.
Eastman Kodak Company just introduced a new advancement in image sensor technology that they say will help make dark, blurry digital photos a thing of the past.
Here is what they say:
Kodak’s new sensor technology provides a significant increase in sensitivity to light when compared to current sensor designs. With this new technology, users will realize a 2x to 4x increase in sensitivity (from one to two photographic stops), which will improve performance when taking pictures under low light and reduce motion blur when imaging moving subjects.
In addition, this technology enables the design of smaller pixels (leading to higher resolutions in a given optical format) while retaining imaging performance. Today, the design of almost all color image sensors is based on the “Bayer Pattern,” an arrangement of red, green, and blue pixels that was first developed by Kodak Scientist Dr. Bryce Bayer in 1976.
In this design, half of the pixels on the sensor are used to collect green light, with the remaining pixels split evenly between sensitivity to red and blue light. After exposure, software reconstructs a full color signal for each pixel in the final image.
Kodak’s new proprietary technology builds on the existing Bayer Pattern by adding panchromatic, or "clear" pixels to the red, green, and blue pixels already on the sensor. Since these pixels are sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light, they collect a significantly higher proportion of the light striking the sensor. The remaining red, green, and blue pixels are then used to record the color information of the scene.
Then they basically created new software that can read and handle the new input to create new pixel patterns, while retaining the overall image quality and color fidelity.
This new technology will work both in digital still cameras and camera phones. As the technology is appropriate for use with both CCD and CMOS image sensors.
The first Kodak sensor to use this technology is expected to be available for sampling in the first quarter of 2008. More information can be obtained from here:
