photos of the moon is same thing as taking photos of the bright sunlight of theearth surface. Like 1/125 f:11 ISO 100.
No but really, that is impressive but depends from the aperture and lens quality do we get better than f:0.4 or something. But that just means the A/D conversion is impressive at that size of sensor so we might see very noiseless ISO of 250 000 setting.
But there really is demand to get a old formats back. Especially if the megapixel amount would be same as with negative. What is not going to happend because Canon likes more to make bigger sensors than tight megapixels. Thing about A4 (197x210mm) sized full size architecture camera. On such negative with ISO 50-100 you can capture more details than what you could even think about with digital cameras.
The article says that there's currently no information available about the resolution. I just wondered if this might be the same sensor from the story the other day about the 120MP sensor...? Two stories for the price of one? Agree? Disagree?
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks
but I'll ask just one more time:
What I want is a digital collector that lays in/on the rails of my Nikon Fs and has the circuitry where the cassette would have gone with maybe a usb jack cut in the bottom of the film back. I know, this is pure nostalgia. Tell me nostalgia doesn't sell. I'm not buying a DX-blah for some time but I'd buy one of these tomorrow. Maybe two.
you're wrong about its uses, but with new and coming art directors being completely unaware about megapixels and print size, the death of print publication.... I agree that I don't see much use from an 8x10 camera. Photoshop and tilt-shift camera takes care of architecture photography, not to mention most arch. firms uses 3d rendering. Publications are going online, and you don't need anything more than 1200px the longest side.
Every publication I've been working for are about content quantity rather than quality. From weddings to fine art, and finally magazine editors. They seem to want all the shots these days, not realizing that shooting is just one half of the equation; printing (or post-processing in photoshop) is the other half.
Anyhoo, I def. see this in scientific use. Not for fashion spreads anytime soon.
That Paris Hilton sex video really could have used one of these!
"although Canon may develop some of their own designed specifically for their requirements"
I'll eat my hat if this sensor is every used in any product sold by Canon.
If it requires 1/100 the light of a 35mm sensor, then it also achieves 1/100 the depth of field using the same lens type. So your landscape photo (it'd be useless for portraits) would have about a battery width worth in focus, and the rest blurred.
"It will be able to capture an image with 1/100th the light intensity required by a DSLR"
I'm reading that as ultra fast shutter speeds being available for fast moving photography. Cool.
TFA doesn't say how many pixels it is.
One?
Perfect for capturing the Sorority girls in the next dorm over that turn-off the lights, but never close the curtains. "No honey I can't see you, but my camera can."
I think Infra-red cameras will work better for your case. Sure, the colors aren't natural, but it works much better in low light.
An SLR shutter doesn't expose the whole frame at the same instant: It's like a scanning line running down the frame, so if your gap (between the separately-controlled curtains) is small enough, you can have _any_ shutter speed you want - just don't expect the whole frame to be recording the same instant in time. Also, you don't need to put the shutter immediately in front of the film/sensor plate (but it helps give a clear image).
Inches? Could we please have that in useful units. Like football fields.
Have gnu, will travel.
With a Beowulf Cluster of these....
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
A reasonable assumption would be that the sensitivity of the sensor is proportional to the area of the photosites (to a first approximation), so if this sensor is 100x as sensitive as, say, a D5MkII, then you would expect the photosites to be about 100x as big. Coincidentally, the 8in x 8in sensor is on the order of 100x the area of the 5D sensor, so the number of pixels is probably about the same (20M or so). To a first approximation, anyway.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Lenses which cover 8*8 are basically large format lenses which include leaf shutters. Leaf shutters have a couple of problems - limited size, and a limited upper speed. Typically 1/500th is the fastest a leaf shutter will operate, and the limited diameter means you typically are down to f5.6 or f8 as a maximum aperture.
The maximum aperture will limit the speed advantage against a 35mm DSLR or medium format where f/2 and faster is common (f/1 can be achived at standard lengths if you compromise on image quality, say a noctilux). f/1 vs f/5.6 is 5 stops, or 32 times the amount of light. So an f/1 lens vs an f/5.6 will accept 32 times as much light to start with
The usual complaint about fast lenses is the limited depth of field. However, large format at f/5.6 will also suffer this problem as the larger image format will also offer a limited DOF, but in addition, a slow lens. I guess the answer will be to run the sensor at a higher ISO equivalent, make it more sensitive, and hence allow a smaller aperture to be used, but the tradeoff isn't obvious from the specifications
My guess is that this is a technology demonstrator, and will not be available to average punters on real cameras. Saying that an old large format camera with a 8*8 back would be very cool
what is this? is this joke?
This is obviously a stunt to show off their process controls in production. They're telling the competition (and investors) that they can make an entire 12 inch wafer worth (40) of their 21 megapixel sensors without a defect anywhere on the wafer. Of course it'll be an expensive wafer, and they haven't said how many other wafers were rejected, but it's still impressive. It marks pretty much the ultimate maturity level for that production process and tells their competition, "You won't beat us on price for this geometry, go try something else." The only applications for something like this are wide-field low-light surveillance (e.g. for asteroid hunting).
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.