New digital camera chip slashes power consumption 50x
They're only in the design prototype phase right yet, but a couple of dudes by the names of Mark Bocko and Zeljko Ignjatovic at the University of Rochester have apparently worked out a way to digitize photography at each pixel of a CMOS sensor, the results of which are actually nothing less than fifty times less power consumption in taking a shot, and ten times the dynamic range of light captured — on chips expected to be smaller and less expensive than current devices. What's that mean exactly? Well, cheap, pervasive cameras for one (yay, more eyes on us at all times), but this could very well have an impact on the way cameraphones and digital cameras are built and used.
