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Single Photon Avalanche Diode

Canon’s MS-500 features a SPAD sensor that truly sees in the dark

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Canon has announced the development of the Canon MS-500, the world’s first ultra-high-sensitivity interchangeable lens camera with a Single Photon Avalanche Diode sensor. Canon announced its first 1-megapixel SPAD sensor in May 2021. By the end of the year, they’d upped the resolution to 3.2-megapixels. This might not sound like a lot, but the original 1-megapixel sensor was already the world’s highest-resolution SPAD sensor up until then.

Now, that 3.2-megapixel sensor will reside inside the new Canon MS-500, offering ultra-low-light sensitivity with almost no noise whatsoever. This camera can literally see in the dark and produce fantastic imagery in full colour. Don’t get too excited yet, though. This isn’t a camera for the likes of us… Yet. Right now, its intended purpose is monitoring.

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Canon’s new SPAD sensor shoots high quality colour images using 1/10th the light required by a CMOS sensor

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Canon has been going a bit mad on the Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) sensor development, it seems. Having just announced their groundbreaking 1-megapixel SPAD sensor a little over six months ago, Canon’s back with a new 3.2-megapixel SPAD sensor, which is not only the most densely pixel-populated sensor of its kind, but it’s also more light sensitive.

According to a report there are plans for Canon’s Kawaski plant to begin mass-producing the new sensor in 2022, but don’t get too excited just yet. This sensor won’t be going into mirrorless cameras – at least, not for a while. Initially, Canon plans to put it inside its own Canon-branded security cameras and even that won’t happen until late in 2022.

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Canon hails groundbreaking 1-megapixel SPAD image sensor as the “eye of the future”

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Canon has developed what was everybody thought to be impossible. And while it might not be the highest resolution camera sensor out there, Canon’s new 1-megapixel Single Photon Avalanche Detection (SPAD) sensor offers some huge benefits over more traditional CMOS or CCD sensors. The biggest being that it all but eliminates noise from your images.

It differs from CMOS sensors in the way that it captures light. Whereas CMOS sensors use electrical signals to monitor the volume of light hitting each pixel in an analogue fashion, which introduces noise, before being converted to digital, SPAD sensors count each and every individual photon that hits it and puts out a true digital signal.

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