Canon 3 Layer Sensor (Foveon Type?) Patent

[bchernicoff]

Sigma says 46mp, because their sensor has 46 million photosites..approx 15million red, 15 million blue, and 15 million green. The red, blue, and green photosites are stacked on top of each other. This yields 15 millions RGB true pixels. A conventional 15mp sensor has 15 million photosites with a red, blue, green bayer filter in front of them. This results in 3.75 million red, 3.75 million blue, and 7.5 million green photo sites. Then a process called demosaicing is used to calculate an RGB color value for each of the final 15 million pixels. The result is color that is not 100% accurate at the pixel level. The results are stunning never the less, as I'm sure you've seen with your 5D Mk II (I own one as well). I should point out that there are shortcomings to the Foveon technology that usually considered enough to make it a niche technology. It will be interesting to see what the new sensor can deliver. And I am very anxiously awaiting to see where Canon's patent will lead. If they have perfected the true-color-at-each-pixel technology, it could be a revolution.

 

[photosites]

I believe a back-side illuminated, 3-layered, CMOS sensor is nothing new. Panasonic published a patent last year on this:

http://egami.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2010-07-19-english

My guess is that the innovation here seems to have something to do with microlens and the difference in sizes of the BGR layers with layer B being the largest...

It is still not clear how that solves color bleeding though... and is Canon the only company using microlenses on their sensors?

 

[Mark D5 TEAM II]

It is nothing new. Canon would be late to the RGB party. Here's Nikon's RGB sensor patent from *4 years ago*, it uses 3 dichroic mirrors to separate the light:

United States Patent 7,138,663
Hoshuyama November 21, 2006

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Color separation device of solid-state image sensor


Abstract
A microlens condenses incident light to an opening. Light passed through the opening reaches a first dichroic mirror. The first dichroic mirror passes blue light and reflects green and red light. Only the blue light is incident on a first light receiving surface. The first dichroic mirror leads the green and red light to a second dichroic mirror. The second dichroic mirror passes the green light and reflects the red light. Only the green light is incident on a second light receiving surface. The second dichroic mirror leads the red light to a third dichroic mirror. The third dichroic mirror reflects the red light. Therefore, the red light is incident on a third light receiving surface.


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Inventors: Hoshuyama; Hideo (Kawasaki, JP)
Assignee: Nikon Corporation (Tokyo, JP)

Appl. No.: 10/732,462
Filed: December 11, 2003

From:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7138663.PN.&OS=PN/7138663&RS=PN/7138663

 

[smeggy]

It is nothing new. Canon would be late to the RGB party. Here's Nikon's RGB sensor patent from *4 years ago*, it uses 3 dichroic mirrors to separate the light:

That seems like murder to mass produce. I would love to be wrong...

Would this be suitable with very wide aperture (f1.2) lenses?