Canon has announced a 35mm full-frame CMOS sensor with a mindboggling 410 million pixels, the world's highest pixel count. The newly developed 410-megapixel CMOS sensor has a 24,592 x 16,704-pixel resolution, the equivalent of 24K, or 198 times that of Full-HD and 12 times that of 8K. It enables cameras to capture a wide field of view and crop in while still obtaining high-quality images of the enlarged area without loss of resolution.
While traditional ultra-high-pixel sensors usually require medium format or even bigger components, this CMOS sensor packs all those megapixels into a chip the size of a standard frame of 35mm film. It can thus be used with a huge range of lenses designed for full-frame cameras, which should allow for the miniaturization of imaging equipment.
It's no slouch, either, with an ultra-high-speed signal readout of 3.28 billion pixels/second. This is achieved with a back-illuminated stacked structure, enabling it to shoot full-resolution images at up to eight frames per second. Alternatively, by employing a four-pixel blending function, it can capture smooth video at 24 frames per second at a 100-megapixel resolution. This function treats four adjacent pixels as one pixel, thereby improving sensitivity and enabling brighter images to be captured.
Although the sensor has the same footprint as a standard 35mm full-frame camera component, it is unlikely to appear in any consumer-level camera any time soon. Canon hasn't released any price details as yet, but the cost is likely to be prohibitive and the company is targeting it at industrial users requiring ultra-high-resolution imaging, including surveillance and medical applications. In the meantime, why not check out the highest-resolution cameras you can buy today?
In related news, it was revealed that Canon was the most prolific Japanese company to file patents in the USA in 2024 – a record it's held for the past 20 years!
