[interested_observer]

Hold onto your seats: there may soon be game-changing breakthroughs in image sensors that could take low-light photography to whole new levels. The inventor of the CMOS sensor is working on building a new type of image sensor that packs a billion pixels onto a chip no larger than the sensors used today. What’s more, each of those pixels are designed to detect single photons.

• CMOS Inventor Working on Gigapixel Sensor That Can Detect Single Photons

[Digitalis]

This was posted on the 12th of October, I cringe every time I see the phrase "game-changing" and "Paradigm shift" which are both seen in the PR paper makes me think it is nothing more than hyperbolic drivel. Besides Falk Lumo has been talking of this kind of technology for ages, hardly a paradigm shift..more like a wiggle.

Cameras with High capture rates, and Video for a device with a sensor like this would require a tremendous amount of processor power, and a considerable amount of buffer memory to handle the pixel data, and a battery able to power it all.

[biz-engineer]

This was posted on the 12th of October, I cringe every time I see this phrase, and "Paradigm shift" seen in the PR paper makes me think it is nothing more than hyperbolic drivel. Besides Falk lumo has been talking of this kind of technology for ages, hardly a paradigm shift..more like a wiggle. High capture rates and Video for a device like this would require a tremendous amount of processor power, and a considerable amount of buffer memory to handle the pixel data.

Yeah, that very doable, today, with a cost and size that no photographer can afford. There are sensors especially designed for military applications that have been around for more than a decade, with dynamic range that you can't event imagine. One of my best friends is a designer of large night vision sensors for defense applications: pixels sizes > 10 times what you know, sensor size = larger than a MF sensor, or any commercial camera you can buy. The sensor in encapsulated in a sealed temperature controlled chamber cooled down to lower than -170 degree Celsius. The sensor sensitivity is such that, at night, you can see as if it were daylight. All that already exists.

[shiner]

Interesting! Now, we'll all need 100 Petabyte drives and quantum computers for the new cameras.

[biz-engineer]

Before the 1 giga pixel quantum sensor happens, I guess Ricoh could do a liquid cooled version of the K-3. That would be a cool camera