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Canon develops 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor for video capture

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Re: Canon develops 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor for video capture

#61

Post by ISL »

seunosewa wrote: post #53
klodolph wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Noise increases as pixel size increases. So you can't just make the pixels bigger. 2. The 5 megapixel camera on an iPhone 4 is pretty amazing. I wouldn't call it a waste of resources. 3. Displacing MF from high-end camera manufacturers requires tiny pixels. You can shoot pictures for e.g. magazines on a $2,000 D600 today, but in 2003 you would have needed at least $4,000 MF camera plus a $10,000+ scanner. Yes, thi…

It is simply not true that noise increases as pixel size increases. The exact opposite is widely known to be true. See this page, for example: http://firmitas.org/Sensor.html

I'm not a CCD engineer, but I suspect you're both right.

Photon shot noise increases like the square root of the area of the pixel, but the signal will increase like the area.

In that case, the important quantity ( Signal/Noise ) improves like the square root of the area of each pixel.

If readout isn't shot-noise limited, then the payoff for a larger sensor could be as large as the ratio of the areas between old and new.

Re: Canon develops 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor for video capture

#62

Post by IvyMike »

davidjohnstone wrote: post #9

For 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 o…

If you are in Los Angeles, you can go to the Stanley Kubrick exhibit at LACMA and see the f/0.7 lens in person, right now. For that matter the entire exhibit is awesome.

Re: Canon develops 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor for video capture

#63

Post by klodolph »

seunosewa wrote: post #53
klodolph wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Noise increases as pixel size increases. So you can't just make the pixels bigger. 2. The 5 megapixel camera on an iPhone 4 is pretty amazing. I wouldn't call it a waste of resources. 3. Displacing MF from high-end camera manufacturers requires tiny pixels. You can shoot pictures for e.g. magazines on a $2,000 D600 today, but in 2003 you would have needed at least $4,000 MF camera plus a $10,000+ scanner. Yes, thi…

It is simply not true that noise increases as pixel size increases. The exact opposite is widely known to be true. See this page, for example: http://firmitas.org/Sensor.html

I was actually just paraphrasing the linked page from Canon:

> In addition, the sensor's pixels and readout circuitry employ new technologies that reduce noise, which tends to increase as pixel size increases.

The linked page is pretty sketchy, it mentions lenses but not optics. Optical resolution will be limited regardless of whether the lenses are perfectly polished. It's hardly irrelevant too, with modern optical resolution close to sensor resolution. The article makes assertions but no citations or measurements. Worthless junk.

Re: Canon develops 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor for video capture

#64

Post by majormajor »

IvyMike wrote: post #62
davidjohnstone wrote: post #9

For 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 o…

If you are in Los Angeles, you can go to the Stanley Kubrick exhibit at LACMA and see the f/0.7 lens in person, right now. For that matter the entire exhibit is awesome.

Seconded

Re: Canon develops 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor for video capture

#65

Post by rz2k »

vanderZwan wrote: post #4

In 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?

The example of the burning incense doesn't look it exceeds the threshold around the ember while simultaneously showing the man's face as lit, so I'd assume you are right about the increased dynamic range.

Re: Canon develops 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor for video capture

#66

Post by wmf »

protomyth wrote: post #50

Let'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.

Fortunately this sensor is so low-res that bandwidth isn't a problem.

Re: Canon develops 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor for video capture

#67

Post by Sharlin »

mikec3k wrote: post #46
regehr wrote: post #20

I 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…

That'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.

Or 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.

Re: Canon develops 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor for video capture

#68

Post by vanderZwan »

seunosewa wrote: post #53
klodolph wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Noise increases as pixel size increases. So you can't just make the pixels bigger. 2. The 5 megapixel camera on an iPhone 4 is pretty amazing. I wouldn't call it a waste of resources. 3. Displacing MF from high-end camera manufacturers requires tiny pixels. You can shoot pictures for e.g. magazines on a $2,000 D600 today, but in 2003 you would have needed at least $4,000 MF camera plus a $10,000+ scanner. Yes, thi…

It is simply not true that noise increases as pixel size increases. The exact opposite is widely known to be true. See this page, for example: http://firmitas.org/Sensor.html

On top of what others have said, let's not forget thermal noise - I can't find it right now but I remember a beercooler-as-SLR-cooler hack someone used to near-freeze his camera, making his long exposure astronomy pictures much less noisy. Also, I've heard that because of this it can be better to shoot a lot of medium-exposure pictures in burst mode and additional-blend them afterwards than having the sensor capture for, say, ten minutes non-stop.

So, since the heatigng up in turn depends largely on current running through the sensor: how does that scale with larger/smaller pixels?

Re: Canon develops 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor for video capture

#69

Post by blt »

Awesome. 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.

Re: Canon develops 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor for video capture

#70

Post by vanderZwan »

rz2k wrote: post #65
vanderZwan wrote: post #4

In 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?

The example of the burning incense doesn't look it exceeds the threshold around the ember while simultaneously showing the man's face as lit, so I'd assume you are right about the increased dynamic range.

Good catch. I think the best examples would be daylight pictures though.
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