By technical editor Matt Allard:
According to a Bloomberg article published on The Japan Times, Sony is working with Nissan Motor Co. and a Tokyo University to produce more affordable 1000fps sensors. They aim to use these in autonomous cars and industrial robots, but clearly the technology would also be useful in regular cameras and smartphones too. At present the only way to get high resolution at these frame rates is to use a high end high speed camera like a Phantom from Vision Research, but if Sony are successful we could see the technology becoming widespread.
Sony already owns almost 40 percent of the image sensor market and are spending more than $2.4 billion US this year alone on their semi-conductor business. It is not surprising that Sony are hoping to make use of their imaging sensor technology in other areas.
High speed in consumer camera is already a reality. Sony’s newest stacked sensor technology in cameras such as the the RX10 Mark II has enabled super high frame rates (at modest resolutions) for under $1300 US.
The challenge for Sony is to shrink this high speed technology into even smaller consumer devices. Conventionally sensors were designed in a way that required faster chips to be bigger. Latest developments make the circuit and sensor smaller, while at the same time boosting speed and resolution.
At present the best prosumer cameras can currently only capture 4K stills at around 60 frames per second. Sony’s prototype sensors have been able to capture 900 frames per second. Just imagine if you were a sports photographer capturing images 10 times faster than the human eye can see.
Smartphones are already capable of capturing 240fps in full HD, with this latest push from Sony it looks it is only a matter of time before 1000fps will be a standard feature in any new camera.
For more information head over to The Japan Times
