CMOS 12x12in Digital Sensor!!!! (Canon)

[dh003i]

Thank you Canon!

Time to start saving for an upgrade to 8x10 and the price of the sensor!

Canon develops world's largest CMOS sensor (http://dpreview.com/news/1008/10083101canonlargestsensor.asp)


Canon has announced it has developed the world's largest CMOS sensor measuring 202 x 205mm. Approximately 40 times the size of Canon's largest commercial CMOS sensor, it captures images with 1/100th the amount of light required by an SLR camera. Its advanced circuitry allows video recording at 60 frames per second with 0.3 lux illumination that according to the company is roughly one-half the brightness of a moonlit night. There is currently no information about the sensor's resolution. This follows last week's development announcement of Canon's 120 megapixel 29.2 x 20.2mm APS-H CMOS sensor.

PS: The article has an small error: "the sensor is capable of capturing images in one one-hundredth the amount of light required by a professional-model digital SLR camera." That should read "one-hundredth the amount of light intensity..."

PPS: I had a major error: it is an 8x8 inch sensor, not 12x12!

[drew.saunders]

If the pixels are 10x10 micron, not an unreasonable size, that's 20,200 x 20,500 pixels, or about 414Mp. 20 micron pixels, 10,100 x 10,250px makes for a 104Mp. Holy crap!

[dh003i]

If the pixels are 10x10 micron, not an unreasonable size, that's 20,200 x 20,500 pixels, or about 414Mp. 20 micron pixels, 10,100 x 10,250px makes for a 104Mp. Holy crap!

If he pixels were 10 micron, a 4x5 wafer would be about 10,100 x 12,700 pixels or 128 megapixels. I hope they make one for 4x5 too! But if not, a good argument to consider an 8x10...when the prices drop.

I wonder how much it will initially cost? It would be 64 square inches, and I imagine medium format digital backs are about 6.5 sqin (6cm x 7cm / (2.54cm/in)²). So it would be almost 10 times the area of a medium format digital sensor. With medium format backs going for say $40K, I'd imagine this would cost at least $400K, but almost certainly more because expense in production goes up more than linearly when increasing sensor area, right?

[Jack Dahlgren]

If he pixels were 10 micron, a 4x5 wafer would be about 10,100 x 12,700 pixels or 128 megapixels. I hope they make one for 4x5 too! But if not, a good argument to consider an 8x10...when the prices drop.

I wonder how much it will initially cost? It would be 64 square inches, and I imagine medium format digital backs are about 6.5 sqin (6cm x 7cm / (2.54cm/in)²). So it would be almost 10 times the area of a medium format digital sensor. With medium format backs going for say $40K, I'd imagine this would cost at least $400K, but almost certainly more because expense in production goes up more than linearly when increasing sensor area, right?

The silicon cost in a $40K back is not $40K. Silicon costs scale exponentially when they are subject to yield loss due to defects, but sensors are mostly big arrays which can probably be designed to deal with some number of defects. When you are dealing with big silicon like this there is likely to be some variation across the wafer that needs to be dealt with as well. And handling/breakage etc. Then there is the issue of volume, which really brings per unit cost down, but the cost needs to be low to drive the volume... All of these conspire against an easy estimate of cost, but one thing I'm sure of is that it is out of my price range.

[Brian Stein]

mucho doleros thats for sure. I also wonder how much juice this would need to run, and the size and weight of the electronics. it may still be that an 8x10 is lighter? good luck in trying to deal with that sort of image size without some serious computing power: way past my old clunkers redeemed with linux.

[Ramiro Elena]

Well, we're using cameras made 60 years ago, those alive in 60 years will be able to get these sensors for cheap on eBay :D

[toyotadesigner]

My sensor is called 'film' and is already available. Damn reliable stuff.

In addition I definitely don't want to lug around a car battery to keep that Canon sensor alive!

[dh003i]

I don't remember the link, but apparently the photosites are huge and it is actually an x-ray sensor. It has a measly 1.6 MP resolution. Not for us large format photographers.

http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2010/08/canon-develops-8-by-8-cmos-sensor.html

[Steve M Hostetter]

The way I understand it is that it's the CCD that is difficult to make larger...

Anyway,, you'll have to send it in to have it cleaned several times a month ..

A scanning back does the same thing just a little slower.

[Matus Kalisky]

Looks like a sensor designed for some large telescopes (I mean really large) and even there I am not sure how many would be able to use such a large sensor.

Given its size its energy consumption must go up too. Maybe it will be water cooled :p

Now if Canon builds an SLR around it - THAT will be a beast ... water cooled SLR :D

[okto]

Sensitivity like that requires big ol' photosites. No surprise that the resolution is low. Way cool piece of news, thanks for sharing!

[Thebes]

Looks like a telescope sensor. Or perhaps for surveillance, sats and drones.I am sure even if its a million each they have a market.
Perhaps in 20 years they'll be on fleabay at a price that makes me think about adapting one to a lf.

[domaz]

Forget large sensors why not just setup a bunch of camera modules in your camera back so that there field of view slightly overlaps and stitch the result from all of them. Ctein just posted an article (http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2011/01/tablet-view-camera.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FZSjz+%28The+Online+Photographer%29) with more ideas along this vein. This could be a promising approach.

[John Bowen]

What to get the man that has everything?

[jim kitchen]

There is a camera that has many, many pixels arranged in a small array, and its mission was designed to capture deep sky objects... :)

The CCD camera is located here: http://cas.sdss.org/dr7/en/sdss/instruments/instruments.asp

If you want to cruise through the universe and see the deep sky images, where you can zoom in to a single galaxy, it is located here: http://www.sdss3.org/dr8/

The site requires that you sign on, but it is free and open to the public. When you request a deep sky image, the data base will be searched and you will be sent an email indicating that you can view the requested image. They do not seem to be coloured images, but black and white images, at least the ones the site presented me.

That said, the technology is there to produce a digital back for a large format camera, albeit with a extremely very hefty price tag.

jim k