Canon Sets World Record with High-Resolution 250-Megapixel Sensor
Canon has just announced it has developed a high-resolution 250-megapixel sensor powerful enough to read text from 11 miles away.
Japanese electronics manufacturer Canon has just topped its own line of imaging and optical products with a 250-megapixel (19,580 x 12,600) sensor with the hi-res capability of magnifying the letters on the side of an aircraft flying 18km away.
The record-breaking sensor, named the APS-H, which has been developed for use in digital cameras, is unlikely to be installed in smartphones and commercial and personal-use cameras. With its powerful resolution, it is likely to be incorporated in high-tech surveillance systems or other industrial, military and space science applications.
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The APS-H chip has a capacity of 418,000 pixels per square millimeter, making it more useful for use in scientific research rather than selfies.
Several technical setbacks reportedly delayed the development of the world's most powerful sensor, including timing and signal issues that affected how 250 million pixel data was processed within the chip.
With the APS-H's chip reading 1.25 billion pixels of data per second, Canon had to work on the sensor's signal processing systems to enable well-coordinated image capture.
Measuring only 29.2mm x 20.2mm, Canon's sensor is smaller than the sensors found on a majority of 35mm digital cameras in use today. However, the new powerful sensor's individual pixels measure 1.5 microns across, which is approximately the same pixel size in consumer cameras.
The sensor also has video capability, but only shoots at five frames per second, which is too slow a rate required for filming.
On the other hand, the video clips it produced proved to be 125 times more dense compared to standard HD video footage, and with a resolution 30 times more powerful than 4k video.
With this feature, it may be possible to develop a larger sensor for specialized medical applications such as X-ray machines, with the APS-H replacing the photographic plate and capture an even more detailed image.
