Scientists from the University of Rochester are working on new CMOS sensor technology. Among many improvements that they were able to develop are less energy consumption and a dramatic increase in dynamic range. So, here is the great news important for us:

"Existing CMOS sensors can record light 1,000 times brighter than their dimmest detectable light, a dynamic range of 1:1,000, while the Rochester technology already demonstrates a dynamic range of 1:100,000."

For the full article look here:

http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2367

Finally an important improvement that doesn't involve pixel count. The question is, how long will it take for this new technology to be applied in real products?

Luiz

Well I guess that about does in the "a larger sensor is required to improve dynamic range" theory. Funny, I was just thinking about this during my drive in this morning. It will be interesting to see who snaps up this technology first, this being a Rochester university study I'm assuming that Kodak is financing the research.

I woud not count that theory down for the count yet

It seems that the majority of the improvements discussed in that article involve shrinking the transistors (which process the reading from the photosite). By making the transistors smaller, the photo diode can be larger given the same photosite footprint.

There was also something in the article that did not sound very promising:



That seems to imply that the data from their sensor is a 1 bit deep (black/white, on/off), which would not be suitable for normal camera use.

Just think that you're talking about a 14-16 bit/channel image. Compared to the current 8 bits/channel how many people will go for the extra memory to store this image vs increasing the resolution of the image?

-- Geoff