Visual Industry Guide
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Pixart concisely reports its Q3 2013 results saying that the revenue increased by 15.6% QoQ to NT$1,350.7M (45.8M USD). The gross margin was improved to 42.8% in Q3 2013 from 40.9% in Q2 mainly due to a more favorable product mix. The company posted a Youtube presentation showing that optical mouse is still the main application for its sensors:
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Himax reports Q3 2013 results. The company says about its image sensor business:
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Business Wire: Toshiba's 8MP, 1.12um pixel T4K35, announced in January 2013, now goes into mass production. The 1/4-inch sensor features HDR and Color Noise Reduction (CNR). The mass production shipments will start on November 15.
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PR Newswire: Omnivision announces the OV10822, a new 10.5MP CameraChip sensor that brings DSC-level performance to smartphones and tablets. As a native 16:9 sensor, the OV10822 offers instant transition between video and image capture modes to capture still images while simultaneously recording HD video without any change in FOV. The 1/2.6-inch OV10822 utilizes 1.4um OmniBSI-2 pixel with improved high- and low-light performance, as well as alternate row HDR functionality. It records full-resolution 10.5MP (4320 x 2432 pixels) video at 30fps, as well as 4K2K (3840 x 2160 pixels) at 30fps with full horizontal FOV. Additionally, the OV10822 can support 1080p HD video at 60fps while maintaining FOV with binning functionality for RAW output.
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Axelis published a nice video lecture on high energy implants in image sensor manufacturing:Image Sensors World Go to the original article...
PR Newswire: Omnivision announces the OV4689, a 4MP SOC sensor in a native 16:9 format for surveillance and security applications. Built on the 2um OmniBSI-2 pixel architecture, the OV4689 captures full-resolution 4-megapixel HD video at 90fps, 1080p HD at 120fps with electronic image stabilization (EIS), and 720p HD at 180fps. The OV4689's line-based staggered HDR ensures smooth motion capture under extreme variations of bright and dark conditions. Furthermore, the sensor's narrow CRA has been optimized specifically for security and surveillance applications.
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The Official Microsoft Blog tells how the new ToF Kinect has been developed, largely based on ex-Canesta Cyrus Bamji sayings:Image Sensors World Go to the original article...
ULIS announces the appointment of Dr. Christel-Loic (Chris) Tisse as CTO. French-Australian Dr. Tisse, 37, brings 13 years of specialist knowledge in optical (visible-light & thermal) imaging science to ULIS. Tisse joins ULIS from MTech-Imaging Pte Ltd., a Singapore-based company he cofounded that specializes in offering innovative low-light, night-vision and thermal infrared imaging technologies. He served as CTO for three years, where he raised more than EUR2.5M in research funding. He also grew the company from a 2-man start-up to a highly skilled team of 15.Image Sensors World Go to the original article...
Heptagon announces that it increases its operations, process and production engineering capacity in Singapore.Camera Labs and DSLR Tips latest news and reviews Go to the original article...
The Nikon COOLPIX P520 is a super-zoom camera with a 42x stabilised range and an 18.1 Megapixel sensor. It replaces last year's COOLPIX P510, keeping the 24-1000mm f3-5.9 zoom lens and built-in GPS receiver, but now coupling them with an updated sensor that adds two Megapixels to the resolution. The screen is now also larger and fully-articulated. As one of the longer zoom cameras on the market I've compared it against the current King of super-zooms, Panasonic's Lumix FZ70 / FZ72 with its monstrous 60x range. Find out how it compares in my Nikon P520 review and see if it deserves its high sales position!Image Sensors World Go to the original article...
Trillion Sensors Summit 2013 published IMEC's presentation on the hyperspectral imagers:
On November 5th Nikon released the Nikon Df. It is a retro styled DSLR following the hype of manufacturers going back to their tested film days body design. Many photographers welcome this with praise and so these cameras are selling well. No wonder Nikon decided to join the game. Yet it is somewhat strange that they did not decide to give the body a sensor of at least the resolution of the D610. People look at the resolution of bodies and 16MP is not an outstanding resolution nowadays. Yet Nikon is aware of this, so could this be the first camera of a line of retro styled Nikon’s. Just as Fuji has a few to fit everyone’s budget. We will see…
For now all we know is this press release:
Nikon Press release
November 5, 2013
TOKYO – Nikon Corporation is pleased to announce the release of the Df, a Nikon FX-format digital SLR camera.
The Df combines intuitive, worry-free dial operation with superior image quality over a broad range of sensitivities in the smallest and lightest FX-format body, making the camera extremely portable. Large metal mechanical dials on the top of the camera enable direct, intuitive operation, offering tactile pleasure of shooting with precision mechanics, and allowing users to feel the joy of creating images that reflect their individual intent. The camera also provides a system that allows users to focus on shooting with the security that comes from visual confirmation of ISO sensitivity, shutter speed, and exposure compensation values, as well as the convenience of direct adjustment of settings at any time, even when the camera is turned off.
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The Nikon Df is a retro-styled DSLR which pays homage to Nikon's iconic film SLRs of the Seventies. It takes the 16.2 Megapixel full-frame sensor of the flagship D4 and houses it in an unashamedly old-fashioned body with physical dials and levers for the shooting mode, release mode, shutter speed, ISO and exposure compensation. The Df also becomes Nikon's first DSLR to include a collapsing coupling lever allowing full aperture metering with old non-AI lenses. I got to try out the new Df at a Nikon event - find out if it’s the camera for you or an exercise in nostalgia that's gone too far in my Nikon Df hands-on preview!Image Sensors World Go to the original article...
Albert Theuwissen continues his educational series of posts, now talking about full well capacity measurements: part 1 and part 2. The second part explains the difference between the cases when the saturation is caused by clipping the signal in ADC or readout chain and cases when the pixel limits the signal.Image Sensors World Go to the original article...
UBM Techonline published Samsung's whitepaper "Gesture Sensor for Mobile Devices" (requires registration to download). The paper reviews the 3D vision gesture technologies:
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Sony's Cyber-shot RX10 is a high-performance zoom camera. It sports a fairly average sounding 8.3x zoom range (24-200mm equivalent), but makes it much more exciting with a constant f2.8 aperture and a larger than average sensor behind it. So rather than the usual 1/2.3in sensors of most super-zooms, the RX10 employs the same 1in 20 Megapixel sensor of the RX100 II that's over four times larger! I've been testing a final production RX10 and ahead of my in-depth review I'd like to share a wide selection of sample images and movies! Check out my Sony RX10 review-in-progress!
Zeiss Otus 1.4 55mm ZE
Every now and then a piece of gear appears, which changes not only the photo gear landscape and forces the competition to alter their plans, but also pushes photographers into working differently using new equipment. The Fuji X system managed to do this, with lots of people switching to this system. The Nikon D800/e had a similar effect just as Canon 5D. And so we come to the Zeiss Otus 55mm 1.4, which might also be such a game changer, although matching its qualities will be very difficult for the other lens makers. For now let us look at the basics.
Looking at the cosmetics, the lens has a modern look, an all metal barrel and a rubber like focusing ring, which is easy to detect with your fingers when looking through the viewfinder, easy to read distance and depth of field scales. Apart from the brilliant design (it won the 2013 IF product design award) the first thing you notice is the sheer size of this prime. It is after all a standard lens. It’s not a 50mm nor a 45mm, which is in fact closer to the diagonal 43.3mm, but a 55mm, yet the size and weight is much closer to a medium format 80mm, then the standard fifties we are used to.
All of this has a reason. The Otus, with the diastagon optical construction, is a very complex lens; 12 elements in 10 groups with floating elements design. The specialists at Zeiss worked on the whole project for 3 years, but the time from starting the work to building the first prototype was just one year. According to Dr. Nasse, scientist from Carl Zeiss and one of the first people to shoot with the lens, this was possible thanks to the extensive experience in building high performance cine lenses.
zeiss otus construction
When designing the lens, the engineers and scientists had a totally free hand, not restricted neither by size, weight nor cost. Richard Schleuning from Zeiss says this was a new approach, as normally these restrictions are a part of every project of a new lens. This time there were no compromises with just one goal in mind, the absolutely best lens for 35mm.
The diastagon is normally used for wide angle lenses, it is a more complex, but also gives a possibility of correcting both for chromatic aberrations and field curvature. Schleuning claims both of these parameters are controlled across the whole aperture spectrum, if so, this is an amazing achievement.
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Electronic Imaging 2014 program has been published and has many nice image sensor papers. An incomplete sample of them is below:Image Sensors World Go to the original article...
Sharp reports a 26% growth of its image sensor sales for Apr 1 - Sept 30, 2013 period, the first half of its financial year (the last line in the table below, note the relative scale with respect to other businesses):
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AV Science publishes a report from SMPTE Annual Meeting mostly talking about UHD/4K issues: "many presenters agreed that increasing the resolution has less impact than other factors on the viewing experience. What's more important—what produces a real "wow" factor—is increasing the dynamic range, color gamut, color subsampling, color bit depth, and frame rate." The color gamut extension was the hot topics at the meeting. The current HDTV's Rec.709 gamut is extended to UHD's Rec.2020 one:
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Chipworks reverse engineering revealed that both front and rear cameras in the new Apple iPad Air use Omnivision's image sensors: 5MP 1.4um pixel in the rear and 1.2MP 1.75um pixel in the front ones: |
| iSight Camera |
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| FaceTime Camera |
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Digitimes: Above 10MP will become the mainstream resolution level for camera modules in smartphones and tablets in 2014, Largan CEO Lin En-ping said at an October 31 investors conference.