"That is really a huge surprise! Panasonic and Fuji worked together on a new kind of organic sensor! The new sensor has the following advantages over conventional sensors:
1) it has only 1/6 of the thickness of the current sensors
2) Increased Dynamic range of 88DB
3) 1,2 times more sensible
4) range of incident angles of 60 degrees, efficiently utilizing light entering at an angle for faithful color reproduction with no color mixing. It also gives greater flexibility in lens designs, facilitating the reduction of overall camera size."
That's the standard problem with these patents. Everyone has one, the first I saw actually included in a photographic sensor was back in 2008 (Epson/Seiki).
Sony's first production-stage patents regarding this was in 2009. Panasonic, Samsung, 'omni, STI and Aptina followed suit shortly after.
None of them include material of choice, and all have stated longevity problems as the main source for not going into beta right now.
FlyPenFly wrote:
I'm sure this will have some sort of weird rendering problems and that RAW editors won't be able to catch up to it for 2 years after release.
Not really, they're exactly like normal SiliconPD sensor. That's the neat thing about it.
Multilayered versions of this patents (of which there are also quite a few) on the other hand implicates all sorts of different scemes, not currently available in any commercial raw converter.
theSuede wrote:
Not really, they're exactly like normal SiliconPD sensor. That's the neat thing about it.
Multilayered versions of this patents (of which there are also quite a few) on the other hand implicates all sorts of different scemes, not currently available in any commercial raw converter.
That's what engineers always say to get their product green lighted! There are always complications...
If you want a similar "difference in method", the difference between front-illuminated and back-illuminated "normal" sensors is just as big.
There's more difference between a Canon 5Dmk3 and a Canon 5Dmk1 than what you get comparing a 5Dmk3 and this system.
I've seen demos of organic sensors running video in real time, using normal off-the-shelf logic-circuits for de-Bayer and image compression. Worked just fine.
theSuede wrote:
None of them include material of choice, and all have stated longevity problems as the main source for not going into beta right now.
That's exactly what I thought, because that (longevity) is probably also the reason why we still don't see big OLED monitors/TVs on the market.
I'd imagine an "organic" sensor would last longer in a camera with OVF (no live view engaged all the time) but camera manufacturers seem to be moving away from those.
"
(4)Offering high reliability for broader applications
Fujifilm has developed a process technology to produce inorganic films for protecting the organic film. It prevents the entry of moisture and oxygen into the organic film to safeguard it against performance degradation. The sensor technology has cleared reliability tests involving the application of stress such as temperature, humidity, electrical voltage and light, paving the way for the use of the organic CMOS image sensor in a wide range of applications. "
Ah, well there's another twist. Very good!
Hope they'll present something workable soon!
As long as there's no real PITA's about the inorganic film deposit, this also has the added benefit of slightly cheaper sensors. The logic parts in a "normal" sensor is quite deeply buried in the substrate, and this costs both time and accuracy in the MFG process.
I know there has been progress in the oled tv front on longevity, so I'm not surprised to hear that sensors have improved too, I'm looking forward to seeing the first sensors in production.
And with the improved incident angles, bring on the FF EVIL's although I assume this tech will end up in compact cams first.
This is a standard Bayer sensor. Just like any other. The only difference is the photodetector; in CMOS PD it's low-efficiency silicon, in this and nano-dot it's a soluble.
Bayer is the layout pattern of the color filters. And they're identical in this and a "normal sensor". The raw files from this works just fine in ACR, LR, CaptureOne, Aperture - or whatever you want.
The Fuji X-trans is a perfectly normal CMOS sensor, but it doesn't have a Bayer color layout.
Fujifilm's marketing director stated, about a year ago, that their patent on organic sensors was from their industrial division and had nothing to do with the imaging division. Has this information changed or are people just speculating?
I don't think it's just speculation. If you go to the DPreview page at the bottom you can see a x-sectional TEM of what they call a 3um and 0.9um pixel. Although small the TEMs show the pixel from the top microlens, the CFA, the new material and the metal layers, vias, contacts and even the transistor. The reticles alone to generate wafers with this many layers are in the many hundreds of $k. The dimensions aren't very aggressive compared to CPU technology but we all know that sensors don't use leading edge technology, but it's still a lot of investment to make final devices.
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