Huge Sony sensor advance heralds amazing video features - 6K, and 1080p at up to 16,000fps

[Quirky]

Quirky, what's with all the negative waves this early in the rumor ;)  Photography has ALWAYS, and will ALWAYS, be pushed ahead by crazy ideas.  I can safely say that if people weren't into these challenges there wold be no photography or film.  Sony and Panasonic are doing really cool things, from an electrical engineering standpoint. FORGET THE MARKETING.  Will I need this camera?  No.  I don't have any interest in slow-motion video.  But I might one day.  You might one day.  Don't get angry at the scientists because they work for money focused corporations :)

 

That's quite a non-sequitur. A weird double whammy at that. But nevermind. 

FWIW, I was neither negative, nor am I angry at anyone. 

 

I'm looking forward to seeing the actual new non-Bayer sensor cameras in action, some time next year. As well as some other models with some different new tech from some other manufacturer. Which I believe is quite possible, if not even likely, eventually. Even though all we've got so far are just rumours. That's all. Nothing more to see here, carry on with the regular script. 

[AndrewM]

This looks really, really interesting. I thought the color filter was going to be a steady state electronic device, something electrochromic, rather than something so mechanical. Though the way it looks like it works would actually reduce some of the worries I had. Instead of taking a red picture, a green picture, then a blue picture, it looks like it is taking a bayer full-color picture, then displacing it a pixel, then another full bayer, then displace, then another full bayer. (It's not strictly a bayer pattern (less green) but let's not nitpick...)

 

Advantages:

• You are getting full three-color information over the entire sensor every exposure, not just once every three.
• You are getting direct information about each individual color at each individual site, but only once a cycle (three exposures).

That makes me a lot less worried about temporal aliasing... Anyway, at the numbers in the document, you can do 80 full cycles is a 1/60 second exposure!

 

Disadvantages:

• You are looking at a really short exposure! 1/16000 second! Those better be sensitive photo sites! Though because you are summing multiple exposures, some noise issues will be reduced. But if you hit the floor of the sensor sensitivity, it will be all over...

 

One of the remaining questions I have is whether you can vary the speed of the color filter/ increase the time of each exposure.

[PrebenR]

assuming Sony use their RGBW system, creating a red, green, blue and white pass using an electronic filter:

4.44M * 4 = 17.76M = 18MP

18 megapixels is about 5760 * 3240, roughly 6K


So the maths points to a very high colour depth indeed, combining full colour and a monochrome channel. Of course, they're then having to stretch this out to 6K final spacial resolution, so like Bayer, there's trickery involved.

The only way to get true 6K (as with any resolution) is either user three 18MP sensors stacked, split by prisms, or use one Bayer sensor with four times the pixels. Still, it could be the best picture ever... ;)

4.44Mpx is what it will be. If you manage to sample several data points from one site (like the Foveon sensor) you get better colour acuity, clarity and resolution compared to a Bayer sensor, but you don't more pixels in x or y direction.