Global shutter M-mount camera announced with eye-opening smartphone "hotlink"

[Andrew Reid]

This new French camera has a few very noteworthy ideas behind it.

First of all, it does away with a mechanical shutter to bring the cost down and instead has a global shutter CMOS sensor. Global shutter of course avoids the kind of distortion and banding you get from a rolling shutter. It has the advantage of being completely silent compared to an electronic shutter.

Read the full article

[thebrothersthre3]

Will it do video I wonder

[BTM_Pix]

"I would like to learn more about how this works – does it send RAW DNG as well? Or just JPEG? How long does it take to send each file? If you’re shooting a lot of frames in quick succession, how large is the internal buffer? Does the camera have a large internal memory for pulling off the shots to a computer via USB, rather than having to send each shot from the smartphone to a computer?"

My guess would be it sending jpeg first so you can get the fast preview on the phone with DNG going on in the background.

Seems to have the option of 8 or 32 gig internal storage which seems fair enough as they don't plan on you having the images on there very long.

 

[Ben Corwin]

Come on Andrew... commenting on EVERYTHING except the Black Magic 4K Pocket? I hate to say it, but you are quickly becoming irrelevant. It's a massive bummer because I've been such a big fan of this site over the years.

[KnightsFan]

Global shutter is the future I want. It's always nice to see progress in that area.

[Nikkor]

Looks great, should have a 6x7 sensor

[sanveer]

" For Pixii has no screen. And doesn't need one: your screen of choice, the smartphone, is already in your pocket. "

 

 

● CMOS sensor with 5.5um pixels

● 12-bits sampling rate, and high dynamic range (60-90dB)

● Global electronic shutter

● Native gain: ISO 200, programmable from 100 to 6400 ISO

● RGB color matrix, optimized with micro-lenses

● IR filter, no low-pass < 1.0mm

 

Its basically a Sony XQ series camera (though it claims to have a viewfinder. Also it claims 12-Bit RAW but how long would images take to transfer between a smartphone and camera. I am not sure what the USP of this camera. It can't possible the rangefinder design. There are some great cameras with that. Or the compact size. 60dB is 10 stops and 90dB is 15, so the range is HUGE. I am guessing that it will have poor dynamic range, a problem suffered by Also while it says 5.5 as the pixel size, it doesn't mention the total pixel count. It mentioned Global Electronic Shutter but it mentions a CMOS sensor, so that's a bit of a contradiction.  

 

"Pixii is a new kind of camera.

You press the shutter and the picture is revealed on your phone.

We feel that the simplicity of our design is the result of a natural evolution.

We found that path through learning and experimenting. It all makes sense once you realize what matters."

 

Why do you need a smartphone to view photos on??? That's insane. So you carry 2 devices only to take and view pics???

The SOLE reason smartphone photography had developed so far is because epoeple hate lugging around huge pieces of equipment wherever they go. With this camera or concept, one cannot do without an accompanying smartphones whose majority of battery consumption is dedicated to tethering between the smartphone and the camera.  Bluetooth won't cut it for fast enough file transfer and wifi will drain the battery big time. 

[BTM_Pix]

It says in the spec about being upgradeable to Bluetooth LE 5.0, which has roughly a 5x speed increase, so transfer of smaller jpegs is viable.

However, BLE can be used as is within an app to wake up the wifi on the phone to auto connect to the camera for the period of the transfer and switch it off again which would be a faster and still relatively power efficient way to connect.

I'm not sure in this age of the ubiquity of the smartphone, it can be classed as carrying two devices as having the smartphone in your pocket is a given

A lot of this depends on the price and if it is sensibly priced (and with the no screen, no af and minimal internal processing, no card interface etc there is no reason why it couldn't be sub £600?) then it might have legs. 

If it gets above that sort of price and certainly above £1000 then a used M8 with a FlashAir card will get you most of the IT side with a fair amount more on the camera side.

[Robert Collins]

Hmmm.... My guess is that a consumer who wants the 'ease of use' of automatic transfer to the smartphone will also want the 'ease of use' of autofocus.

[IronFilm]

I bet some users would just velcro their cellphone to the back! So they can chimp away. 

Wonder if bluetooth could send the JPEGs across? But if you want to suck down your battery (and storage space!) then the WiFi gets turned on if raws are wanted. 

[Emanuel]

7 hours ago, Ben Corwin said:

Come on Andrew... commenting on EVERYTHING except the Black Magic 4K Pocket? I hate to say it, but you are quickly becoming irrelevant. It's a massive bummer because I've been such a big fan of this site over the years.

WTH !?

They treated him like they did. He posted this one here a triple hours away of yours...

...and you still complain?

He simply doesn't have much more to say... Cannot say. I had 28 camera units to implement and they did the same... so?!

[roxics]

It's a pretty looking camera but it's a one trick pony. Once every other camera offers the ability to automatically upload photos to your phone while also offering traditional features like built in storage, evf and lcd, then there really isn't a point to this thing anymore. Unless it comes in super cheap, but I doubt that. 

[androidlad]

Looks like a CMOSIS CMV series sensor:

5.5um pixel size, global shutter and 12bit ADC match several CMOSIS SKUs

And the funny thing is the 60-90dB dynamic range swing is exactly the trick from CMOSIS, native DR is 60dB, extended DR is 90dB with Full Well Capacity Temporal Limiting.

I doubt CMOSIS would custom produce a FF version for Pixii, so the most likely SKU Pixii is going to use is CMV12000, an APS-C sized sensor that matches all announced specs.

[Brian Williams]

I missed it, it this a proper rangefinder in regards to focusing? That would be the selling point for me, as I'll never afford a Leica.

[BTM_Pix]

14 minutes ago, Brian Williams said:

I missed it, it this a proper rangefinder in regards to focusing? That would be the selling point for me, as I'll never afford a Leica.

Yes it is

[Nikkor]

I would buy this for 500€.

[sanveer]

4 hours ago, androidlad said:

Looks like a CMOSIS CMV series sensor:

5.5um pixel size, global shutter and 12bit ADC match several CMOSIS SKUs

And the funny thing is the 60-90dB dynamic range swing is exactly the trick from CMOSIS, native DR is 60dB, extended DR is 90dB with Full Well Capacity Temporal Limiting.

I doubt CMOSIS would custom produce a FF version for Pixii, so the most likely SKU Pixii is going to use is CMV12000, an APS-C sized sensor that matches all announced specs.

CMOSIS is now AMS, but you got the sensor Spot On. It is super capable, thought not necessarily from a ILC or a Large Fixed lens sensor viewpoint. The sensor can do Full Res 300fps at 10-bit and 132fps at 12-bit full res. It has HDR mode where it has the option of doing it through different ways. The Problem is that the Photo Resolution is limited to 12MP. And the Even Bigger problem is that the sensor is an APS-C sensor. It should have been atleast 20MP if not 24MP. 

 

https://ams.com/cmv12000

[androidlad]

41 minutes ago, sanveer said:

CMOSIS is now AMS, but you got the sensor Spot On. It is super capable, thought not necessarily from a ILC or a Large Fixed lens sensor viewpoint. The sensor can do Full Res 300fps at 10-bit and 132fps at 12-bit full res. It has HDR mode where it has the option of doing it through different ways. The Problem is that the Photo Resolution is limited to 12MP. And the Even Bigger problem is that the sensor is an APS-C sensor. It should have been atleast 20MP if not 24MP. 

 

https://ams.com/cmv12000

At 5.5um its native DR is only 60dB, while A7R III offers 80dB at 4um...

I can't imagine the further DR penalty if they increase the pixel density.

[Mattias Burling]

4 hours ago, Brian Williams said:

I missed it, it this a proper rangefinder in regards to focusing? That would be the selling point for me, as I'll never afford a Leica.

It needs to be sub $900 to be cheaper than Leica. Dont see that happening.

[sanveer]

6 hours ago, androidlad said:

At 5.5um its native DR is only 60dB, while A7R III offers 80dB at 4um...

I can't imagine the further DR penalty if they increase the pixel density.

80dB is about 13.3 stops of dynamic range. The Sony A7Riii offers more like 14.7 stops (https://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Sony/A7R-III).

The problem is that a camera can do photo stacking and have way better dynamic range. And having 132 to 300 frames (even if 1/3rd can be used would be great). But this camera doesn't seem like the computational photography powerhouse that smartphones are (or the Alexa cameras are). While they did mention 60-90dB in their literature, I am guessing they just mentioned the sensor figures and that they won't be able to actually pull that off.