CMOS

Prepare to see another giant leap in smartphone picture-taking quality this year.

Sony announced today three new back-illuminated stacked CMOS image sensors optimized for bright and low-light conditions. The new compact sensors are faster, consume less power than previous versions, and will be available in 8- to 13- megapixel flavors. Most notably, the sensors feature new "RGBW Coding" and "High Dynamic Range (HDR) Movie" abilities baked directly onto the hardware. The iPhone 4S features a Sony 8-megapixel sensor, and it's possible that this may be a preview of the camera sensor inside the iPhone 5.

You might recognize the RGB acronym, as it stands for red-green-blue; the new sensor adds white pixels to the mix that pumps up the sensor's light sensitivity. It is possible that a future smartphone with this sensor will have little problem shooting pictures in dark rooms (or at night), as evidenced in the example picture above. Another benefit to the RGBW coding is that no changes to signal processing are required to support this updated technology, making it easy to implement. Surprisingly, Kodak has been shopping around something like this technology since at least 2007. … Read more

A huge image sensor that Canon showed off last year turns out to have more of a purpose in life than touting the company's manufacturing prowess. It's being used to help a Japanese observatory hunt for meteors.

Canon's 202x205mm sensor dwarfs the 24x36mm "full-frame" sensors that are used commercially in the company's high-end SLR cameras. When Canon touted the giant sensor last year, it said, "Potential applications for the new high-sensitivity CMOS sensor include the video recording of stars in the night sky and nocturnal animal behavior."

Well, it looks like those … Read more

The inventors of the digital camera, the industrial robot, public-key cryptography, and the barcode are just some of those being inducted into this year's National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Today, the National Inventors Hall of Fame announced its latest selections of the people responsible for some of the key technologies that we use and rely on today.

In 1975, a Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson built a device that was able to capture an image, convert it to an electronic signal, and then digitize and store that image, leading to the world's first digital camera, according to the … Read more

The Windows Control Panel gives access to some of the operating system's nuts and bolts, but it doesn't always provide as much information as it could. ReSysInfo is a basic program that presents information about a variety of your computer's components all in one spot.

ReSysInfo looks very much like the Windows Control panel, with a collection of icons representing information about drives, networks, keyboards, and other hardware and software. Unlike the Control Panel, ReSysInfo doesn't actually let you change any settings, but it does allow you to quickly view the settings and other information. There … Read more

Apple's iPhone 4 camera packs a technology that a lot of buyers of the phone may have missed: a new image sensor tech that is coming into focus--pardon the pun--as camera makers like Kodak adopt the technology in higher-end cameras.

The technology, called backside illumination, or BSI, was highlighted by Steve Jobs when he took the stage to roll out the new iPhone, as Joshua Goldman of CNET Reviews wrote here.

Apple's savviness shines through here. The company had to do its homework to get out in front of this trend, particularly in smartphones, which are not necessarily … Read more

As consumer demand for cameras continues to rise, Sony plans to invest $1.2 billion next year to double its production of the image sensors used in smartphones and digital cameras.

The Japanese electronics giant announced today that part of the investment would go toward buying back a semiconductor production line from Toshiba, a deal estimated to cost around $600 million, according to an industry source cited by Reuters. The company is also planning to convert part of a plant in Nagasaki to make CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) sensors and will purchase wafer processing equipment for CMOS image sensors, Reuters … Read more

Ah, it's that time of year again where we reflect on the technology that arrived and got us to open our wallets and try to predict what will tempt us in the coming year to toss last year's model for the new shiny shiny.

In past years, when it came to digital cameras the majority of announcements at CES were for refreshes of budget and style lines with the exception of a few with some attention-grabbing feature or design.

However, a big reason for that was the annual Photo Marketing Association's PMA trade show that followed CES … Read more

Canon has crammed 120 million photosites--13,280x9,184 pixels--onto a 29.2mm by 20.2mm (APS-H size) sensor. Why? I'm not sure. To use a sensor that dense would require lots of light, so perhaps there are some medical imaging applications that might benefit from the high resolution and be able to supply the controlled illumination.

According to the press release, the sensor can output 9.5fps HD frames from any subsection of the sensor. That might present some cool video possibilities.

(Via Rob Galbraith)

Regardless of your feelings about 3D, there's really no stopping the onslaught of products now. Hence we have Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-TX9 and DSC-WX5 that offer the ability to shoot 3D panorama photos.

The TX9 replaces the TX7, which is barely 6 months old. It has the same body, touch-screen LCD, and lens as that camera, but its backside-illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensor gets a resolution bump from 10 to 12 megapixels. The WX5 replaces 2009's WX1 and again is built essentially the same as its predecessor, but with the higher-resolution sensor. However, along with the increased megapixels come important shooting feature differences.

First, there's that 3D stuff. In addition to the Intelligent Sweep Panorama found on Sony's earlier Exmor R-based models, these have a 3D Sweep Panorama. Press the shutter release, sweep the camera vertically or horizontally, and the camera captures left and right images and then stitches them together. You then connect the camera by HDMI to your 3D-ready HDTV, pop on your glasses, and enjoy. The results are good, especially considering how easy it is to create them and that they're single-lens cameras as opposed to dual-lens cameras like Fujifilm's Real 3D W1.

The 3D fun doesn't stop there, though. Both cameras have a Sweep Multi Angle option that captures a series of shots at different angles and then combines them into one shot. Tilting the camera left and right plays through the photos, creating a lenticular lens effect. The result is very similar to what you can do with any camera and Start 3D, but these can only be viewed on the camera. And going by what was said at the demo Sony gave us, it seems like it's mostly just a gimmick to sell 3D cameras at retail stores to people who don't own 3D HDTVs. … Read more