Above: left Canon’s ultra-large-scale sensor and right is the 5D Mark II’s full frame sensor.
Is this really a cover for something about to hit commercial production? I think it is.
Canon have announced the development of an ultra-large-scale CMOS sensor with a ‘special circuit design’. The sheer size of the sensor – 40x that of the 5D Mark II’s full frame CMOS – makes a breakthrough in low light shooting possible, in conditions half as bright as moon light. But of more immediate interest to me is how they enabled 60fps video on such a large sensor without encountering mammoth rolling shutter problems.
The experimental wafer currently shoots HD video at 60fps and captures low light scenes at just one-hundreth of the amount of light required by the 5D Mark II’s sensor. It will see much more than the human eye is capable of in such conditions.
Video on such a large sensor was not possible until Canon’s announcement today. The size of such a sensor meant that the lag between exposure and outputting the image line by line was too large for video to be feasible. But it seems Canon have had a breakthrough in circuit design that allows a fast enough read out for the physical size of the sensor to become a non-issue. This is key.
It seems Canon have developed a global shutter ready for commercial use.
This is more interesting that purely the size of the sensor and will have an impact on professional video DSLRs soon I expect.
Canon Japan:
In the past, enlarging the size of the sensor resulted in an increase in the amount of time required between the receiving and transmission of data signals, which posed a challenge to achieving high-speed readout. Canon, however, solved this problem through an innovative circuit design, making possible the realization of a massive video-compatible CMOS sensor.
We won’t be seeing an ultra-large-scale sensor in a video camera any time soon but could we be seeing the innovative circuit design? Yes I think we could…
As far as such large CMOS sensors go, the main challenge to bringing them to the market is not just mass production costs but optical performance. Since the surface area of it is 40x the size of the 5D Mark II’s, I expect that the lenses will follow suit and would have to be much larger! (Compare a Hasselblad lens to a c-mount lens for example). That’s an engineering challenge almost as complicated as creating the sensor itself.
To me it seems that this ultra-large-scale sensor was in fact an R&D project to develop and test the global shutter circuitry of future full frame DSLRs. They have cleverly hyped up their capabilities whilst cloaking it’s real purpose with fascinating low light soundbites.
Here is the other juicy bit of the press release from Canon.
Because the increased size of the new CMOS sensor allows more light to be gathered, it enables shooting in low-light environments. The sensor makes possible the image capture in one one-hundredth the amount of light required by a 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor, facilitating the shooting of 60 frame-per-second video with a mere 0.3 lux of illumination.
Potential applications for the new high-sensitivity CMOS sensor include the video recording of stars in the night sky and nocturnal animal behavior.
Through the further development of distinctive CMOS image sensors, Canon will break new ground in the world of new image expression, in the area of still images as well as video.
I like the emphasis on ‘video’ throughout the press release. It seems they are pumping some serious R&D resources not just into the stills capabilities of sensors but into video too. Keep it up Canon!
