Japanese invent fast, sensitive digital image maker
THE PROBLEM with digital cameras is that annoying...[Oh, for god’s sake] ...delay. We’ve all tried to snap a local celebrity as they pass us on the street, only to watch them thundering off into the distance while our annoying little gadget is still catching its breath.
You don’t know how many times I’ve tried to get a decent picture of our local celebrity (see picture). But my Sony Cybershot, funky and modern as it sounds, couldn’t keep up with a microscooting octagenarian. So eventually, to get this picture, I had to run into the street and stop her.
The days of having to waylay old ladies in the street could be over now, thanks to the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and a company called Rohm, reports nikkei.net.
They’ say they've jointly developed a new image sensor that has over six times the sensitivity of a conventional silicon-based device. So it detects light across a broader spectrum.
And it boosts the shutter speed of digital cameras. Another bonus is that it offers the kind of night time vision useful for monitoring cameras and car-mounted safety systems.
They make this new image sensor by layering a thin film of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) above the silicon substrate that forms the base of the circuitry. CIGS is now being developed for solar cells and can detect light with twice the sensitivity of silicon. The sensor has been designed to allow 90 per cent of the surface to detect light, which triples the normal capacity. Ultimately that means six times the sensitivity.
The new image sensor detects visible light equally as well as a typical silicon-based device, but trounces it on near infrared light detection, going up to a wavelength of 1,300 nanometers.
Rohm and the institute have a 100,000-pixel sensor-on-a-chip prototype, which is 7.5mm square. The bad news is, we’ll have to wait two or three years for the end product to emerge.
I can’t wait that long. Why doesn’t someone invent a mobile phone that uses film? Come on Nokia, what are you waiting for? µ
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The lag that you're talking about has to do with all of the other circuitry in the camera, not the sensor. A DSLR using the same generation of image sensor is much, much more responsive than your point and shoot. What you want is for camera makers to make cameras that focus and meter more quickly... that's all. I'm going now.
FYI - "Japs" is considered derogatory outside the UK .

Go to Wikipedia and look it up.
You are racist.
How do you blokes feel about Brits?
Or for that matter, Poles, Jerries, Russkies, Frenchies, Canucks, Yanks, Rebs (they fought the yanks) Bennies; and on, and on. 

Derivative national descriptors aren't racist.

None of the above including Jappo describes a race in a derogatory fashion just a nationality. And in fact it isn't even derogatory. 

However if you use a term like Yankee scum you would either be talking about Derek Jeter because you're a Red Sox fan or you are Osama Bin Laden just getting his rocks off.


Please.

Owain, low end digital cameras use contrast detection (better cameras use phase detection which this doesn't seem like it would effect) to focus and normally with more light they are able to focus faster. This development may be able to improve focus speed for low end cameras like P&Ss.

I had the same thought as you though as it seemed the author doesn't really understand what he is talking about.

In Canada and the US japs is pretty derogatory term for both japanese and jewish women.
>>In Canada and the US japs is pretty derogatory term for both japanese and jewish women.>>

Well..depends upon the context. There used to be a Kosher Japanese restaurant in NYC on 42nd street between 5-6th Avenue and the owners were t-shirts that said "JAP".

If you call a Jewish woman a JAP, it might be a put down, but it's not necessarily racist or anit-semetic. And if you say something like, "The Japs have come up with a great new camera," I don't think that is really racist either. It's sort of like saying, "The Yanks make some great rock music."
Yeah, that's a hell great idea, some tinny film camera with cell phone capability!!!!