Canon creates 120 megapixel sensor

[OrionsByte]

Freaking insane...

TOKYO, August 24, 2010—Canon Inc. announced today that it has successfully developed an APS-H-size*1 CMOS image sensor that delivers an image resolution of approximately 120 megapixels (13,280 x 9,184 pixels), the world's highest level*2 of resolution for its size.

Compared with Canon's highest-resolution commercial CMOS sensor of the same size, comprising approximately 16.1 million pixels, the newly developed sensor features a pixel count that, at approximately 120 million pixels, is nearly 7.5 times larger and offers a 2.4-fold improvement in resolution.*3

With CMOS sensors, while high-speed readout for high pixel counts is achieved through parallel processing, an increase in parallel-processing signal counts can result in such problems as signal delays and minor deviations in timing. By modifying the method employed to control the readout circuit timing, Canon successfully achieved the high-speed readout of sensor signals. As a result, the new CMOS sensor makes possible a maximum output speed of approximately 9.5 frames per second, supporting the continuous shooting of ultra-high-resolution images.

Canon's newly developed CMOS sensor also incorporates a Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) video output capability. The sensor can output Full HD video from any approximately one-sixtieth-sized section of its total surface area.

Images captured with Canon's newly developed approximately 120-megapixel CMOS image sensor, even when cropped or digitally magnified, maintain higher levels of definition and clarity than ever before. Additionally, the sensor enables image confirmation across a wide image area, with Full HD video viewing of a select portion of the overall frame.

Through the further development of CMOS image sensors, Canon will break new ground in the world of image expression, targeting new still images that largely surpass those made possible with film, and video movies that capitalize on the unique merits of SLR cameras, namely their high mobility and the expressive power offered through interchangeable lenses.


*1 The imaging area of the newly developed sensor measures approx. 29.2 x 20.2 mm.
*2 As of August 20, 2010. Based on a Canon study.
*3 Canon's highest-resolution commercial CMOS sensor, employed in the company's EOS-1Ds Mark III and EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR cameras, is equivalent to the full-frame size of the 35 mm film format and incorporates approximately 21.1 million pixels. In 2007, the company successfully developed an APS-H-size sensor with approximately 50 million pixels.

 

[Village Idiot]

There goes the neighbor hood.

 

[Derrel]

They should slap that in their new G-12 compact camera.

 

[tirediron]

In a word, "Wow"! I'd be very interested in seeing some unbiased comparisons between this new sensor and those of the 1Ds Mk III and D3s/x as far as noise and high-ISO performance go. I'd love to see the price-tag on the G12 with this bad boy in it!!!

 

[Idahophoto]

And people thought I was crazy about the building poster comment I made. Real thoughts far more than needed unless like one person said when I read about it on Canonromors.com. Sure if you worked for NASA or some scintefic purposes might have use for it but the average Joe not even close. I'm very happy with the 15MP I get with the 50D and am only thinking of the 7D for the video otherwise I would probably just go with a second 50D which I still might do. Sure Ill take extra if I can get it, but the thing is not going to really add much to average pictures even ones top pros do and you will probably pay a nice chunk for it. I for one would rather have a better AF system. Still it's intersting.

 

[OrionsByte]

And people thought I was crazy about the building poster comment I made. Real thoughts far more than needed unless like one person said when I read about it on Canonromors.com. Sure if you worked for NASA or some scintefic purposes might have use for it but the average Joe not even close. I'm very happy with the 15MP I get with the 50D and am only thinking of the 7D for the video otherwise I would probably just go with a second 50D which I still might do. Sure Ill take extra if I can get it, but the thing is not going to really add much to average pictures even ones top pros do and you will probably pay a nice chunk for it. I for one would rather have a better AF system. Still it's intersting.

Yeah I'm with you - I'd much rather have a 15 MP camera with higher usable sensitivity than an outrageous pixel count.

I was telling a friend of mine that it kind of seems like the microprocessor race - AMD and Intel kept trying to one-up each other on processor speed, until eventually someone got the bright idea to split the processing on to multiple cores (I don't recall who did it first). Now we're seeing triple- and quad-core processors, and speeds aren't really increasing all that much.

So I wonder at what point the camera industry will say, "Who needs this many pixels?" and start focusing (no pun intended) on making "better pixels."

 

[davisphotos]

It's a crop sensor 120MP-that's some insane pixel density. The analogy to processor speed is very apt-I'm wondering if perhaps pixel count will level out somewhat and companies will start working on improving dynamic range, light sensitivity and overall image quality. Unfortunately, it's harder to market more subjective features like dynamic range and image quality than a nice solid number like pixel count.

 

[prodigy2k7]

Im no expert, but just because they reached this level, doesnt mean you will see it anytime soon. The military uses computers that go over 1.0 THz (instead of the common GHz) and yet we dont see them on the consumer market yet. Same with Intel, I heard of a guy that says he works for intel and the new chips they are working on, are years ahead of their time, and wont actually come out, for many years.

You may not see this sensor for another 10 years.

Just my 2 cents. Interesting though.

 

[KmH]

I wonder what ever happened to the 50 MP, APS-H sensor they had in 2007?

*3 Canon's highest-resolution commercial CMOS sensor, employed in the company's EOS-1Ds Mark III and EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR cameras, is equivalent to the full-frame size of the 35 mm film format and incorporates approximately 21.1 million pixels. In 2007, the company successfully developed an APS-H-size sensor with approximately 50 million pixels.

 

[Markw]

Did they also come out with a 250GB CF card to go with it? Youre going to need something ridiculously enormous like that if you want any chance of keeping a few hundred pics on a card. Its hard to say if that would even be close to enough. The thing will need 8 card slots. (I know..exaggurated, but those pictures are just ridiculously large, waaay more than anyone will ever need. You'd need to buy land to need a print that big.

Mark

 

[emh]

It's a crop sensor 120MP-that's some insane pixel density. The analogy to processor speed is very apt-I'm wondering if perhaps pixel count will level out somewhat and companies will start working on improving dynamic range, light sensitivity and overall image quality. Unfortunately, it's harder to market more subjective features like dynamic range and image quality than a nice solid number like pixel count.

Bingo! It's much easier to sell a single number than some unquantifiable "goodness" that the average Joe couldn't care less about. After all, all Joe cares about are the bragging rights that come with having more megapixels than the average Jane next door.

To be fair, there are some extremely specialized, super-niche markets that could probably make use of sensors with gazillions of pixels. So I'll withhold criticizing Canon until this shows up in a G13 or a T3i.

Im no expert, but just because they reached this level, doesnt mean you will see it anytime soon. The military uses computers that go over 1.0 THz (instead of the common GHz) and yet we dont see them on the consumer market yet. Same with Intel, I heard of a guy that says he works for intel and the new chips they are working on, are years ahead of their time, and wont actually come out, for many years.

Are you sure you are not mistaking Tera FLOPS for THz? There are no computers of Earth-origin that operate at anything even close to 1 THz... at least not in the general sense of a computer (there are very specialized circuits that operate at THz speeds but they are no more computers than your average microwave oven is). In fact, a lot of military-specific electronics tend to operate a lot slower than cutting-edge consumer stuff -- sometimes because they were designed many years (or even decades) ago and sometimes because of higher reliability, longevity, security etc. considerations.

 

[prodigy2k7]

It's a crop sensor 120MP-that's some insane pixel density. The analogy to processor speed is very apt-I'm wondering if perhaps pixel count will level out somewhat and companies will start working on improving dynamic range, light sensitivity and overall image quality. Unfortunately, it's harder to market more subjective features like dynamic range and image quality than a nice solid number like pixel count.

Bingo! It's much easier to sell a single number than some unquantifiable "goodness" that the average Joe couldn't care less about. After all, all Joe cares about are the bragging rights that come with having more megapixels than the average Jane next door.

To be fair, there are some extremely specialized, super-niche markets that could probably make use of sensors with gazillions of pixels. So I'll withhold criticizing Canon until this shows up in a G13 or a T3i.

Im no expert, but just because they reached this level, doesnt mean you will see it anytime soon. The military uses computers that go over 1.0 THz (instead of the common GHz) and yet we dont see them on the consumer market yet. Same with Intel, I heard of a guy that says he works for intel and the new chips they are working on, are years ahead of their time, and wont actually come out, for many years.

Are you sure you are not mistaking Tera FLOPS for THz? There are no computers of Earth-origin that operate at anything even close to 1 THz... at least not in the general sense of a computer (there are very specialized circuits that operate at THz speeds but they are no more computers than your average microwave oven is). In fact, a lot of military-specific electronics tend to operate a lot slower than cutting-edge consumer stuff -- sometimes because they were designed many years (or even decades) ago and sometimes because of higher reliability, longevity, security etc. considerations.

Could be wrong, but the F22 raptor has a processor like the one I mentioned. Blame history channel if im wrong. ha!

Hmm maybe it is flops, i have no idea the difference -.-

interesting quote though: "Also in 2004, Cray completed the Red Storm system for Sandia National Laboratories. This has processors clustered in 96-processor cabinets, a theoretical maximum of 300 cabinets in a machine, and a design speed of 41.5 teraflops."

Another interesting quote:
"Today, the F-22's Common Integrated Processor main mission computers operate at 10.5 billion instructions per second and have 300 megabytes of memory. These numbers represent 100,000 times the computing speed and 8,000 times the memory of the Apollo moon lander."

if "instructures per second" is Hz, then thats 10.5 Ghz? still a lot faster then consumer CPUs that hit a ceiling around 4-5GHz? i think -.-

 

[emh]

Apologies in advance for going off on this non-camera tangent...

Could be wrong, but the F22 raptor has a processor like the one I mentioned. Blame history channel if im wrong. ha!

Hmm maybe it is flops, i have no idea the difference -.-

Ummm... yeah. No way a Raptor has a THz "computer"
FLOPs (floating point operations per second) or OPs (operations per second) is a measure of total compute capability. That can go well over a Tera FLOP when you put lots of processors together in one computer. In fact, the most powerful computers these days are up to a few peta Flops (1 peta FLOP = 1000 tera FLOPs), but with 1000s of processors in them.

interesting quote though: "Also in 2004, Cray completed the Red Storm system for Sandia National Laboratories. This has processors clustered in 96-processor cabinets, a theoretical maximum of 300 cabinets in a machine, and a design speed of 41.5 teraflops."

42 TFLOPS won't even crack the 100 most powerful computers in the world today.

Another interesting quote:
"Today, the F-22's Common Integrated Processor main mission computers operate at 10.5 billion instructions per second and have 300 megabytes of memory. These numbers represent 100,000 times the computing speed and 8,000 times the memory of the Apollo moon lander."

if "instructures per second" is Hz, then thats 10.5 Ghz? still a lot faster then consumer CPUs that hit a ceiling around 4-5GHz? i think -.-

"Instructions per second" is not Hz. For example, AMD ship a 12-core processor you can buy today with each core clocked at 2.3 GHz. Even at 1 instruction per cycle per core, that's 27.6 billions of instructions per second. But each core can issue multiple instructions per cycle. And you could easily build computers with multiples of these in one box. So the 10.5 billion instructions per second number is a lot lower than what's already available on the open market today. In fact, a high-end GPU today will single handedly (single-processoredly?) get you 10x to 100x more compute power than the number you cited for the F22.

 

[prodigy2k7]

Apologies in advance for going off on this non-camera tangent...

Could be wrong, but the F22 raptor has a processor like the one I mentioned. Blame history channel if im wrong. ha!

Hmm maybe it is flops, i have no idea the difference -.-

Ummm... yeah. No way a Raptor has a THz "computer"
FLOPs (floating point operations per second) or OPs (operations per second) is a measure of total compute capability. That can go well over a Tera FLOP when you put lots of processors together in one computer. In fact, the most powerful computers these days are up to a few peta Flops (1 peta FLOP = 1000 tera FLOPs), but with 1000s of processors in them.

interesting quote though: "Also in 2004, Cray completed the Red Storm system for Sandia National Laboratories. This has processors clustered in 96-processor cabinets, a theoretical maximum of 300 cabinets in a machine, and a design speed of 41.5 teraflops."

42 TFLOPS won't even crack the 100 most powerful computers in the world today.

Another interesting quote:
"Today, the F-22's Common Integrated Processor main mission computers operate at 10.5 billion instructions per second and have 300 megabytes of memory. These numbers represent 100,000 times the computing speed and 8,000 times the memory of the Apollo moon lander."

if "instructures per second" is Hz, then thats 10.5 Ghz? still a lot faster then consumer CPUs that hit a ceiling around 4-5GHz? i think -.-

"Instructions per second" is not Hz. For example, AMD ship a 12-core processor you can buy today with each core clocked at 2.3 GHz. Even at 1 instruction per cycle per core, that's 27.6 billions of instructions per second. But each core can issue multiple instructions per cycle. And you could easily build computers with multiples of these in one box. So the 10.5 billion instructions per second number is a lot lower than what's already available on the open market today. In fact, a high-end GPU today will single handedly (single-processoredly?) get you 10x to 100x more compute power than the number you cited for the F22.

ahh thats right! i remember graphics cards have a lot of "cores".
hmm, interesting...thanks for clearing that up XD

 

[cfusionpm]

Rather than reading about the sensor, I'd rather see images taken with the sensor.

Not sure why ANYONE would be concerned with high ISO/noise issues in a camera like this. That'd be like dogging a 60MP Hasselblad H4D because it tops out at ISO400.