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Curved image sensor to pave way for cheaper lenses

Photographs are two dimensional, so it stands to reason that camera sensors should be flat – right? Wrong, philistine. That Christopher Columbus of camera technology – long-time sensor pioneer Sony – is about to prove you curved Earth deniers wrong with its latest imagine breakthrough.

It’s gone and made a concave sensor for digital cameras. Which mean, what exactly…?

Apparently it will pave the way for cheaper, smaller lenses and higher photo quality. And it will eliminate the well-known imaging issue known as vignetting where the edges around an image will be much darker than the rest of the image. Read our feature on how a digital camera’s image sensor works here

This is what a curved image sensor looks like.
This is what a curved image sensor looks like.

Sony explained in a press statement that as the light hits an image sensor, the flat surface doesn’t always capture equal amounts of light. Some of the light around the edges of the sensor gets lost, cause a vignette effect.

“However, since the light is perpendicularly on the sensor the entire surface can solve this problem on the curved plane CMOS sensor. It can also be used to simplify lenses, as the curved CMOS sensor corrects the ‘Petval field curvature’,” Sony said in the statement.

Lens manufacturers have to go through a costly process to correct the “Petval field curvature”, which makes them heavier and more complex. The curved image sensor would eliminate the need for such expensive lenses.

As IEEE Spectrum explains, “because of the geometry, it can be paired with a flatter lens and a larger aperture, which lets in more light. Photodiodes at the periphery of a sensor array will be bent toward the center, which means light rays will hit them straight on instead of obliquely.”

The image below was taken with the curved image sensor, and released by Sony.

Sony curved sensor

[Via – IEEE Spectrum]

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