Yole Developpement and Woodside Capital Partners publish "Smartphone Depth Sensing" report dated by July 2017.

BASF spinoff Trimamix publishes an arxiv.

Coolpad, one of the large China-based smartphone makers that uses 13MP monochrome + 13MP RGB dual camera in its devices, says about the benefits of that configuration:"The two lenses may look the same, but they have very different functions.

Qualcomm announces an expansion to the Qualcomm Spectra Module Program to incorporate a biometric authentication and high-resolution depth sensing for a broad range of mobile devices and head mounted displays (HMD). This module program is built on the 2nd generation Spectra embedded ISP family.

The Instax Mini 9 is the latest affordable instant camera to use Fujifilm's hugely popular Instax Mini film. It's based on the best-selling Mini 8 and adds a selfie mirror and close-up accessory, as well as coming in five pastel colours.

Imaging Resource publishes a video on Sony Kumamoto fab earthquake damage and a recovery effort that brought fab back to life in a so sort time:

Autosens publishes an interview with ESPROS CEO Beat De Coi.

Phil Garrou IFTLE 346 overviews image sensor staking history since Sony introduced it in 2013:

The Nikon COOLPIX W100 is a budget point-and-shoot waterproof compact. If you were asked to describe it in two words they would be simple and inexpensive, given a couple more you could also add fun and stylish.

GSM Arena reports that the upcoming Vivo X20 (Xplay 7) smartphone features 5 cameras - double on the front and triple on the rear sides:

Himax Q3 2017 report has an update on the company's imaging business:“The Company believes 3D sensing is among the most significant new features for the next generation smartphone.

NHK Open House held in Tokyo in May 2017 revealed the latest TV innovations:3D-integrated image sensor with per-pixel interconnect (together with University of Tokyo): "We have managed to shrink the pixels from the previous size of approximately 80 × 80 µm² to approximately 50 × 50 µm².

BusinessWire: Techvanio market reports often feature an interesting mix of quite obvious and quite unusual statements.

Extended Depth of Focus (EDoF) techniques used to be a popular topic 10-15 years ago, as long as the mainstream camera phone resolution has not exceeded 2MP. However, EDoF companies were unable to scale their resolution beyond that point.

The Nikon COOLPIX W300 is a rugged waterproof compact with a 5x optical zoom and a 16 Megapixel sensor. It keeps the 24-120mm zoom of the earlier AW130 and 30m water-proofness, and upgrades it with 4k video and better wireless.

San Francisco-based stealth startup PerceptiveIO publishes an open-access paper "UltraStereo: Efficient Learning-based Matching for Active Stereo Systems" by Sean Ryan Fanello, Julien Valentin, Christoph Rhemann, Adarsh Kowdle, Vladimir Tankovich, Philip Davidson, and Shahram Izadi.

Samsung Q2 2017 earnings report mentions a capex allocation fro CIS foundry business:"The Foundry Business is... to allocate sizable capex for converting part of line 11 from DRAM to image sensor production in the second half [of 2017].

PRNewsWire: Spreadtrum announces mass production of its LTE SoC platforms: SC9853I manufactured in Intel's 14nm foundry process with Octa-core 64-bit Intel Airmont processor; and Spreadtrum SC9850 series. Both SC9853I and SC9850 series emphasize dual-camera processing capability.

Qualcomm presentation "On-device motion tracking for immersive mobile VR" discusses 4-camera setup in the company's VR headset:

The Sony FE 90mm f2.8 Macro G OSS is a medium telephoto for Sony's mirrorless cameras. It's the first Sony Macro corrected for its full-frame bodies, upon which it'll deliver 1:1 / 1x magnification from a distance of 28cm. A sharp performer, check out my sample images in my review-so-far.

Pinnacle Imaging Systems launches Denali-MC HDR ISP IP core said to preserve a scene’s color fidelity and full contrast range throughout the tone mapping process, all without producing halos, color shifts, and undesired motion artifacts.

SeekingAlpha publishes SMIC Q2 2017 earnings call saying that the foundry sees a significant growth in its CIS process volume:"By device, most of our year-on-year revenue growth came from CMOS image sensors, NOR Flash, application processors and the power ICs.And for the existing customer, for...

BusinessWire: The upcoming LG V30 smartphone is said to have camera module with F#1.6 lens, said to be the brightest in smartphones. I wonder what is the effective aperture of the pixels in the sensor and whether it makes use of the so bright lens.

The Sony FE 70-200mm f2.8 G Master is a pro telephoto zoom for Alpha mirrorless cameras. One of the first G Master lenses, it delivers high resolution details with attractive rendering of blurred areas.

EETimes publishes a useful article "Engineer's Guide to Imaging Valley" by Junko Yoshida. Most of the France’s imaging companies are concentrated in the Grenoble/Lyon area:The article gives a very nice overview of the history and contemporary state of the French Imaging Valley.

University North Caroline at Chapel Hill presents "A Frameless Imaging Sensor with Asynchronous Pixels: An Architectural Evaluation" by Montek Singh, Pintian Zhang, Andrew Vitkus, Ketan Mayer-Patel, and Leandra Vicci at 2017 IEEE Intl Symposium on Asynchronous Circuits and Systems.

International Image Sensors Workshop 2017 held in Hiroshima, Japan on May 30-June 2, publishes all 110 presented papers on-line: 61 regular papers, 45 posters, and 4 invited papers. Some of the papers also have presentation slides published.

AutoSens publishes an interview with Abhay Rai, Director Product Marketing: Automotive Imaging at Sony. Few quotes:Q: What are sensor problems for autonomous driving?A: Due to the emergence of safety critical application, basic performance requirements have changed.

Pixart Q2 2017 revenue increased by 17.4% QoQ to NT$1,295.3 million. The gross margin increased from 52.8% in previous quarter to 55.8% in 2017 Q2 due to decrease in expenses and product mix change.

Digitimes Research believes that Sony took a 45% share of the global CIS market in 2016, while Samsung grabbed a 15% share of the market. The global CIS shipment value will grow to $11.2b in 2017 from $10.4b in 2016. The market is forecast to grow to nearly $13.8b in 2020.

University of Linz, Austria, publishes a paper "Thin-film camera using luminescent concentrators and an optical Söller collimator" by Alexander Koppelhuber and Oliver Bimber."We discuss optical imaging capabilities and limitations, and present first prototypes and results.

I've prepared a list of image sensor companies genealogy, with a kind help of EF and DG. As one can understand, nobody's knowledge is complete, so please feel free to add more info and correct mistakes in comments.

Deutsche Bank analysis of active alignment (AA) systems supplier ASM Pacific Technology (ASMPT) has interesting info on 3D sensing adoption in future iPhones and dual cameras in future Samsung phones:"We expect ASMPT’s AA machine sales to grow only 10% YoY in 2018 and stay flat YoY in 2019, after ...

ST Micro reports Q2 2017 results. Regarding the imaging business, the company says "As anticipated, Imaging revenues in the second quarter decreased slightly on a sequential basis to $68 million, while we prepare for the ramp of new programs.

Sony patent application US20170229493 "Pixel circuit and imaging apparatus" by Kouichi Harada and Toshiyuki Nishihara proposes dark current reduction in bulk charge modulated device (BCMD)."...

Albert Theuwissen releases the first report on "Reproducibility, Variability and Reliability of CIS" in a 5-year series. The 175-page report contains 118 figures and 98 tables with data on QE, FPN, DSNU, Qsat, DR, SNR, DC, and more.

Digitimes Research comes up with its analysis of LiDAR adoption in the car industry, forecasting first LiDAR-equipped production cars appearing this year:"...

BusinessWire: Technavio comes up with another unusual report "Global Low Light Level Imaging Sensors Market 2017-2021.

Long exposures can be used to create beautiful and mysterious-looking images, transforming landscape or city scenes without any post-processing. It's become one of my favourite techniques, and in my tutorial I'll explain everything you need to know to get started with long exposures.

Sony introduces IMX307 and IMX327 sensors featuring 2.9um pixels. The 1080p60 sensors support multiple-exposure and DOL-HDR and have 12b ADC.

The Nikon AF-P 70-300mm f4.5-5.6E is a stabilized 4.3x telephoto zoom corrected for use on full-frame Nikon DSLRs. It's the successor to Nikon's popular but 11 year old AF-S 70–300mm 4.5–5.6G.

SeekingAlpha Q2 2017 earnings call transcript gives some interesting info about ON Semi image sensor business:"During the second quarter, we exited the mobile image sensor market as the margin profile for that business was not comparable with our target financial model.

NovusLight publishes an article "Vision Inspired by Biology" based on the talk with Luca Verre, the CEO and co-founder of Chronocam.

Yole Developpement releases "Uncooled Infrared Imagers market & technology trends" report: "Today the uncooled IR camera market is showing an 8% CAGR between 2016 and 2022 reaching almost US$ 4.4 billion at the end of the period. Only few players control this industry.

The Sony E PZ 18-105mm f4G OSS is a general-purpose 5.8x motorized zoom for Sony's cropped-frame / APSC mirrorless cameras, including the A5000, A6000 and original NEX ranges, where it delivers a 27-158mm equivalent range.

EETimes article on fabs mentions Apple imaging group activity: "Or, take the example of the imaging-tech landscape growing rapidly in the Grenoble/Lyon area.

Sony announces its quarterly earning results. The company updates about its image sensor business:"Sales increased 41.4% year-on-year (a 38% increase on a constant currency basis) to 204.3 billion yen.

MIT Technology Review: Cheaper LiDARs may not deliver the quality of data required for driving at highway speeds:"At 70 miles per hour, spotting an object at, say, 60 meters out provides two seconds to react. But when traveling at that speed, it can take 100 meters to slow to a stop.

Essential startup tells what does is take to tune an image processing pipeline for smartphone dual camera (RGB + Monochrome):"Objective tuning is meant to ensure that each camera module sent to production is operating at an acceptable baseline level.

Two weeks after Light L16 computational camera shipments start, there is still no single user review anywhere on the web. However, LightRumors notices that Light Co. has released few full resolution images on its web site.