ImageSensors
Latest
Sony buys Toshiba out of the sensor business for $155 million
Sony has purchased Toshiba's image sensor business for 19 billion yen, or around $155 million, confirming rumors from October. It recently re-organized its sensor division into a wholly-owned subsidiary called the Sony Semiconductor Corporation. The move will bolster the new company and remove Toshiba as a primary competitor in the smartphone and camera image sensor business. Sony manufacturers such chips for its own smartphones along with models by the likes of Apple and Xiaomi. Its chips are also used in DSLRs made by Nikon and its own Alpha models.
PlayStation and image sensors help Sony turn a profit
Twelve months ago, Sony was busy recalculating the losses it was expecting to report, due to its beleaguered mobile division. Today, the firm's announcing a 33.6-billion yen ($278-million) profit thanks (once more) to PlayStation and its image sensor division. Overall revenues came in slightly lower than a year ago (down by 0.5%), but a general uptick across the company's many divisions has helped push it into profitability. Despite this, mobile sales continue to slide (down 15-percent this quarter). Sony's Xperia brand is an expensive pastime, costing the company approximately $1.9 million per day in losses.
Sony buys a company that makes Kinect-like depth sensors
Sony has purchased SoftKinetic, a Belgian startup that's most famous for creating image sensors that can digitally capture objects in 3D. The firm specializes in time of flight, a camera technology that you'll be familiar with if you've ever used the Xbox's Kinect camera. If you've got long memory, you'll recall that SoftKinetic provided the necessary technology to make Just Dance work on the PlayStation, as well as 3D scanners for MakerBot. Now, it's going to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate, giving the firm a useful knowledge boost in an area that's growing increasingly important. After all, since Sony is developing PlayStation VR, smart glasses and produces the camera sensors for much of the mobile industry, that know-how is likely to be in plenty of products in the not-too-distant future.
Red claims Dragon is 'single most significant sensor in the history of image capture'
Red Camera's bombastic CEO, Jim Jannard, says that internal testing of the new 6K Dragon sensor proves that it's the new "resolution and dynamic range king." He also claims it will be "the cleanest sensor you have ever seen, ISO 2000 looks better than MX [the current sensor] at ISO 800." The imaging chip was first outed at NAB in April, promising 15+ stops of DR and 120fps at a full 5K of resolution, with $6,000 upgrades for Epic customers by the end of the year. Owners of the $9,700 (brain only) Scarlet-X will also get the Dragon, though no price or date has been given yet for that camera. Needless to say, some independent testing will be needed to substantiate his claims, but Jannard sure does sound confident.
RED Dragon 6K sensor upgrade eyes-on (video)
"Obsolescence Obsolete" -- that's RED's tagline for the just-announced Dragon sensor upgrade, which is set to bring 6K resolution to EPIC and Scarlet cameras beginning later this year. The sensor module was on display at the company's NAB booth today, under a backlit case that could only have been designed to make photographing the new chip a near-impossible task. We did manage to snag a few frames of the device, which appears as a mere silhouette to the naked eye. Sensors aren't designed for us to look at, however -- they're supposed to do the looking -- so we won't get any more hung up on the presentation. Existing RED camera owners can look forward to an incredibly impressive 15+ stops of native dynamic range and up to 120 frames-per-second at resolutions up to 5K. And as we discovered earlier today, the upgrade will roll out to EPIC owners sometime in 2012 for $6,000 while Scarlet users will need to hang tight for a release date, and a price tag. That's all we've got as far as details go, so click on through the gallery below for a flashlight-enhanced peek at the Dragon.
