Dynamic Range of SL2-S

[beewee]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

8 hours ago, Photoworks said:

aren't most digital camera sensors basically stupid. my understanding is that the signal gets capture and transmitted to by the sensor to the processor and then all the magic is in the processor. A better sensor just capture a stronger signal that does not have to be amplified as much.

 

 

13 minutes ago, scott kirkpatrick said:

No.  The signal from each photosite has to be amplified (by different amounts at different ISOs, and digitized without introducing too much noise beyone the shot noise that is inherent in capturing photons.  Then it leaves the imaging chip as a digital signal, whose processing is noiseless and can be "smart."  It takes much magic to do the analog part with as little distortion and delay as possible.

 

Putting it another way, if digital camera sensors are stupid, we should be expecting many more camera sensors makers on the market beyond Sony, Tower Jazz, Canon and a handful more and they should all have the same ‘quality’ of sensors but there’s good reason why Sony is dominating the market. Much of it comes down to nanoscale analog integrated circuitry which is one of the most difficult fields of electrical engineering and manufacturing. Many factors impact sensor performance beyond even the chip design/architecture, including silicon lithographic processes, and the ability to consistently churn out identical chips at the nanometer level at a mass production scale and all this drives yield and ultimately cost/viability. 

Edited December 30, 2020 by beewee

[BernardC]

9 hours ago, beewee said:

they should all have the same ‘quality’ of sensors but there’s good reason why Sony is dominating the market.

The logical reason is cost. Full-frame sensor fabs are not cheap. Performance has converged among the various suppliers, the one that "dominates" is the one willing to sell at the lowest price.

There is more competition for specialized sensors (higher MP, video-only, etc), because they aren't yet interchangeable.

As I mentioned in a different thread, these sensor discussion have had their day. It's not like 2008, when we saw huge improvements every few months. It now takes 5 years to get a meaningful improvement.