New Canon Sensor

[Jeremy Hughes]

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/04/canon-crams-50-megapixels-into-a-cmos-prototype/

Canon is designing a 19 x 28mm 50MP CMOS sensor. I wonder what the sensitivity is like?

[Kevin Halverson]

With receptor sites that small, the S/N ratio is likely to be pretty poor.

[J. Bernard Vallon]

If the application is security, they aren't really interested in ridiculously high s/n ratios like we are (i think). However the other thing that affects S/N ratio is highly efficient semi-conductors. If the minimal readable noise is closer to a single electron, your S/N ratio goes through the roof, and your photo-sites can still be pretty small.

[Kevin Halverson]

In practical terms the S/N ratio is dominated by the gain and the self noise of the electronics in front of the quantizers. With extremely small receptor sites, the necessary gain will be high and the self noise will become a considerable portion of the total signal. Now, with very low frame rates, one can accumulate a larger charge, but at cinema frame rates, I have my doubts.