Canon showcases CMOS sensor that's 40x as big as a 35mm full frame sensor

19 June 2018

Canon has revealed more details about their newly developed ultra high-resolution sensor, which the company says is the world's largest CMOS image sensor.

Measuring approximately 20 cm square, the huge sensor is equivalent to nearly 40 times the size of a 35 mm full-frame CMOS sensor, and has potential applications including video recording of celestial objects in the night sky, nocturnal animal behavior and auroras, and use in nightwatch cameras. As you might expect, images captured with the ultrahigh-resolution sensor maintain high levels of definition and clarity even when cropped or digitally magnified.

Increasing the size of CMOS sensors entails overcoming such problems as distortion and transmission delays for the electrical signals converted from light. To resolve these issues, Canon say they made use of a parallel processing circuit, allowing the sensor to shoot video at 60 frames per second with only 0.3 lux of illumination (approximately the same level of brightness as that generated by a full moon).

When installed in the 105cm Schmidt camera at the Kiso Observatory operated by the University of Tokyo's Institute of Astronomy, the ultrahigh-sensitivity sensor made possible the world's first video recording of meteors with an equivalent apparent magnitude of 10, a level so dark that image capture had not been possible until now.

The CMOS sensor performs parallel processing to support the high-speed readout of large volumes of pixels, and by modifying the method employed to control the readout circuit timing, the sensor makes possible a maximum output speed of approximately 9.5 frames per second, supporting the continuous shooting of ultrahigh-resolution images.

Canon say the 120-megapixel ultrahigh-resolution performance of the Canon CMOS sensor may lead to unprecedented industrial applications that "could only be imagined in the past."

You can see a video on the sensor's production here.