Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Rumours of a new “Mini A9” APS-C Sony camera seem to be popping up more and more as we get closer to Photokina. But a new announcement today may offer some insight into what may be announced in a couple of weeks.
Sony has today announced a new 31MP APS-C sized CMOS sensor with a global shutter. 31MP is slightly larger than 6K, and while 6K isn’t unheard of, it’s possible that the new Sony IMX342LQA isn’t destined for a video camera, but a stills camera.
Well, it seems that Sony isn’t the only one with a global shutter CMOS announcement of late. According to a press release, Panasonic has also just announced a new global shutter CMOS sensor. This one, though, is capable of shooting up to 60 frames per second at 8K (36MP) resolution. Unlike Sony, which utilises a rear illuminated design with parallel DA converter, Panasonic’s uses an organic photoconductive film (OPF) to allow simultaneous readout of all the pixels on each frame.
Rolling shutter has been the bane of DSLR and mirrorless video shooters since the beginning. In fact, for users of just about any camera with a CMOS sensor. This is all down to how CMOS sensors traditionally work, scanning the scene line by line. Each line is captured at a slightly different point in time, so as you pan, it appears that subjects are leaning or wobbling. Hence it’s become affectionately known as the “jello effect”.
That may be all set to change, though, thanks to a new breakthrough from Sony who has developed an entirely new CMOS sensor with a global shutter function. Announced last week at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Fracisco, the new sensor features a pixel-parallel analogue to digital converter. This means that it can read the data from all of the pixels simultaneously.
One of the biggest pieces of D850 speculation floating around the Internet the last few days seems to be about the sensor. Specifically, who makes it. And no, it’s not Sony. Nikon have actually designed their own sensor for the D850, according to a Q&A session with Imaging Resource. Nikon also promise some pretty significant performance improvements.
This isn’t the first time Nikon have developed their own sensor. Although, many of their past cameras have used Sony and a few Toshiba sensors. But it a Nikon designed sensor is a first for the D8x0 line. The D800 and D810 both contain a 36MP Sony made sensor suspected to be the same one as that in the original Sony A7R.
The rolling shutter effect creates weird patterns in the videos shot on most devices with CMOS sensors. Destin Sandlin from Smarter Every Day has created a fantastic video that explains this effect in a series of examples and comparisons.
As Destin points out, even the past three years he would film the effects of the rolling shutter every time he had his smartphone and a high-speed camera at the same time. As a result, he came up with plenty of examples to simulate the rolling shutter effect, and show us why and how it emerges.
Quanta Image Sensor. Remember that name; it could be the new sensor type that will replace the CMOS in your current camera.
No need to worry though that the inventor of the CMOS will be forgotten, as professor Eric Fossum who invented it is also behind the development of the QIS.
Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering’s professor, along with Thayer PhD candidate Jiaju Ma, have been working on a new pixel for over three years and eventually would like to“have 1 billion pixels on the sensor and we’ll still keep the sensor the same size,” says the co-inventor.
Sensors are not as trivial a film. At least for me the simplicity of chemistry was always simpler than the magic of electronics.
Vimeo user Raymond Siri created two quick, yet informative animations for Canon that illustrate how CCD and CMOS sensors work.
The movies show how the light is filtered accumulated and then they show the difference in how the data is sent for storage.
Rolling Shutter is the way that most DSLR are shooting video. (and point and shoots and iPhones too). For 95% of the time it does not really matter what type of shutter is used for capturing video, in the other 5% it matters a lot. Following is a break down and explanation of what is Rolling Shutter why it is being used and what are its quarks.[Read More…]
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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