InVisage
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See how InVisage's HDR sensor will improve smartphone filmmaking
It's been over five years since we heard from InVisage, a company developing a new kind of smartphone sensor with higher dynamic range and zero rolling shutter. It just produced a short film called Prix using a prototype chip to show exactly how the tech works. As a reminder, InVisage developed a photosensitive nano-coating it calls QuantumFilm that works differently than silicon. It claims that the material has "higher photosensitivity and electron sensitivity per pixel," which makes it react more like film than a typical CMOS sensor. It's also fast enough to instantly switch on and off, allowing the use of a global instead of a rolling shutter.
InVisage envisions a world where cell phone cameras don't suck, embraces quantum dots
The invention of nanocrystal semiconductors -- more commonly called quantum dots -- has spurred scientists to create everything from precisely-colored LED lamps to higher-density flash memory. There's also been some talk of applying a solution of the tiny crystals to create higher sensitivity cameras, and according to a company named InVisage, that latter utility is almost ready for commercial production. By smearing light-amplifying quantum dots onto the existing CMOS sensors used in cell phone cameras like so much strawberry jam, InVisage claims it will offer smartphone sensors that have four times the performance and twice the dynamic range of existing chips by the end of the year, and roll out the conveyor belts in late 2011, just in time for the contract to end on your terrible new cameraphone. [Thanks, Matt]
