
Apple Wants to Take Camera Sensor Design In-House: Report
Apple is reportedly interested in building on the success of the M-series processors and bringing the design of multiple other components in-house, including camera sensors.
Apple is reportedly interested in building on the success of the M-series processors and bringing the design of multiple other components in-house, including camera sensors.
Back in the early 2000s, Sigma -- a company usually known in the photography community as a lens manufacturer -- released a new type of camera sensor named the Foveon X3. This sensor technology was first patented in 1999 by a company called Foveon, Inc. (later acquired in 2008 by Sigma) and featured an innovative color perception technology: a 3-layer stack of photosensitive diodes.
Nikon has filed a patent for a new type of sensor that would allow it to perform both a rolling and global shutter operation. It's not the first time the company has proposed such a design, but it expands on the use case of a previous filing.
A teardown by astrophotography site LandingField found that the 12-megapixel Alpha 7S III is using four photosites to create a single pixel, meaning its actual resolution is 48-megapixels. Some have taken this to mean that it uses the same sensor as the Alpha 1.
While the idea of a curved CMOS sensor is not new, all companies to this point have only developed them as an in-house proposal project and not as a finished, commercially-ready finished product. That has changed thanks to startup, Curve-One.
Samsung appears to be unsatisfied with stopping with its already-announced 108-megapixel smartphone sensor, as a leaked slide from the company's presentation on its ISOCELL sensor technology shows it is at least entertaining the idea of a whopping 600-megapixel version.
Sony has been receiving attention and praise in recent years for the quality of its sensors and the fact that it produces sensors for other heavyweight camera companies, including Nikon. But even though some of Nikon's CMOS sensors may be manufactured in Sony factories, Nikon actually spends a considerable amount of resources designing those high-end sensors.