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Canon develops 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor for video capture
- lotyrin 14y agoI love the performance of these larger sensors, and these demos blow everything I've seen out of the water, but I'd never carry that kind of gear around for any of my purposes (the size and weight more than the price, though that's definitely a large factor).
- raverbashing 14y agoIt's still a prototype, that's why it's bulky I suppose the actual consumer products will be lighter.
- trackofalljades 14y agoIt will most likely show up first in bodies that look like the C300 and C100 do today. http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/professional/products/professional_cameras/cinema_eos_cameras/eos_c300 http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/professional/products/professi...
- trackofalljades 14y agoHave you ever played with a Sony RX-100? Nowhere near full frame, but like four times the sensor area of a typical pocket camera. I got one recently and it's nothing short of astonishing for what it looks like on the outside and how it feels to use. Even the AVCHD video capabilities are damn impressive (again, for its price and form factor).
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- morsch 14y agoMoonlight is for the most part just reflected sunlight, so it's not surprising that the colors are very similar. Obviously it's much less bright, by a factor of 500k according to Wikipedia, but that's what this sensor is about. You can get similarly startling images from a plain point and shoot camera by installing it on a tripod and taking long exposure shots of things. You need 30 to 60 seconds exposure, sometimes available as a "starry sky" scene mode. Architecture is particularly suited as it tends not to move around. :) Even a cheap, small, P&S sensor is much more sensitive to light when you expose for 60 seconds, all while being completely noise-free.
- theatrus2 14y agoThe sensitivity didn't increase by exposing it longer - its simply accumulating more signal over time. Many sensors are ill-suited to long exposures though. While they can do it, you end up with heat related issues (commonly manifested as stuck pixels and general noise). CCDs also end up saturating and spilling over to adjacent cells, making high dynamic scenes a challenge.
- vanderZwan 14y agoIn a way it's kind of simple, isn't it? Having "only" Full HD on a 35 mm sensor simply means you have much larger individual potential wells, capturing more photons per pixel. What I'm really wondering about is the dynamic range - wouldn't that also drastically increase?
- TheAnimus 14y agoDepending on how they handle the noise reduction, yes.
- Gravityloss 14y agoToo bad the whole camera business wasted a huge amount of resouces over ten years on a stupid tinier and tinier pixels race.
- wmf 14y agoGiven the choice between 24 MP with very high sensitivity or 2 MP with ridiculously high sensitivity, I'm not sure the industry is wrong.
- prof_hobart 14y agoBut they aren't the only two options. With the quality of lens on the average compact camera for instance, I struggle to see any real noticable improvement above around 5 MP.
- theatrus2 14y agoLenses are very constrained by physics, and cost. Ground glass and more exotic materials are expensive to produce - injection molded plastic isn't. A high MP sensor is miles cheaper than an upgraded optical system.
- vanderZwan 14y agoAnd a cheap lens with low optical resolution makes a higher number of pixels effectively useless, so it's still a strange development.
- IceyEC 14y agoThat's absolutely amazing!
- TheAnimus 14y agoI wouldn't mind a better bit of info about the sensor! For instance I'm guessing its a bayer filtered job, to keep the sensativity (at the expense of sharpness of say Sigma Foveon). But I can't believe they have just had such an improvement by switching to larger wells and more sensativity, do they have some cunning time domain based filtering too. One advantage digital sensors have is that they can exclude certain bits of noise by merging the image results over time, obviously this comes at the expense of sharpness.
- tomkinstinch 14y agoI wonder if they are using a bayer mask with an RGBO pattern (R, G, B filtered wells, and an open channel in each repeating subunit). Kodak has the patent, so they may have been able to acquire or license it at low cost. http://web.archive.org/web/20070720002510/http://johncompton.1000nerds.kodak.com/default.asp?item=624876 http://web.archive.org/web/20070720002510/http://johncompton...
- davidjohnstone 14y agoFor comparison, the Nikon D4 (a digital SLR) can shoot video at ISO 204,800, and it can resolve details in the dark beyond the ability of the eye, and I suspect this new sensor is more sensitive — or, at least, far more noise free — than that. EDIT: Judging by some photos I've taken of the night sky, with an f/2.8 lens and with a shutter speed of 1/50s, you need an ISO of around 300,000 to get enough brightness. If only Stanley Kubrick had this to play with. Instead, he used a f/0.7 lens to shoot some scenes in Barry Lyndon by candlelight, way back in 1975.
- eksith 14y agoDidn't he use the same lenses used by NASA on the cameras for the Apollo missions? I think the larger aperture gave better low-light exposure during the candlelit scene (and may have inadvertantly fuelled conspiracy nuts that think the moon landings were a hoax because they think the sunlight reflected off the regolith was a secondary light source).
- davidjohnstone 14y agoYes, an f/0.7 aperture is a ridiculously wide aperture (thus, it lets in a lot of light[1]), two stops brighter than f/1.4 (a "stop" means a doubling of the amount of light; f/1.2 lenses are the fastest lenses commonly available, and they'll cost around $2k), or four stops faster than f/2.8 (which is what the fastest commonly available zoom lenses are, and they're expensive too). Leica make a very rare f/0.95 lens that would set you back $11k, and it's appropriately called Noctilux. As for conspiracy theories, what makes it even better is that Stanley Kubrick also made 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, which includes some scenes set on the moon, and I've heard of conspiracy theories about how these were used for the "real" moon landing too… (And yes, according to Wikipedia, Kubrick bought three of the ten copies of this lens made, with NASA buying six and Carl Zeiss keeping the other.) 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number
- Gravityloss 14y agoFor smaller image circles (smaller sensor), you can get 0.95 lenses for under a thousand euros.
- topbanana 14y agoIs this a color sensor? The high end astrophotography sensors tend to be monochromatic, with a filter wheel placed in front of the sensor. That way, each well has 3 times as much chance of seeing a photon.
- carbocation 14y agoBased on the incredible looks-like-daylight shot taken by moonlight, the answer is yes, this is a color sensor.
- CountHackulus 14y agoAll sensors are monochrome just with red, green, and blue filters over pixels in what's called a Bayer pattern. The only real exception to this rule that I can think of is the Foveon sensor.
- topbanana 14y agoWhen we talk about sensors we're talking about the whole device
- Aardwolf 14y agoI would love to see such a sensor for photos instead of video!
- ominous_prime 14y agoof course we would, but photographers wouldn't be too impressed with only capturing 1920(?)x1080 resolution. This gains it's light gathering abilities by simply having much larger "pixels" on the sensor, which can collect more photons. This is the same principal used on the highest end canon eos body, the 1DX, which has slightly lower resolution than the 5DmkIII in order to gain sensitivity.
- baq 14y agoNative resolution of this baby looks to be 864 mm^2 / 19 micron^2 ~= 45MPix, in line with the latest Nikon and with rumors of high-density FF Canon. The innovation here is noise reduction and not the sensor itself... obviously Canon will charge an arm an a leg for that video camera - and won't ever make it into a DSLR to not cannibalize their profits.
- ominous_prime 14y agoI'm fairly certain they meant that pixels are 19µm on a side, not in area, since they state: > 7.5-times the surface area of the pixels on the CMOS sensor incorporated in Canon's top-of-the-line EOS-1D X and other digital SLR cameras That puts a 35mm sensor right around HD video resolution, or in the 2-2.1MP range.
- kybernetyk 14y agoWow, the full moon example is really impressive.
- regehr 14y agoI always find it depressing when I take a picture by moonlight and it ends up looking very much like a picture taken by sunlight, as opposed to looking like the scene looks to our eyes. Always have to keep in mind that a CCD != rods and cones. Sensitivity is nice but as far as I'm concerned, dynamic range is the main thing that's needed in digital photography. DSLR sensors have gotten much, much better over the last 10 years but there's still plenty of room for improvement.
- trackofalljades 14y agoYou're right, about photography. In video, however, you need tons and tons and tons and tons of sensitivity in addition to dynamic range because you can only use fast "shutter" (electronic, not physical, of course) speeds. Needing to create a perfect image 24, 30, or 60 times a second in the dark requires a very different bag of tricks. This is why, for example, having fewer and larger pixels is vastly preferable for motion versus stills.
- mikec3k 14y agoThat's a result of how metering works - it assumes you want a brightly lit scene. You'll either need to use manual exposure or use one of the spot metering modes, where it measures only the brightness of a focal point rather than the overall scene brightness and tries to compensate.
- Sharlin 14y agoOr you use the exposure compensation setting. But yes, the metering software in a camera does not know how the scene "should" look like. It can only assume that you want a "properly" exposed photo - such that both under- and overexposure is minimized. If you want something else, you'll have to tell the camera what you want.
- aaronbrethorst 14y agoCheck this out: http://www.calphoto.com/moon.htm http://www.calphoto.com/moon.htm There's a lot of great information on how to best capture the moon.
- zokier 14y agoThey develop this amazing new FullHD sensor and post a 640x360 video to show it off?
- friendcomputer 14y agoI'm curious how this performs with fast motion and if it's a general-purpose sensor or only suitable for low light. Anyone know?
- sukuriant 14y agoAre you asking if it could be used for slow motion capture? Because if you're doing something that could be captured at normal 24/48/60 fps, then I don't see any reason why this camera would care if there was motion or not
- zokier 14y agoI wonder what the anticipated applications are? Surveillance seems like one obvious target (and I guess that's what the moonlight-scene was trying to show), at least if the sensor (and thus the final products) is not ridiculously expensive. Also the fact that it is being demoed at "SECURITY SHOW 2013" points towards surveillance.
- baq 14y agothis will be an expensive piece of gear. that moonlit video was just insane.
- thenomad 14y agoAs a filmmaker, I'm more impressed by the burning incense. I don't even make live-action video (I do animation), and I STILL desperately want a camera that can do that. I suspect that the results of showing that video to a room full of filmmakers can be summed up in the phrase "Shut up and take my money."
- scarecrowbob 14y agoIf you're doing stop motion, can't you just do longer exposures? Or is that impractical in a stop-motion workflow?
- thenomad 14y agoTo the best of my knowledge, there's no reason not to do that - although I don't do stop-motion, I do performance capture. (The reason I was drooling over the camera wasn't for any particularly practical use - I wouldn't use it day-to-day. I have on occasion done live-action filmmaking, and I know how INCREDIBLY useful uber-low-light performance like that would be. Seeing the potential for mood and Dogme-style shooting makes me want to pick up a Real Camera again ;) )
- hop 14y agoI bet it can do some insane slowmo frame rates too in normal lighting conditions. For all they put into this sensor, surprised Canon produced such a crapily edited video.
- Retric 14y agoI suspect that video was an internal tech demo and had nothing to do with there marketing department.
- protomyth 14y agoLet's see what codecs and outputs they record before getting too excited. The sensor in the 5d mk III could be so much more if it recorded to something better. Bandwidth is a killer.
- wmf 14y agoFortunately this sensor is so low-res that bandwidth isn't a problem.
- blt 14y agoAwesome. I've been waiting a long time for camera makers to do something like this after they got tired of increasing megapixels. Really going to open up new worlds of creativity for nighttime and low-light indoor shooting. Even better - make a b/w version with 3x more sensitivity and better sharpness.
- graycat 14y agoSo, with all the critical details here about CCD sensors, you expert guys are telling me that I should not rush out and spend $10 K, $20 K, or whatever for the latest Nikon/Canon single lens reflex with a CCD sensor and a bag of lenses and, instead, keep my old Nikon Nikormat with its bag of Nikon lenses? Let's see, opening the bag for the first time in a while, I have a Nikkor 200 mm f4, a Nikkor 105 mm f2.5, a Nikkor 55 mm f3.5 macro (good for closeups and general usage) with an extension tube for getting even closer, and a Nikkor 50 mm f1.4. Ah, I guess the f1.4 is for taking shots of the girlfriend in her little cocktail dress sitting at the candle lit romantic dinner table waiting for the rest of the evening! Or maybe I should be sitting at the table taking the picture as she comes in with a frilly apron over her cocktail dress and carrying a serving tray with her hand made Sachertorte mit Schlagobers (whipped cream)? Also in the bag is a Honeywell strobe light: It uses a 900 Volt dry cell battery if can find one and otherwise just uses the A/C adapter. The recharge time on the A/C adapter is fast. I suspect I will be able to buy film such as Kodak Kodacolor for a long time, but processing is an issue: I've had Sam's Club start with my Kodacolor 35 mm and return to me a CD with JPG images with 1818 x 1228 pixels which seems to be a little below the resolution of the best of the Nikon equipment. At one time Kodak offered Kodak PhotoCD with much higher resolution. Any suggestions? What about getting good processing and scanning to JPG of the film? Sounds like my old Nikon equipment is still competitive with newer single lens reflex cameras with CCD sensors and roughly 35 mm image width? E.g., on resolution Dalsa made a CCD image sensor with 48 million pixels, a light detection rectangle 36 x 48 mm, i.e., much like 35 mm film in my Nikon, with each pixel a square 6 microns on a side, capturing about 55,000 electrons per pixel, and, net, 6 K x 8 K pixels. Sounds good until notice that apparently each pixel is for just one color, red, green, or blue, and they use a 2 x 2 array of four such pixels, one red, one blue, and two green, for one 'color' pixel. So, in such 'color' pixels their sensor is 3 K x 4 K and, thus, not necessarily a lot better than 35 mm film? Where am I going wrong?
- cuu508 14y ago* this sensor is for video, your Nikormat cannot do video * practicality of digital vs analog, people will trade quality for convenience * with Bayer filter you don't lose exactly 1/2 of resolution, the algoritms employed do a little better than that
- neya 14y agoThis is my today's best Hackernews item, ever. As a Videographer, I've always yearned for better DSLR's that can shoot video under (extreme) low-light conditions. I just hope they launch a consumer/pro-sumer model with this sensor soon! Throw in a low-light lens and you're all set for (ultra) low-light videography!!