Canon develops 250-megapixel APS-H sensor

by Mark Tyson on 7 September 2015, 11:06

Tags: Canon (TYO:7751)

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Canon has announced the development of a new APS-H sized CMOS imaging sensor that incorporates approximately 250 million pixels. It claims this is a world record for a sensor under the 35mm full-frame size. Maximum native resolution captured images have the dimensions of 19,580 x 12,600 pixels.

While sometimes an increase in pixel count can result in signal delays, the new Canon sensor doesn't suffer from such problems with its ultra-high signal readout speed of 1.25 billion pixels per second. The Japanese imaging tech firm explains that it has boosted the readout speed using "circuit miniaturization and enhanced signal-processing technology". Thus it is capable to recording these huge 250-megapixel images at up to five frames per second. Canon insists that, despite the massive pixel count, its architecture delivers high sensitivity and low-noise.

The sensor is a pretty good video performer too. Presumably decreasing the frame size, to achieve something smoother than the 5fps achievable at the full 250-megapixel capture, Canon claims that the sensor is capable of video of 125x FHD resolution or 30x 4K resolution. Thanks to the lashings of extra pixels, data video editors, mixing down to something like 4K, could crop and magnify video scenes without loss of detail and clarity.

Extraordinarily Canon says that the sensor was tested in a camera that could "capture images enabling the distinguishing of lettering on the side of an airplane flying at a distance of approximately 18km from the shooting location". However the optical zoom of the camera lens employed helped it out, according to a little asterisk.

Canon expects the new sensor to be used in surveillance and crime prevention tools, ultra-high-resolution measuring instruments and other industrial equipment. So it sounds like this particular sensor won't be on its way to a compact camera or smartphone.



HEXUS Forums :: 13 Comments

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That sounds like a good thing to use in all kinds of scientific researches. Though I am sure the day will come, when some company will try to put this kind of sensor in a phone.
enemys
That sounds like a good thing to use in all kinds of scientific researches. Though I am sure the day will come, when some company will try to put this kind of sensor in a phone.

I wonder how that compares to the sensors in spy satellites?
It's about time DSLR sized sensors got an upgrade, they've been stagnant for far to long. Whilst smartphone snappers have been improved massively.

smartphone snappers have been limited by optics for sometime now to the point compact camera's now use smartphone sensors and because they're tiny regular optics allow for incredible amounts of zoom.

It appears zoom factor is now a bigger selling point than megapixels in compacts which is a shame. As it's much better to crop a photo to size than take one at mega zoom (shake, framing etc)
I have recently had a shoot off between a sony 20mp dslr with a 300mm lens (12x effective zoom) and a lumix zoom camera which had 12mp sensor and 30x zoom.

I have hoped for a while that someone would scale up the latest technology in smartphone snappers to a decent sized sensor and moved the megapixel count up significantly
DanceswithUnix
enemys
That sounds like a good thing to use in all kinds of scientific researches. Though I am sure the day will come, when some company will try to put this kind of sensor in a phone.

I wonder how that compares to the sensors in spy satellites?


Not even in the same ballpark. Hell not even on the same continent. The ones in satellites can tell the difference between 2 objects that are only a baseball-width apart from their geosynchronous orbit. Like, hundreds of miles up ha. They can't do stuff like read license plates but they can differentiate massive detail, that's how they're defined. I think the lenses are measured in gigapixel. The newer ones are definitely, and the lenses are MASSIVE, the first spy satellite camera and housing was the size of a VW Beetle.

(I recently watched a Modern Marvels episode on satellites, was super interesting)
Interestingly the first AF system debuted in the U2 spyplane in the 1950s.