Sony Semicon develops 100MP FF sensor with 6K video

[Mokara]

9 hours ago, Nikkor said:

With The Same Technology applied to large and to small Sensors, guess which one will have larger full well capacity and less rolling shutter.

100MP is total overkill for fullframe, when will you See diffraction? F5.6? Will they build in a focus stacking program for landscapes? Moving the ibis back and forth, using phase detection pixels to make a depthmap? I know they are not.

Even if you encounter diffraction limitations, higher pixel counts mean that you can actually reach that limitation with bumping into approximation errors that you would encounter if your pixel resolution was at it. As a general rule of thumb, in order to capture a true image you want your sensor resolution to be significantly more than your lens resolution so you don't waste any of the lense performance. Plus, Beyer filters means that even when you are at the diffraction limit you will lose information, so you have to be significantly below it to capture reasonably accurate true color at the maximum resolution possible with the lens.

High pixel count sensors are useful for this reason, even if the optics does not resolve down to that level. At a guess I would say that you need about 9-16 pixels (3X or 4X matrices) on the sensor to properly recover all of the information in 1 pixel of lens resolution.

3 hours ago, Towd said:

Color aware binning that doesn't throw out data.  Sounds cool.  Would love to read the white paper on how they bin the data without throwing anything away.

In the meantime my point stands that a lower megapixel sensor with the same capabilities would be more useful.  

It is fairly simple. You use the 3x3 Beyer array to generate a single debeyered pixel, which is what is output. If that is done on the sensor itself it means that your camera would not have to debeyer the image separately, and you would essentially be getting a true color image from the camera at full resolution. The 4K output would have the image quality of a 12K camera, but without the computational overhead a conventional 12K camera would normally have. Since computing power is the bottleneck on all video cameras, a sensor that does this automatically itself would free up enormous resources in the rest of the camera that can then be used in other more useful ways. Such as monitoring more AF/exposure points for example, which in turn would allow for tighter more accurate tracking and things of that sort.

[androidlad]

4K RGB 4:4:4 readout mode:

[ND64]

3 hours ago, androidlad said:

4K RGB 4:4:4 readout mode:

Good luck demosaicing this puzzle mess and get a clean 4k as full read out. 

[androidlad]

3 minutes ago, Eric Calabros said:

Good luck demosaicing this puzzle mess and get a clean 4k as full read out. 

Ha, this IS the demosaicing, all done on-chip at hardware level. You get super clean and sharp 4K 4:4:4 straight away.

[John Matthews]

Great. Sounds like an RX100 full-frame sensor. I wonder when people will say enough is enough. Weren’t people saying that with 4K? 

[Andrew Reid]

Similar architecture to the Sony-Fuji 100MP medium format sensor?

21 minutes ago, John Matthews said:

Great. Sounds like an RX100 full-frame sensor. I wonder when people will say enough is enough. Weren’t people saying that with 4K? 

Personally I don't need 100MP stills but the technology is interesting as is all forward progress, it leads to an interesting future and is better than staying the same, otherwise we'd all be shooting 720p and 8MP stills

[webrunner5]

26 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Similar architecture to the Sony-Fuji 100MP medium format sensor?

Personally I don't need 100MP stills but the technology is interesting as is all forward progress, it leads to an interesting future and is better than staying the same, otherwise we'd all be shooting 720p and 8MP stills

I would have killed for that good of output at your age! 360p and Maybe 1.5MP was the norm, and that was Broadcast spec. Actually it was 360 interlaced to be honest. Progressive was just a dream back then. When I quit my ENG stint it was still 480 output. Most stations were Not going to spend all the money to go 720. Heh, who Needs SD. Nobody had a TV to even see it. I am not too sure they Ever made a Tube TV that was 720? First 720 I ever remember seeing was on like a $10,000.00 Plasma TV. You could fry an egg on the screen. First Plasma TV I ever owned was a 40" one that my wife pitched a bitch about because the electric bill jumped about 20% lol. They are great to own though in the winter. Thing weighed about 75 pounds it seems.

[androidlad]

14 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Similar architecture to the Sony-Fuji 100MP medium format sensor?

Personally I don't need 100MP stills but the technology is interesting as is all forward progress, it leads to an interesting future and is better than staying the same, otherwise we'd all be shooting 720p and 8MP stills

Almost completely different architecture with this one being more advanced. 3.76um vs 2.91um, slim DTI, way more ADCs and they are now colour-aware (meaning significant readout noise reduction and QE boost).

There are various 2x2, 3x3, 6x6 binning modes optimised for speed, quality or a compromise between the two.

One of the 2x2 binning modes produces a 25MP image that even surpasses A7 III.

[sanveer]

7 hours ago, androidlad said:

4K RGB 4:4:4 readout mode:

Whoa that's a monster of a CFA and binning setup combination. 

[Towd]

9 hours ago, androidlad said:

4K RGB 4:4:4 readout mode:

 

2 hours ago, androidlad said:

There are various 2x2, 3x3, 6x6 binning modes optimised for speed, quality or a compromise between the two.

Very cool!  Interesting to see how they are sampling the bayer pattern for the 4:4:4 color.  Some pretty extensive binning going on.  With this level of sampling, the speed optimized binning may still produce a really nice image with just a tad more noise.   It'll be interesting to see the final results.

[Yurolov]

9 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Similar architecture to the Sony-Fuji 100MP medium format sensor?

Personally I don't need 100MP stills but the technology is interesting as is all forward progress, it leads to an interesting future and is better than staying the same, otherwise we'd all be shooting 720p and 8MP stills

Forward progress in terms of aesthetics is relative. It is why people still use the nearly decade old alexa and pay a premium for early CCD s16 cameras. Sony may have the tech but the images are lackluster. Not sure why Canon would give up the very thing that makes their image unique and special.  

[TAPTAP]

On 3/21/2019 at 9:33 AM, Nikkor said:

Pointless 100mp on a small sensor. I wish they would rather work on full well capacity or something else that gives more dynamic range.

 

So... what do you think of Canon’s 250MP APS-C prototype? Is that a no-go, too? ‘Cause it looks incredible! And so does the 8K video camera that Canon took to many conferences too. Sure, it used four Odyssey 7Q recorders and 9 miles of cabling to make happen, but Canon 8K  video you guys! And BIF on an APS-C sensor with 250MP!!! I have a hard time believing that Sony’s such a “winner “ at sensor performance with all these real-world Canon achievements.

[Danyyyel]

21 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Great. Sounds like an RX100 full-frame sensor. I wonder when people will say enough is enough. Weren’t people saying that with 4K? 

LOL, people are still think half a stop DR or Low light or more megapixel are going to make their work masterpieces. We have 6k sensor doing 4k images in $ 2000 camera and people are still wasting their times on these.

[Mick]

On 3/22/2019 at 6:14 PM, Towd said:

Color aware binning that doesn't throw out data.  Sounds cool.  Would love to read the white paper on how they bin the data without throwing anything away.

In the meantime my point stands that a lower megapixel sensor with the same capabilities would be more useful.  

It has been demonstrated again and again that there are just about NO advantage to bigger pixels except readout speed. 100 mpix is fine, just allow for downsampled raws in the final camera body (like Canon does).

I'm currently using two bodies with 24 mpix (A9) and 42 mpix (A7RIII). 24 mpix images are less 'crop'-able. But even 42 mpix is not enough in some situations. So I'd love a +100 mpix sensor!

Diffraction? Yes of course. The laws of physics cannot be broken

But if you shoot mostly f/4 or wider like most sports/wildlife/portrait people then diffraction at f/5.6 is not an issue.

Even with some diffraction a 100 mpix final image would never be less sharp in print/display than if taken with a 42 mpix sensor (and the same lens/setup).

 

[Mick]

7 hours ago, TAPTAP said:

 

So... what do you think of Canon’s 250MP APS-C prototype? Is that a no-go, too? ‘Cause it looks incredible! And so does the 8K video camera that Canon took to many conferences too. Sure, it used four Odyssey 7Q recorders and 9 miles of cabling to make happen, but Canon 8K  video you guys! And BIF on an APS-C sensor with 250MP!!! I have a hard time believing that Sony’s such a “winner “ at sensor performance with all these real-world Canon achievements.

Where can I buy a camera body with that APS-C sensor? Vaporware!

Or that 120 mpix APS-H sensor they repeatedly mentioned through the years but still is nowhere to be found in the wild? Vaporware!

No, Sonys is just about untouchable when it comes to sensor tech. The reason is that they earn a LOT of money selling all kinds of sensors (in particular mobile sensors) and so they can afford to spend much more on R&D than both Nikon and Canon.

Canon did a great job with the sensor in 1DX II and 5DIV. But they are still way behind and I don't see them being able to compete on sensor tech now and in the future.

[Mick]

20 hours ago, Yurolov said:

 Not sure why Canon would give up the very thing that makes their image unique and special.  

Blind tests has shown that there is nothing about Canon that makes their images unique. At this moment Sonys sensors has higher DR, higher color sensitivity and better low light performance. In the past Canon had better colors but all this 'Canon color science' is no longer valid. Just like that nonsense about 'film look' (24hz) needs to die sooner or later (which it will).

[Justappreciating]

Lol some people acting like they know more than a elite team who's making it, some people seem to forget that the technology evolves rapidly and that with new hardware comes new solutions...

Also most of you don't seem to realise that this is clearly a sensor for stills for photographers... not for filmmakers... of course there will be a video variant of the sensor for a video camera model with different specs.

And for people saying they don't need 100mp, everyone says they don't need more until they try it and get amazed with the quality, don't forget that the resolution is growing up in every device, aswell as the hardware performance to edit such resolution photos or videos and the more the time passes, the more affordable prices will get with this specs.

[androidlad]

All readout drive modes detailed here:

[androidlad]

On 4/14/2019 at 11:43 AM, androidlad said:

All readout drive modes detailed here:

Let's all marvel at this particular piece of cutting edge engineering. It's the one sensor to rule them all.

There's 8K 30P, 6K 60P, 4K 90P, 3K 120P, 2K 240P.

Ultra high sensitivity RGB binning mode is available for 4K up to 60P and 2K up to 180P.

16bit ADC readout is available for video framerates for the first time.

[Towd]

1 hour ago, androidlad said:

Let's all marvel at this particular piece of cutting edge engineering. It's the one sensor to rule them all.

There's 8K 30P, 6K 60P, 4K 90P, 3K 120P, 2K 240P.

4K 90P

I dunno.  This isn't what I was hoping for in a next generation sensor.  Even with triple the read out speed, I think I'm more interested in a lower megapixel version.  For me it's less about the frame rates, and more to do with managing rolling shutter though, so maybe Sony will surprise there.

In the end though this will be great for stills while also recording good video, so I'm sure it'll make a lot of people happy.

If you find the specs for the lower resolution version, I'd be interested in seeing that.