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Panasonic Expands Dynamic Range
Panasonic have this week demonstrated a new sensor technology that captures up to three times more dynamic range than a conventional sensor. According to the report by CNET News, Panasonic’s Tokayoshi Yamada has demoed a 177x144 pixel image sensor that takes three photos at different shutter speeds and combines them into a single image that can span a dynamic range of 140 decibels (“ordinary” sensors achieve 60 decibels).
“In his presentation, Yamada showed a resulting image taken of a regular incandescent light bulb. With conventional sensor technology, a few of the words printed on the bulb were visible, but most were washed out in a blown-out white patch near the bulb’s filament. In the Panasonic sensor’s image, not only were most of the words visible, but also the helical coil of the filament was.”
Website: CNET News - Panasonic sensor tackles key photo problem—dynamic range
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#1 Mike
Interesting concept. May have limitations with moving subjects where shutter speed is critical.
11:15 pm - Friday, February 8, 2008
#2 Bob
Great. Now we'll be able to see Panasonic's image noise in greater detail. IF this lives up to the hype,and IF Panasonic can improve (drasticly) on image noise,they may become a real player for the customer who cares about the quality of their photo at settings higher than 100 ISO.
3:57 pm - Saturday, February 9, 2008
#3 KR
Hey Bob, is that true of even their SLR?
I know for their compacts they squeezed in too much stuff in a small chip and the processing is overly aggressive -
but I wondered how their SLRs fared. I know theirs is 4:3 and so it doesn't really compare to the others, but I wondered....... I haven't really heard much about their SLRs from anyone close to me so I don't know off hand.
7:47 am - Monday, February 11, 2008
#4 Zoltan
About half a year ago I recall there were numerous posts on photography fora concerning a patent filed by Panasonic (then Matsushita) that would allow this "in-camera HDR" thing. Some speculated this technology would make it into their cameras expected to be announced in the second half of 2007, but it obviously didn't. Still, it's exciting to hear this is not a shelved patent, but something Panasonic are ready to use in real-world products.
Basically this is extra-rapid exposure bracketing combined with in-camera exposure blending and tone mapping. It's probably not superior to taking a fast burst of bracketed shots and then using some HDR software in postprocessing, but it sounds a lot more convenient. Of course Mike is right that it won't be applicable to very fast-moving subject matter.
As to KR's question about the image quality of the Panasonic LiveMOS sensors built into recent FourThirds DSLRs, I would suggest that you download a few raw samples taken with the Olympus E-3 from http://raw.fotosite.pl/index-Olympus_E-3_ZD_12-60_f2.8-4.htm and develop them with a current raw engine such as Adobe Lightroom to see if they pass your own quality standards at the print sizes you normally print at.
12:12 pm - Monday, February 11, 2008