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Canon's 120MP Camera Sensor
- deckar01 9y ago> If you’d like one in the future, though, you should probably start stockpiling hard drives: RAW photos shot by the sensor weigh in at 210MB each. I would be more worried about the amount of RAM you need to comfortably edit these photos.
- landcoctos 9y agoAh, I was waiting for the surveillance example in the video... they didn't disappoint and it was the last example.
- black_puppydog 9y agoDid I miss something? It was the only example! The video goes directly from "Look at the high-res awesome awesomeness!" to "Future Applications: Wide-area monitoring (a.k.a. video surveillance)" EDIT: I find that depressing. Seriously? With tech like that, you can't at least come up with a more benign example? You really have to throw yourself at mayors and other hawks first?
- zo1 9y agoYou don't even need such a high-resolution sensor. At that level, you might as well have multiple cameras and stitch the results together. And the military has already done it. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS
- slantyyz 9y agoSometimes the high-resolution sensor is used in place of a zoom lens (i.e., use "digital zoom" to 1:1). This way the camera's primary lens is simpler because it has a shorter focal length and there's less to break down. Can probably bring the costs down a little too.
- black_puppydog 9y agoWikipedia seems to be confused here about the "unit cost" of Gorgon Stare (listed as $15M) and the "development cost" (also noted as $15M). Or is Sierra Nevada Corp. really making the full cost in profit as of the second unit sold?! Anyhow, those two examples are probably in a different price range, no?
- slantyyz 9y agoStadiums that serve alcohol use and need cameras like this. The Toronto Blue Jays have had issues with beer throwing idiots during post season games in 2015 and 2016. The incident in 2016 was particularly bad when a guy threw a full beer can at an Orioles outfielder during the wild card game.
- black_puppydog 9y agoOh I never had any illusions of this not being used for surveillance. But that the manufacturer doesn't even try to frame it primarily as "look at the amazing photography you can make with this" is a sad sign of the times for me.
- NiklasMort 9y agotips hat
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- overcast 9y agoEver climbing megapixel is awesome and all, but I want ever increasing ISO performance. Low light is where the real innovation is. Especially in my line of business with food photography.
- tlb 9y agoIf you're doing still photos of food, surely you can just put more light on the subject or use a longer exposure. With modern sensors, ISO is mainly limited by thermal noise. Astrophotographers often use cooled sensors to allow higher sensitivity, but it's tricky to cool it very much without moisture from the air condensing inside or on the lenses.
- munificent 9y ago> If you're doing still photos of food, surely you can just put more light on the subject or use a longer exposure. Longer exposure, yes, though that means having to set up a tripod for every shot which significantly increases the time it takes to get a shoot done. Turning up the lighting is very difficult for food photography. Lights are hot and food doesn't last long under studio lights. (That's also why a lot of food photography has such shallow depth of field — a wider aperture lets in more light.)
- SourPatch 9y agoAnother option is to use a body that offers stabilization. Olympus has gotten their stabilization good enough that you can shoot handheld at pretty slow shutter speeds: https://blog.mingthein.com/2016/11/02/review-olympus-e-m1-mark-ii/ https://blog.mingthein.com/2016/11/02/review-olympus-e-m1-ma...
- ksk 9y agoI guess you haven't read this then :) https://blog.mingthein.com/2016/08/19/stabilisation-is-good-but-only-up-to-a-point/ https://blog.mingthein.com/2016/08/19/stabilisation-is-good-...
- Lio 9y agoThere's not much discussion about high ISO noise. I'd be interested to know how such a high pixel density affects that. If they could keep that desesity on a medium format sized sensor it would really be amazing and would really give large format 8x10 film a run for its money. Hasselblad offer a 100MP 53 x 40mm sensor which they can then use to capture pseudo 400MP images. That's based on a multishot system where they can move the sensor by, I think, half a pixel by shaking the sensor. Only good for things like landscapes that don't move but still amazing. (Also, off topic but I'm pretty sure the watch used there is an Omega Speedmaster Professional. I'm not sure if impressed or ashamed that I can recognise it from its unbranded movement.)
- jwarren 9y agoThe Hasselblad sensor shift is amazing for photographing art or still life (i.e. cars etc) - I'm sure you can imagine how excellent this is for commercial photography.
- bufferoverflow 9y agoOnly for a smaller niche of commercial photography - the one that sells large fine art prints. You don't really need high resolution for billboards or posters - they are viewed from large distances. Magazines are not printed with that great quality. Even high quality photo books are more than fine with 20-30 megapixel shots.
- jacquesm 9y ago> Only good for things like landscapes that don't move but still amazing. And also very good for high resolution document imaging, such as 300 DPI newspaper shots. Here is a blurb about that sensor: https://www.hasselblad.com/press/press-releases/hasselblad-introduces-the-h6d-400c-ms/ https://www.hasselblad.com/press/press-releases/hasselblad-i... You're right about the watch, if you look at the bridge in the enlarged picture you can still make out the blurred letters.
- simias 9y agoWhat's the advantage over a scanner? Speed?
- andrewla 9y agoNokia made two cameras, the Lumia 1020 and Lumia 808, that featured a 41MP camera. For the most part, the use case was pretty much to immediately downsample or use the high resolution as a way to create a synthetic high-quality digital zoom. The low-light quality was excellent as well. The sensor was 8.80×6.60 mm (as opposed to the APS-H sensor here, at 29.22×20.20mm), which means 3x the sensor density. I've been waiting for a while for this "Pureview" technology to show up anywhere else; it's surprising to me that it has not.
- Joeri 9y agoI had a lumia 950 which had “only” a 20 MP sensor and the low light photography was stunning, better than what I saw with my own eyes in some cases. It was very slow though (even in daylight), which made it useless at action shots, so I guess other phones optimize for speed over image quality. I did make some absolutely breathtaking landscape shots with that 950, and I’ve never made pictures that nice since switching to an iphone.
- z3t4 9y agopic or it never happened :P
- ganzuul 9y agoThe 1020 still wipes the floor with any of the current smartphone cameras, though the new dual-camera phones are a very interesting development. You can stand to lose a lot of chroma resolution if you still have lumina resolution. Just try chroma noise reduction while retaining lumina noise in your favorite image editor.
- slantyyz 9y ago>> The sensor was 8.80×6.60 mm FWIW, this sensor is more commonly known as a 2/3" sensor, which was used in some recent Fujifilm compact cameras (X10-X30, XF1 etc) and is also commonly used for broadcast television cameras. I had an X10/X20, and that smallish sensor could produce some really nice results in spite of its size.
- galago 9y agoA lot of cameras are sticking at 24MP because that's where a lot of lenses start to reach a weak point. Also, file size to utility becomes a consideration because most people expect cloud/sharing. I feel like 100+MP is going to be an enthusiast thing for a long time. It seems a lot like car speeds. Every car sold today can go over 100 miles per hour. Some people still care about how fast their car can go, but most don't really think about it or even know their car's top speed.
- copperx 9y agoThat's true if you're using 35MM equivalent lenses. One must switch to medium format sizes.
- lllr_finger 9y agoUnless you're looking at the Mamiya or Hasselblad MF lenses, good 35mm lenses tend to out-resolve MF and definitely LF. Projection circle is only part of the effective resolution.
- slantyyz 9y agoI tend to think this 120MP sensor is probably going to be sold commercially as a surveillance product first. There's a lot of need for products like this in stadiums, arenas, large public areas etc.
- komali2 9y agoThat marketing video seemed to be highlighting specifically that. They even had the shot of the security woman at the very end.
- coolspot 9y agoSee also WAAS [11] and ARGUS [22] [11] https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/how-one-new-drone-tech-finally-allows-all-seeing-survei-1553272901 https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/how-one-new-drone-tech-fin... [22] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p4BQ1XzwDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p4BQ1XzwDg
- ivanech 9y agoThe fact that this captures at 9.4 fps means comparing the image to 1080p kind of makes sense, but I wish they had a comparison to a more practical still resolution between 24-50 MP.
- zokier 9y ago> All pixel progressive reading of 9.4fps > RAW photos shot by the sensor weigh in at 210MB each. 1974 MB/s. Finally an use-case for Intels fancy 3d-xpoint memory?
- JKCalhoun 9y agoI've been pining for a greyscale digital camera. I think maybe Leica had one but it seemed overly pricey (to the surprise of no, I suppose). Price aside though, having only the one I am aware of is slim pickings. With no Bayer filter I expect four times the pixel density with no gain in noise (and in fact a slight improvement in speed since the lossiness of the filter is removed from the light path). I guess I want the sharp, medium format portraits we saw from the 1960's — but digital. I've considered building my own by either: 1) using a telescope CCD and building my own camera, or 2) try to remove the Bayer filter from the CCD. I dislike both those options....
- Finnucane 9y ago>I guess I want the sharp, medium format portraits we saw from the 1960's — but digital The closest you're going to get to that now is the MF cameras from Fuji and Hasselblad. Of course, this will set you back a pretty bitcoin. I have to say though, I just got a Nikon D850, and it's pretty nice--nearly the equal of my Hasselblad 503.
- DanCarvajal 9y agoyou could pay someone else to do it https://www.monochromeimaging.com/ https://www.monochromeimaging.com/
- igivanov 9y agoThe problem of RAW conversion remains because every converter will still de-Bayer files from such a camera and thus degrade the IQ.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- david-cako 9y agoI love how they choose 1080p to compare it to as though we should give a shit what 1080p stills look like on a 5D Mark IV.
- Skunkleton 9y agoYeah, 1080p is less impressive when you call it 2MP.
- awalton 9y agoKnowing Canon it still only supports 1080p video...
- agumonkey 9y agoHappy to hear that Canon is going medical.
- arich2day 9y agoConfirmed for iPhone 2020
- Animats 9y agoThis is going to be big for surveillance cams. Just put a fisheye lens on them and collect a hemisphere. There are already 4K fisheye surveillance cams. You do pan, tilt, and zoom later. Next step is face popout in a GPU. Faces, license plates, and other items of interest can be saved at high resolution and the rest compressed to a lower level of detail.
- bluetwo 9y agoOK but where is my SX70?
- dmitriid 9y agoHmmm... Technical merits aside, have you noticed that the only "future applications" they could come up with is surveillance?