It’s been a while since Canon announced they were developing a 250MP sensor, but they had a sample on show at CES this year and Photogear’s David Newton took a closer look.
250MP in your pocket
The most remarkable thing about it is perhaps how unremarkable it looks. On Canon’s booth it featured a standard EOS mount and was shown connected to a regular EOS telephoto lens. The housing is just for show, to demonstrate how it might look in the the industrial setting it’s intended for, but it would actually fit in a 5D-sized camera housing if you had the time and inclination to hack a Franken-camera together.
The sensor was being shown with a regular EOS mount, so you’ll be able to use your existing collection of 800mm telephoto primes with it.
Chances are you’d be working in a government intelligence agency if that were the case. Canon see the potential markets for the sensor as ‘industrial’ ‘surveillance’ and ‘governmental’ and, well, anything further than that is idle speculation, but what government would ever want high resolution surveillance capabilities over incredible distances? Quite.
250MP: the world’s highest resolution CMOS sensor
The sensor is CMOS-based, APS-H sized and delivers video as well as stills. The resolution is such that you can take 1/120th of the image and make an HD signal from it by cropping into the raw feed. At that resolution apparently you’d be looking at shooting stills at around 5fps.
Anyway, it’s not for sale to the likes of you and I, however Canon made this proof-of-concept as a result of demand from ‘some of [their] clients.’ So the next time you’re outside, do remember to smile like you mean it, it can definitely be seen!
The sensor’s effective range is measured in miles rather than feet.
On the upside, however, the megapixel wars are finally, definitively over*. We can stop worrying about resolution now. We’re done.
*Probably.
