Kodak says its new 5-megapixel sensor will fit in the small camera packages of mainstream mobile phones.
(Credit: Kodak)Eastman Kodak hopes turning one aspect of chip design on its head will help improve cell phone cameras--or at least help their image quality catch up with their megapixel increases.
"We believe we've created a new camera sensor product that rivals that of real cameras, but it's small enough to be used in a camera phone," said Fas Mosleh, manager of CMOS market work for Kodak's professional and applied imaging group.
There have been nice cameras in high-end mobile phones such as Nokia's N95, but Kodak believes its technology, built into a 5-megapixel sensor product to ship by the end of the year, will help bring better cameras to mainstream mobile phones.
Semiconductor chips currently detect light essentially by counting how many electrons result from light striking a pixel on the image sensor. More intense light means more electrons, and that electronic signal can be converted into digital data.
But Kodak believes it can get some improvements by rewiring the image sensor design to detect the absence of electrons instead--in effect counting "holes" rather than electrons. To do so, some sensor circuitry must be rewired, but Kodak argues that the technology produces less noise than conventional sensors.
The upshot, as promised by Kodak: better picture quality, or the same picture quality when shooting in dim light conditions such as those that prevail in most indoor scenes.
A basic problem with image sensors is the challenge of distinguishing the light's signal--the actual photons striking the sensor--from electronic noise within the sensor. That problem gets worse as pixels get smaller, so more megapixels isn't necessarily progress.
"Image quality has been deteriorating because your image resolution has been going up. Pixelization is better, but your low-light performance is worse," Mosleh said. "If you pick up a camera phone from 2003 or 2004 and compare to one from 2008, that old one will produce nicer pictures."
For product purposes, Kodak is pairing the hole-detector technology with a new color filter array Kodak calls Clear Pixel that's designed to improve low-light performance even more by devoting some pixels to measuring just brightness instead of color.
The 5-megapixel technology package, called the KAC05020, will fit into a small package measuring about .25 inch square and costing between $3 and $6 in large quantities, depending on what associated technology and software is included, Kodak said. It will support capture of 720p high-definition video, too.
Kodak researchers are presenting the sensor technology at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference on Monday in San Francisco.
The hole-detector pMOS technology could apply to larger sensors, but its benefits are clearer on small sensors, Mosleh said.
Kodak will offer KAC05020 samples in the second quarter, with high-volume shipments in the fourth quarter, the company said.
The hole detection, called pMOS in contrast to the usual NMOS sensors, can be built with no changes to semiconductor manufacturing, Mosleh said. However, some changes are necessary. "Pixel designers who have been working with collecting electrons now are collecting the absence. And the circuits coming off the sensor need to be repositioned, so support electronics need to be changed," he said.
Kodak's Clear Pixel technology, a variation on the Bayer pattern color filter array the company invented decades ago and now almost universal in digital cameras, is designed to improve sensitivity by devoting more pixels to detecting light intensity rather than color.
(Credit: Kodak)PhaseOne Chief Executive Henrik Hakonsson is bridging a vast digital photography divide.
A medium-format camera with a Phase One digital back.
His company makes top-end image sensor housings called digital backs, each costing tens of thousands of dollars and attaching to high-end medium-format cameras with similarly high price tags. But he just signed a partnership with Microsoft, which gears its products for the broadest possible audience.
The Phase One product that brings these two worlds together is Capture One, software that helped pioneer the area of processing "raw" images taken directly from image sensors without any in-camera processing. The software exists chiefly for Phase One's high-end customers, but it also supports many mainstream cameras.
Through the partnership, terms of which were not disclosed, Microsoft will help Phase One tackle technical challenges of improving that software, Hakonsson said. And according to Josh Weisberg, Microsoft's director of digital imaging evangelism, Capture One will be able to handle files encoded with Microsoft's HD Photo format, which the company is advocating as a higher-quality replacement for the ubiquitous JPEG and is standardizing as JPEG XR.
Phase One, based in Copenhagen, was founded in 1993 and is owned by its 130 employees. On the hardware side, its top-end P45+ back uses a 39-megapixel sensor from Kodak. It sells two versions of Capture One, the $499 Pro and the $99 LE, but with the upcoming version 4, the LE version will simply be named Capture One 4.
I chatted with Hakonsson about his company's software, hardware, and Microsoft alliance earlier this month. Here's an edited transcript.
Phase One CEO Henrik Hakonsson
(Credit: Phase One)
Q: Most people haven't heard of Phase One. Can you give us a thumbnail sketch?
Hakonsson: Phase One is the world's leading digital camera back manufacturer. If you take a copy of Vogue magazine and look at the first 50 pages, approximately 80 percent of the images are shot with Phase One digital back and Capture One software. Our position in the market is the very top maybe 1 percent of the photo segment--shooters who work with the biggest clients and the most demanding photographic applications.
What's your sales volume for digital backs?
The global market will exceed 10,000. Phase 1 has more than 50 percent of the market. Some of our digital back competitors are working to make less costly solutions. We try to target the most demanding photographers.
What will result from the Microsoft partnership?
For Phase One, the main reason for doing this was the ability to get access to some tools which will help us provide better services for the kind of photographers we're working with. We're getting into file sizes that may be two to three times what we have today, and the speed of being able to handle these files requires other tools than what we have in our portfolio.
For me, performance is No. 1. The parameters on which we position our product are speed, image quality, and ease of use. On the performance side, we needed a partner.
How big are your image files?
Typically 150MB. We expect larger file sizes for the next two to three years. The ability to make sure that people can browse and process images is important going forward. Microsoft has a range of tools for assuring that we can serve our high-end customers, who are the ones we are predominantly concerned about.
Micron plans to announce a new image sensor for cars Wednesday that can keep an eye on you as well as on the road.
Micron's MT9V023 image sensor for vehicular video chores
(Credit: Micron)The company's charmingly named MT9V023 sensors are geared for a long list of ways that increasingly electronic cars will use cameras in an attempt to improve safety and convenience. The company is selling samples of the 752x480-pixel, 60-frame-per-second sensor at $25 apiece and expects them to be used in cars to ship in late 2008.
Some U.S. vehicles have cameras to improve rear-view vision when backing up--the Hummer H2 uses a Micron sensor for such a purpose--but Micron believes cameras will become common. They're already in half of Japanese cars and should be in half of U.S. cars by 2014 or 2015, said Curtis Stith, director of marketing for Micron's imaging new markets.
"The volume potential is pretty interesting," he said, adding that half the U.S. market is 7.5 million vehicles per year, and luxury cars likely will come with more than one sensor. "That's a reason why we're pursuing the market."
Cameras in Japan are used most often for two reasons: to supply video to aid in backing up and to aid in nosing out into traffic around corners without having to actually poke into traffic, he said. There, camera use is made easier by the fact that many cameras are already equipped with in-dash video screens; in the United States, that feature is largely available only for cars with navigation systems that often are a $2,000 option.
Stith enumerated a long list of in-camera camera uses, some of them shipping now:
• Volvo's XC90 SUV uses three cameras: one for backing up and two for monitoring the blind spots to either side of the car.
• Cameras can be used to check for vehicles that are destined for a collision, telling the car to deploy air bags or tighten seat belts. The Hyundai Move in Japan uses this application, he said.
• Another forward-looking camera can check if a driver is unintentionally drifting out of a lane, using an algorithm that factors in speed and how sharply the steering wheel is being turned to distinguish between unintentional drifting and deliberate lane changes.
• Yet another front-mounted camera could keep an eye out for oncoming night traffic, automatically switching headlights between dimmed and high beams.
• A camera mounted on top of the steering column can monitor the frequency and duration of a driver's blinks to guard against drowsy driving. If blinks become too rapid or protracted, the car can sound an alarm to jolt the driver awake.
• An internal camera can help identify passengers to control how air bags should be deployed--for example, with less force when protecting children.
• Another camera could let parents watch their children bicker in the distant reaches of a vast van or SUV.
The Micron sensor has multiple registers so that one, two or three applications can monitor video from a single camera. For forward-looking possibilities such as crash prediction or headlight dimming, the camera is typically mounted in front of the rear-view mirror inside the car so it doesn't get coated with bugs.
Micron's sensor is built using complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) manufacturing process that lets processing logic be attached to the sensor.
Eastman Kodak just sold its first CMOS image sensor for digital cameras. The customer? Eastman Kodak.
OK, that's being a little flippant. Kodak's camera division is separate from its sensor division, and the latter must compete with other suppliers for the camera business, so the deal is a significant achievement in the company's attempt to transform its sensor business.
Kodak will use its new KAC-05011 sensor in the new Easyshare C513, a $99 model with a 3X optical zoom lens and 2.4-inch LCD screen. It's due to ship this month, Kodak plans to announce Tuesday.
CMOS, which stands for complementary metal oxide semiconductor, is the ordinary process by which computer processors and memory are made. Most digital camera sensors today are built with the more specialized CCD, or charge-coupled device, technology.
Kodak's sensor group builds its own CCD products, but it's begun a parallel effort to design CMOS sensors built by IBM and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC). Selling the CMOS sensor--a 5-megapixel model the company promised earlier this year--is a milestone indicating Kodak has attained a certain level of expertise.
All things being equal, a CMOS sensor costs somewhere between 5 and 15 percent less to build than a CCD sensor, but Kodak is interested in the CMOS market more because it also can incorporate some processing tasks, said Michael DeLuca, Kodak's marketing manager for image sensors. For example, it can incorporate circuitry for basic sensor functions such as analog-to-digital conversion or chip timing, he said. And in the longer run, it could house circuitry for reconstructing full-color images from sensors using Kodak's new color filter patterns.
Ultimately, CMOS will likely replace CCD in some product categories, DeLuca predicted.
"For mass-market consumer products, it's probably a question of time," he said.
CMOS sensors are widely used in mobile phone cameras but are less common elsewhere in the digital camera market. The most notable example is Canon, which uses CMOS sensors in its SLR cameras--including some "full-frame" 36-by-24mm ones that are very large by digital camera standards.
The company also has said the sensor will be used in mobile phones.
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