Multilayer Sensors are Coming From Canon [CR2]

[LetTheRightLensIn]

And the effective res is a bit lower per processing power and storage space required and they have relatively modest low ISO DR.

So what's the point, then? It sounds like there are lots of drawbacks with the only potential advantage being "truer colors."

Does modest low ISO DR mean worse than current Canon sensors, similar to current Canon sensors, or similar to Canon sensors with the potential for a big DR increase given innovative tech/manufacturing?

Maybe they have some totally new tech that makes it able to do better at high ISO and low ISO than the regular type of sensors they are using now? And maybe it provides great colors and they have a ton of processing power to handle all the data and the less efficient data storage is more than outweighed by how well they have the basic tech working (CFA filters rob a lot of light, if they managed to capture almost all of it with three layer that could be the only way to give a big boost to high iso at this point; but it would take some amazing new tech as all the current three layer tech actually does worse in most regards)?

If not, though, then it does seem potentially questionable yeah.

 

[Loswr]

Neuro and I both wrote on that article mentioned...

Judging by the numerous grammatical errors in those Adweek comments, I am pretty sure it's not the same Neuro in CR forum. ;D

No, certainly not me. Likely one of the banned ex-CR trolls attempting a lame and pathetic sort of payback.

 

[ScottyP]

Neuro and I both wrote on that article mentioned...

Judging by the numerous grammatical errors in those Adweek comments, I am pretty sure it's not the same Neuro in CR forum. ;D

No, certainly not me. Likely one of the banned ex-CR trolls attempting a lame and pathetic sort of payback.

Haha. The writing (and spelling) was like 2nd grade skill level. They should have used a copy of Neuro's avatar, but with a little cross section of a peanut where the brain would go.

 

[skoobey]

At this point, it much better IQ and no anti-aliasing filter, with really good software to remove moire right away, if needed, and I'll upgrade. Other vise, I'll skip yet another generation.

 

[Lee Jay]

A problem with Foveon sensors is lousy color separation. It's not a red, blue and green layer, it's three white layers with a little bit of bias on each one. This is why they have lousy, inaccurate colors with lots of color artifacts like purple and green splotches all over the place.

I hope Canon has a way to dramatically improve on Foveon sensors before they'd release this into the wild. Foveon's have lousy DR, lousy high ISO performance, lousy colors, and the lack of an AA filter means a ton of aliasing artifacts.

 

[eml58]

No, certainly not me. Likely one of the banned ex-CR trolls attempting a lame and pathetic sort of payback.

Mt Spokane copped a mention as well, both sets of comments seemed, off ?

A Mt Spokane ashamed of being a Canon user ? don't think so

A Nuero supportive of Sony & unable to spell or write concise grammar ? don't think so

 

[jrista]

A problem with Foveon sensors is lousy color separation. It's not a red, blue and green layer, it's three white layers with a little bit of bias on each one. This is why they have lousy, inaccurate colors with lots of color artifacts like purple and green splotches all over the place.

I hope Canon has a way to dramatically improve on Foveon sensors before they'd release this into the wild. Foveon's have lousy DR, lousy high ISO performance, lousy colors, and the lack of an AA filter means a ton of aliasing artifacts.

Hmm, that hasn't been my experience with Foveon images. They seem to have pretty good color fidelity at low ISO. They also seem to handle blues quite well, which isn't surprising given that blue is the top layer.

I was never impressed with the high ISO capabilities, and I think their higher ISO noise is pretty splotchy...but Canon noise is often just as bad (only Canon color splotches tend to be primarily reddish, with a bit of green.)

 

[Lee Jay]

A problem with Foveon sensors is lousy color separation. It's not a red, blue and green layer, it's three white layers with a little bit of bias on each one. This is why they have lousy, inaccurate colors with lots of color artifacts like purple and green splotches all over the place.

I hope Canon has a way to dramatically improve on Foveon sensors before they'd release this into the wild. Foveon's have lousy DR, lousy high ISO performance, lousy colors, and the lack of an AA filter means a ton of aliasing artifacts.

Hmm, that hasn't been my experience with Foveon images. They seem to have pretty good color fidelity at low ISO. They also seem to handle blues quite well, which isn't surprising given that blue is the top layer.

I was never impressed with the high ISO capabilities, and I think their higher ISO noise is pretty splotchy...but Canon noise is often just as bad (only Canon color splotches tend to be primarily reddish, with a bit of green.)

I'm talking about different splotches. They aren't a few pixels like chroma noise, they're a few thousand pixels.

 

[jrista]

A problem with Foveon sensors is lousy color separation. It's not a red, blue and green layer, it's three white layers with a little bit of bias on each one. This is why they have lousy, inaccurate colors with lots of color artifacts like purple and green splotches all over the place.

I hope Canon has a way to dramatically improve on Foveon sensors before they'd release this into the wild. Foveon's have lousy DR, lousy high ISO performance, lousy colors, and the lack of an AA filter means a ton of aliasing artifacts.

Hmm, that hasn't been my experience with Foveon images. They seem to have pretty good color fidelity at low ISO. They also seem to handle blues quite well, which isn't surprising given that blue is the top layer.

I was never impressed with the high ISO capabilities, and I think their higher ISO noise is pretty splotchy...but Canon noise is often just as bad (only Canon color splotches tend to be primarily reddish, with a bit of green.)

I'm talking about different splotches. They aren't a few pixels like chroma noise, they're a few thousand pixels.

Yeah, Canon RAWs have the same problem. I am not sure it's thousands of pixels, but certainly several hundred.

 

[Woody]

Maybe they have some totally new tech that makes it able to do better at high ISO and low ISO than the regular type of sensors they are using now? And maybe it provides great colors and they have a ton of processing power to handle all the data and the less efficient data storage is more than outweighed by how well they have the basic tech working (CFA filters rob a lot of light, if they managed to capture almost all of it with three layer that could be the only way to give a big boost to high iso at this point; but it would take some amazing new tech as all the current three layer tech actually does worse in most regards)?

If not, though, then it does seem potentially questionable yeah.

One thing we ought to remember is that when Canon first embarked on CMOS sensor technology, there were lots of skeptics out there. At that time, most believed in the superiority of CCD to CMOS, until they were proven wrong. ;D

On another note, Sony also has a patent on multilayer sensor:
http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/sony-3-layer-patent-in-detail/

So, Canon is not alone. Almost appears as if Foveon type sensor is the Nirvana for sensor designers, despite Eric Fossum's doubts. ;D

 

[dufflover]

A CR2 involving new, and actually "real" new sensor tech. Finally, bring it on!

 

[SoullessPolack]

Can someone explain to me why they're working on this rather than more megapixels? Rather, why the focus is on more layers? I understand it's to better represent colors. But what is wrong with colors? My cameras have always nice, realistic, vivid colors as long as I use a good lens. I've never had a photograph where I even had the slightest hint of a thought that the color is not accurate. When I look at my pictures, it looks like when I was there. Granted, the dynamic range is not the same, but we're not taking pictures with our eyes, so that's expected. What is it about color that they need to squeeze that last 0.01% of color accuracy out of the camera?

 

[jrista]

Can someone explain to me why they're working on this rather than more megapixels? Rather, why the focus is on more layers? I understand it's to better represent colors. But what is wrong with colors? My cameras have always nice, realistic, vivid colors as long as I use a good lens. I've never had a photograph where I even had the slightest hint of a thought that the color is not accurate. When I look at my pictures, it looks like when I was there. Granted, the dynamic range is not the same, but we're not taking pictures with our eyes, so that's expected. What is it about color that they need to squeeze that last 0.01% of color accuracy out of the camera?

It's more than just better color fidelity. Bayer sensors have sparse data (sparse color data, you generally have more complete luminance data, but it's still not ideal), and need to be debayered. Assuming Canon is able to create a layered sensor with similar photosite counts as bayer sensors today, say 20mp, the image from a layered sensor should be much more complete, more detailed, sharper. The only real drawback to current Foveon sensors is they are really low resolution. For cameras of similar resolutions, Foveon is better because it's sharper out of camera for the given file size.

Sparse color information, and the act of debayering, is a primary source of color noise. Canon weakened the color filters in their more recent sensors (excluding the 7D II...not sure about that one yet), which results in more color bleed between pixels of differing colors, which just makes the color noise issue even worse. Luminance information is also biased...while it's higher resolution than the color information, different color channels have different sensitivities. When the color profile tone curves are applied to correct that discrepancy, it exacerbates noise (both luminance and color.)

When you gather a full constituent of color information at every photosite, if done right, you should have far lower color noise (doubtful it can be eliminated, but certainly lowered), and since every photosite gathers full luminance information, you won't get that increase in luminance noise due to different amplification of each color channel.

There are a lot of benefits for moving to a layered sensor design. The difficulties lie in getting good sensitivity at each layer, and in handling the photodiode count. A 20mp layered sensor with three colors is 60 million photodiodes that need to be read out. That's roughly triple Canon's current highest pixel count...I don't think even DIGIC 6 can handle that at even moderately reasonable frame rates...assuming 14-bit, a 20mp RGB layered sensor could do maybe 3.3fps with a pair of DIGIC 6 (based on the 10fps frame rate of the 7D II.) At best, that's a slow studio camera.

If Canon is intending to use this in the 1D X replacement, either they have something seriously powerful in DIGIC 7, or they are dramatically lowering the photosite count. If they released a 7mp RGB layered sensor with ~21 million photodiodes, they could get 12fps with dual DIGIC 5 or 6. They would need twice the throughput of DIGIC 5/6 to do 12fps at 14mp. They would need to process 2GB/s (which is basically the equivalent of eight DIGIC 5/6) to do 12fps at 28mp.

 

[Lee Jay]

Can someone explain to me why they're working on this rather than more megapixels? Rather, why the focus is on more layers? I understand it's to better represent colors. But what is wrong with colors? My cameras have always nice, realistic, vivid colors as long as I use a good lens. I've never had a photograph where I even had the slightest hint of a thought that the color is not accurate. When I look at my pictures, it looks like when I was there. Granted, the dynamic range is not the same, but we're not taking pictures with our eyes, so that's expected. What is it about color that they need to squeeze that last 0.01% of color accuracy out of the camera?

The problem with Bayer cameras isn't color, it's that the Bayer dyes absorb something like half the light coming in. In theory, if you could go without that dye layer, you could gain a stop, or perhaps a bit more, of high ISO performance.

 

[wtlloyd]

So, at first I'm thinkin', "Here we go, 100 pages, easy".

Then I see only 4 pages in 8 hours... ???

And I realized, what kinda rumor is that? Multilayer sensors, what does that even mean? Stupid rumor, let's get back to talking about DR and diffraction and AA filters, and all that good stuff we're so familiar with...

How are you supposed to argue, when you don't know what your're talking about?

 

[Perio]

Guys, is it possible to get 16-bit images with FF DSLRs in theory? Would it give any real life benefit vs. 14-bit?

 

[jrista]

Here is one of the layered sensor patents from a few years ago (2011):

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://egami.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2013-05-22&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://egami.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2013-05-22%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DC0u%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-USfficial

This one seems to apply the nanocoating concept to the red layer. Nanocoating uses nanoscopic scale spikes of differing sizes on a reflective surface to produce a non-abrupt transition layer. Reflections occur at abrupt transistions in refractive index, so by creating a non-abrupt transition layer, you can nearly eliminate reflections entirely. This is different from standard multicoating, which still allows reflections to occur, it just cancels them out via wave interference.

Here is another patent from 2012:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://egami.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2013-05-22&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://egami.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2013-05-22%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DC0u%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-USfficial

This is another sensitivity increasing patent. This apparently uses dielectric antireflective layers underneath the preceeding layer to reduce ghosting reflections. Not sure if this is intended to be used in conjunction with the nanocoating of the red layer or not...it seems to explicitly call out the blue and green layers (which are higher up than the red layer).

Canon also has their more recent patent for the five-layer sensor with UV and IR layers:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://egami.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2014-06-27

This patent is interesting, because it seems to depict a multi-layered BSI design, at least based on the diagram of the sensor (all the transistors are on the back side...that alone would be HUGE for layered sensor sensitivity...if you look at the ChipWorks electron micrographs of current Foveon designs, the transistors take up a huge amount of die space, as Foveon is still an FSI design...which is probably the biggest reason that sensor suffers so in low light.)

It was discovered some time ago that infrared light diffuses and reflects back subcutaneously in human skin. It can be used to greatly reduce the appearance of skin blemishes (I found a page a while back that shows that most skin features effectively disappear when you shoot full infrared). I'm not sure what UV light does for skin...apparently Canon found something useful with UV light.

Anyway, wtlloyd, there's some reference material. That's what Canon's got for multi-layered sensors.

 

[Loswr]

Guys, is it possible to get 16-bit images with FF DSLRs in theory? Would it give any real life benefit vs. 14-bit?

Sure, if they start using 16-bit ADCs. Whether or not it's of real life benefit depends on the specific sensor designs, and on the importance you personally place on a couple extra stops of dynamic range.

 

[Lee Jay]

Guys, is it possible to get 16-bit images with FF DSLRs in theory? Would it give any real life benefit vs. 14-bit?

Yes, and possibly.

 

[BozillaNZ]

Guys, is it possible to get 16-bit images with FF DSLRs in theory? Would it give any real life benefit vs. 14-bit?

For current line of Canon sensors, even 14-bit is overkill, you will do just fine with 12-bit. The extra bits are only recording noise.

If you can make a sensor that outputs clean 65536 grades of shade, then a 16-bit signal path will unleash a lot more potential.

And no, I am not a drone. ???