Canon has announced that it has created a new 410-megapixel 35mm full-frame CMOS sensor, which is the “highest pixel count ever achieved” in a sensor of this size.
Due to the high level of detail that the new sensor is capable of capturing, Canon expects it to be used in “surveillance, medical and industrial applications” where there is a demand for “extreme resolution.” Canon’s 410 megapixel sensor has a resolution of 24K, which is 198 times the resolution of HD and 12 times the resolution of 8K. This makes it easy to crop and then enlarge the photo taken by the sensor without losing detail.
Typically, sky-high megapixel counts are limited to cameras with medium format sensors. But the beauty of Canon cramming so many pixels into 35mm is that they can be used “in combination with lenses for full-frame sensors.”
To achieve this, Canon had to make more than a few design changes. The new sensor has a redesigned circuitry and “back-illuminated stack formation” where “the pixel segment and signal processing segment are interlayered.” This means that the reading speed is 3280 megapixels per second, and video is eight frames per second. A monochrome version of the sensor can combine four pixels at a time to capture even brighter images and record “100-megapixel video at 24 frames per second,” Canon says.
It doesn’t look like this type of sensor is going to become a consumer camera anytime soon, but the fact that this level of miniaturization is possible means that one day it will, for those photography enthusiasts who want it.
