Sony announces new 24mp full frame sensor — can anyone say A900?
Sony has just announced a 24.8MP full frame 35mm sensor targeted at digital SLRS. The new CMOS sensor is said to use advanced circuitry to overcome the limitations inherent in creating a full frame sensor.
The answer to a hard drive maker’s prayers: the Sony 24.81mp sensor.
The following is from the Sony press release:
Sony will target for mass production of this CMOS image sensor within this year.
Major features
- High picture quality in 35mm full size image sensor with 24.81M effective pixels
- “Column-Parallel A/D Conversion method” achieves high S/N and high-speed imaging
- CDS/PGA(24dB) Circuit (PGA: Programmable Gain Amplifier)
- 12bit-AD Converter on chip
- Diversified readout mode
- All-pixel scan mode 6.3 frame/s (12bit)
- Window readout
- High-speed digital output (12 channel parallel LVDS output)
Device Structure
Image size Diagonal width: 43.3mm (Type 2.7)
Total number of pixels: 6236(H) x 4124(V) approx. 25.72M pixels
Number of effective pixels: 6104(H) x 4064(V) approx.24.81M pixels
Number of active pixels: 6096(H) x 4056(V) approx.24.73M pixels
Chip size: 41.0mm (H) x 31.9 mm (V)
Unit cell size: 5.94um (H) x 5.94um (V)
This sounds pretty incredible. We’ve all heard the “too good to be true” rumors, now we have Sony’s announcement that they will offer a full frame, nearly 25mp sensor.
Two things are evident. This has to be the sensor Sony will use in the flagship/A900 dSLR. It has to be. Sony will undoubtedly offer to sell this sensor to other manufactures including Nikon and Pentax. But they can’t call their top-of-the-line camera the flagship unless it utilizes the best technology Sony has to offer. So unless Sony is developing something even more incredible, this has to be the heart of the flagship.
The other point is the press release says the sensor will be mass produced within this year. That tells me the flagship won’t be on sale any time soon. This year, maybe, but those hoping for a PMA announcement with the camera shipping soon afterwards are going to be disappointed. It is possible Sony could announce the flagship at the PMA show, but from the tone of the press release the top of the line Alpha won’t be on dealer shelves for some time.
Don’t worry too much about the A900. It seems that Sony has a whole box of new toys they are ready to announce at PMA. We are sure to see some new Sony dSLR hardware before the week is up.
If you still have your heart set on the flagship, look at it this way…you’ll have several months to stock up on terabyte hard drives to store all those images from that huge sensor
Watch this space for more Sony dSLR news in the coming days.
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Alphatracks, Camera, Photography, Sony Alpha, Tom Bonner, full frame sensor
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8 Responses to “Sony announces new 24mp full frame sensor — can anyone say A900?”
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January 30th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Speaking of hard drives (External 500 GB = ~$120US as of 2008-01, External 1 TB = ~$250US), when formatted as NTFS and COMPRESSED, how much space savings are people noticing storing image files?
For me, 211% slack (wasted space) is not unheard of on FAT32 drives. I almost want to get my ol’ Stacker compression software out of my storage bin and reinstall it! Here’s a 500 GB FAT 32 report as of today:
93,599 files, 1,352 folders
422 GB (453,433,904,514 bytes) file size
432 GB (455,195,197,440 bytes) occupied on disk
465 GB (499,983,089,664 bytes) total capacity (hence the 500 GB moniker)
… that claims only 2% loss (after 7.5% loss due to size calculations by conservative digital/binary 2-to-the-power-of-10 versus calculations via over-generous decimal 10-to-the-power-of-2!). Uh-huh.
Click!
Love and hugs,
Peter Blaise
Minolta Rokkor Alpha DiMage Photographer
http://www.peterblaisephotography.com/
PS - May I suggest upgrading the http://www.alphatracks.com/ site header nomenclature to say:
Agfa Konica Minolta Sony Dynax Alpha Maxxum DSLR
(Agfa sold the Minolta RD-175 as their own Action Cam) - that should cover everything I know of that was released as a Minolta Alpha-Mount Camera AMC DSLR!
January 30th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Sony’s 24mp digital camera sensor: expect it in new dSLRs soon…
Sony will manufacture a 24.81 megapixel, full-frame 35mm digital sensor. The new dSLR sensor is designed for digital SLRS and will be used by many other camera manufacturers. It is expected that Sony will incorporate the new chip in the top of line Alp…
January 31st, 2008 at 1:48 am
[…] Alphatracks Minolta and Sony SLR Weblog « Sony announces new 24mp full frame sensor — can anyone say A900? […]
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:06 pm
[…] Sony was not about to let that happen again. The 2008 PMA show was packed with Sony and Sony Alpha dLSR news. Of course everyone is still talking about the incredible 24mp, full-frame sensor that Sony announced, and the introduction of not one but two new live view dSLR bodies caught a lot of people by surprise. The A300 and A350 are a huge shot in the arm to the Alpha line, and should go a long way to convince potential customers that Sony is serious about playing in the dSLR arena. […]
March 21st, 2008 at 12:49 am
[…] Sony was not about to let that happen again. The 2008 PMA show was packed with Sony and Sony Alpha dLSR news. Of course everyone is still talking about the incredible 24mp, full-frame sensor that Sony announced, and the introduction of not one but two new live view dSLR bodies caught a lot of people by surprise. The A300 and A350 are a huge shot in the arm to the Alpha line, and should go a long way to convince potential customers that Sony is serious about playing in the dSLR arena. […]
March 4th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Hi,
I am looking for a Philips 7FF1Aw digital photo frame but am currently struggling to find one anywhere, or to find anywhere that has a good review. Do you know anywhere you can point me to that will provide one of these please?
Many thanks
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:09 pm
I’ve never given this a try, but I think it’s about time I do.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Haha ^^ nice, is there a section to follow the RSS feed