Canon's 50MP CMOS Is Sweet, but It's Not for Cameras

The highest resolution available today for the 35mm standard is a performance achieved by Canon in the form of the 1Ds Mark II, which should have a successor in the nearby future. But the 16,7MP sported by the full-frame CMOS sensor are nothing compared to what Canon has cooked up.

It might not be yet available for photographic cameras, but the new 50 megapixel CMOS monstrosity, as Engadget calls it, might someday be available for this purpose. But for now, Canon has only succeeded to build a 19x28mm prototype for industrial purposes.

It's interesting to note that the size of the 50MP contraption is almost the same as the 1.3x crop factor sensor in the 1D Mark III or the 1D Mark II N. The EOS 1D Mark III sports a 10.7 million resolution, so would it be too bold to think that the 1D Mark IV will have 50 megapixels?

Well yes, the 1D series are built for sports, the Mark III boasting a whopping 10fps, so it's unlikely that by the time the 1D Mark IV is launched they will be able to make the camera process the humongous amount of data generated by 10 images, each captured at maximum resolution. After all, the record for maximum resolution is held by the medium format cameras like Hasselblad or Phase One, each with 39 megapixels, and they are anything but fast.

For now, Canon's 50MP CMOS sensor is only aimed at surveillance cameras and the likes, so if you really want many pixels choose medium format.

And since we're discussing mega resolutions, NHK's (Nippon Hoso Kyokai) Science and Technical Research Laboratories also have something they call "Super Hi-Vision". Basically, it's a sensor capable of capturing and reproducing moving pictures at a standard resolution of 7680x4320 pixels, that's more than 33MP.

As my colleague Ionut Ciocirlie says, at this size the image practically contains 16 times more pixels than a standard 1080p stream. Unfortunately for us (and fortunately for all electronics manufacturers who like to show off with their big TVs) NHK's sensor is still unable to capture colors so currently the footage can only be monochrome.

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