Canon Creates 120-Megapixel Camera Sensor

In what’s a sure sign that the megapixel race in cameras is out of control, Canon has announced that it has developed a 120-megapixel image sensor.

That’s 13,280 x 9,184 pixels packed into a rectangle about 29 millimeters x 20 millimeters–or 1.4 inches x 0.7 inches . It’s the highest level of resolution in a sensor of its size, says Canon.

Most cameras today used either a CCD (charge-coupled device) sensor or a CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) sensor. Canon’s latest innovation is for a CMOS sensor.

The 120-megapixel sensor is about 7.5 times larger and offers a 2.4-fold improvement in resolution over Canon’s highest comparable commercial sensor. Canon’s highest-resolution commercial CMOS sensor is currently the EOS-1Ds Mark III and EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR cameras. That sensor incorporates approximately 21.1 million pixels.

Cramming more pixels into a sensor is not necessarily indicative of the quality of the photos. Many consumers think more megapixels in a camera means better photos. But sometimes packing more light-sensitive pixels on a tiny sensor can result in greater noise in the photos. Cameras also require strong processing capabilities to take all the data from the sensors and translate into a beautiful picture.

With most CMOS sensors, camera makers use parallel processing to read data at high pixel counts. But that has to be balanced against problems such as signal delays and deviations in timing, all of which can affect image quality.

Canon has modified the method to control the readout circuit timing to get about 9.5 frames per second. This can support continuous shooting of ultra-high-resolution images, says Canon.

The newly developed CMOS sensor also includes full HD video (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) output capability.

For now, the 120-megapixel sensor is a proof-of-concept. It’s an engineering flight of fancy but it shows camera makers are trying to find ways to pack in greater capability into increasingly smaller sensors.

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