Sony Making News for Image Sensor Innovations, Again

Last Week, Sony made news with its patent for an image sensor that could apply multiple exposure times to a singe image.

This week, it's an image sensor that can capture Red/Green/Blue information at every pixel.  The sensor uses something called "Active-Pixel Color Sensing" to achieve this.  Instead of having some pixels detect green, others red and still others green by use of a color filter array, every pixel in an Active-Pixel Color Sensing (APCS) sensor would detect those three colors by using a moving electronic color filter.

The details are a bit sketchy right now, but rumors have the sensor showing up in products starting late 2015 or early 2016.  (With the Experia smartphone being the first recipient.)


 Using each pixel to capture Red/Green/Blue data would result in advantages.

First, this allows Sony to eliminate the Bayer filter traditionally used to capture color information.

Eliminating the Bayer filter eliminates the need to interpolate color data from several pixels in order to produce color information.  This eliminates a great deal of the processing currently needed to produce color images.  Eliminating processing should greatly increase the speed at which images can be captured and recorded.  It might also lower power consumption.

Eliminating the Bayer filter also eliminates the need to deal with moire.  This means that a camera equipped with this type of sensor could eliminate the anti-aliasing filter found in many digital cameras.  This would help increase image clarity.  Sharper images are always a plus.


Second, the pixels used could be larger than those used in Bayer based sensors with no loss of image resolution.  Larger pixels are more efficient when it comes to capturing light and less prone to noise at high ISO settings.  Fewer pixels would also increase processing speed.


The increase in processing speed actually seems to be one of the largest advantages for the new design.  Sony is suggesting 2K video recorded at 16,000 fps.


There is one obvious problem with the new sensor: the name.  The acronym for the current name would be "APCS".  That is far too to APS-C, which is a common sensor size found in digital cameras.  Imagine a camera being described as having an APCS APS-C sensor.

That might be just a tad confusing.


Keep track of developments on this sensor and other Sony camera news at Sony Alpha Rumors.