Canon Develops World's Largest CMOS Sensor

[Cyrax]

I had one geeky reaction when reading this.  Especially after looking at that picture...

LOL 

[that1guy]

You would need a monster lens to supply that sensor with a big enough image circle. Sounds perfect for wide-field telescopes, but I'm curious what other applications. Probably just a technical demonstration with no plans to put it into production.

I find it annoying, though, that they keep perpetuating the myth that larger sensors are more light sensitive, when it's (almost) all in the aperture of the optics. Larger sensors merely samples a larger field of view.

Actually, lenses from 8x10 view cameras would work quite nicely on that.  They aren't as huge as you might think...of course, they aren't point and shoot lenses either 

[Jon Gilchrist]

Sounds perfect for wide-field telescopes, but I'm curious what other applications. Probably just a technical demonstration with no plans to put it into production.

The application is moving large quantities of data off the sensor.  I can see that trickling down to most every camera they make.

Or maybe they'll actually make an 8" square view camera sensor.  The news release says it's 40x the size of the 5DMKII sensor.  Anyone have an idea of the cost of that sensor?  Not the replacement cost, the part cost.  Some rough numbers: Camera cost=$2500.  Profit of 50%, make the sensor 25% of the remaining cost and you have a sensor cost of about $312.50, probably way high.  Multiply that by 40 and you have $12,500 in sensor cost.  A Hassy 39MP back currently sells for $13,995 on B&H, so an 8" square back that sold for $50k+ would not be out of line.  Hmmm....

[NormanBates]

@Jon:

I think you're not too far off... except you didn't include yields in your calculation, and that makes a HUGE difference: for such a big chip, it has to be the main cost-driving factor

a 12" wafer on a high-end CMOS process costs $3K to $5K; maybe this one is not so high-end, but still: the problem here is how many working chips you get out of a wafer

if your numbers are correct and they pay $5K per wafer, that means only 40% of the chips actually work (if they pay $3K, it's 24%); if that's your yield and you try to build a chip that is 40 times larger, you can expect to get one that works out of every 10^16 chips you manufacture

I think they have vastly better yields, but even at 90% (which would be my guess here) that gives you only 1.5% working chips when you build a chip that is 40 times larger (=0.9^40); at 95%, it goes to 13%

bottom line: this thing is massively expensive to produce, unless you can make it with enough redundancies that you get super-high yields

[Jaszek]

Although no ISO sensitivity is stated, we can make some assumptions and get an idea of where it may be.  They say that it will shoot in 1/100th the light of the 5DII.  If we take that as ISO 6400, the highest standard setting on the 5DII, then 1/100th would be about 6.5 stops faster or somewhere above 409,600.

6400
12,800 (1-stop)
25,600 (2-stops)
51,200 (3-stops)
102,400 (4-stops)
204,800 (5-stops)
409,600 (6-stops)
(this sensor)
819,200 (7-stops)

Hm, let me make a guess... Should that be 640,000 maybe? (6400 * 100) 

It doesn't work that way. The previous post is correct.

[epsiloneri]

Hm, let me make a guess... Should that be 640,000 maybe? (6400 * 100) 

It doesn't work that way. The previous post is correct.

Of course it works that way. Both are correct. And btw, log2(100) = 6.639 stops. But note that this doesn't make the large sensor more sensitive (as in more signal per photon).

[epsiloneri]

Actually, lenses from 8x10 view cameras would work quite nicely on that.  They aren't as huge as you might think...of course, they aren't point and shoot lenses either 

Interesting. It seems to me that sensors get cheaper faster than lenses, so I predict that we at some point will see inexpensive medium format camera systems that produce the same or better IQ as much more expensive FF/APS systems, with their only drawback that they are bulkier 

[AprilForever]

Digital Crown Graphic, here we come!!!

[Jaszek]

BTW, here's another shot of them side by side


Canon Expo by Jaszek PL, on Flickr

[epsiloneri]

BTW, here's another shot of them side by side

Crazy big! Thanks for the pic. Hope you're having fun at the expo.

[Jaszek]

It was pretty fun there. I have some shots on my flickr if you want to see. CLICKY!!!

[dr croubie]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15242383 When i first saw it I thought maybe they'd actually put this sensor to use, the title sucked me into reading by claiming a "1-Gigapixel CCD".
But then it's only later in the story you find out that it's 106 x 8 Megapixel Medium Format sensors (60x45mm).
Took them 5 years to make them all.
They could just as easily have bought a few Phase One IQ-180 80 Megapixel Backs off the shelf, and made an 8-Gigapixel camera in a fraction of the time...