New Sony sensor in Blackmagic Cine: 100 megapixel in 35mm full-frame; P1, Leica, Fuji next?

[Paul Spinnler]

There you go – Blackmagic Design just announced the Ursa Cinema cam with 16 stops DR (ie small pixel pitch Sony BSI); we are on the cusp of leaving behind IMX411 and all 100 megapixel crop MF bodies will be soon move to 180 - a significant jump. Perfect for tech cams with HR glass!



Most likely Sony's IMX811 platform. What's striking is that it is an un-announced sensor and that BMD is going out with it already, meaning Sony has been sampling the sensors for a while ... which means maybe the IQ5 is closer than we think.

This means in terms of next gen products:

Leica M12 / M12M / Q4 / SL4: 100 MPX
P1: IQ5-250, potentially 275 - maybe this year already????!!!
Fuji, Hassy, Leica crop MF: 180 MPX; if Leica S4 has in-between mount potentially 200

It also means we'll most likely soon see a new Sony flagship at 100 megapixels, followed by the M12 + S4 in 2025, alongside the IQ5.

Better save up them pennies - the next-gen is around the corner and maybe its worthwhile to just look forward to the products in 2025.

Next steps:
+ Keep IQ4 - it'll be a 25k trade-in value for IQ5 and it might be out this or next year -> BOOM; as a result, I except IQ4 supply to remain very limited; those who swooped in on cheap forum deals at 20k are incredibly lucky; trade-in value will anchor IQ4 values, so better hold on to them babies
+ Leica S4 falls right into the new tech cycle - perfect for its 2.0 APO optics which will fully resolve 2.8 microns
+ Prior-gen crop MF Fuji and Hasselblad will get another round of bodies rather sooner than later once Leica made their move; interesting to see optics performance on 2.8 microns; there will be lenses which perform better or worse as we'll have 2020s gen crop MF optics (Leica S4) and 2010s gen crop MF optics alongside 2020s gen crop MF optics from Hassy, Fuji

It would make perfect sense for Leica to drop the M12 in 2025 WOW, M12M in 2026. 50 and 35 APO M are going to shine.

IQ5 might be the new king of the sensor hill very soon!!

 

[Required]

BMD did show off their upcoming 17K cinema camera as well.

 

[anyone]

exciting stuff! Even though I must say there are for my use case diminishing returns in getting more megapixels. 50mp BSI in fact would be good enough … but it’s nice to see new options!

 

[mristuccia]

Now the big question is: with or without PDAF?

 

[Paul Spinnler]

That

BMD did show off their upcoming 17K cinema camera as well.

View attachment 212182

That’s very interesting. I missed this one - it means it looks manufacturers of products are able to create custom chips with Sony easier than thought.

I think an IQ5-275 is more likely than not at this stage … fingers crossed.

 

[SCHWARZZEIT]

How do you know that the sensors used in the 12K and 17K Blackmagic Design Cine cameras are made by Sony?

According to their business development manager Stuart Ashton these sensors were designed in-house by BMD as stated in this CineD article. The pixel pitch is 2.9 microns which is different from the 2.81 micron pixels of Sony's new IMX811 sensor.

 

[Paul Spinnler]

Hi Dominique - nice to hear from you!

BMD in the past used Sony Imaging sensors, incl. IMX410CQK; I need to be more distinct: You can buy an off the shelf sensor (including design and manufacturing) - which is what most companies in the photo space do except Leica with the TowerJazz stuff where they commissioned also a custom design for the S3, because it costs less and you can order on a need basis, or also take on the design and then just let a foundry produce the chip. Problem is to make this worthwhile you need to have a certain volume. If I remember correctly a conversation. I had on the S the batch size was 5000.

I think in the cinema space, given sales volumes and margins for the high end cameras, there's room for custom design and manufacturing in some manufacturer's profit calculations. They may even outsource the design to specialist design shops in parts and may have shopped around for separate foundry capacity for fabrication, treatment and packaging of the chips. There's only a handful of foundries who can produce small pixel pitch sensors I understand incl. Sony Imaging and Towerjazz, but the later were bought by Intel.

Its most likely, in my view, that Sony Imaging is producing these, but w/o confirmation you are right its hard to tell - could also be another foundry or multiple. I am not deep enough in the semiconductor industry to know how these custom chips were put together as I understand the new cinema cameras also have custom CFAs which allow for more light gathering and to downsample perfectly to 8k and 4k.

When I spoke with Leica on the S3 at one point they basically said for efficiency purposes it doesnt make sense to not go with Sony as everyone is using them and its crucial in the consumer space to hit certain margins. The S3 in part was so expensive due to its custom chip.

In cimema the ball game is different with Red, BMD and Arri designing their own chips specifically optimized for video with custom CFAs and read-out circuitry, e.g. ALEV 4 sensels in the Arri 35.

What it shows though is that we are indeed on the cusp of 2.8 micron cameras if the cinema guys already bring out high DR 100 megapixel video cameras ... and the IMX811 platform scales down to 100 and 180 megapixels in the standard photo formats sold in the 411 cycle.

 

[SCHWARZZEIT]

I think in the cinema space, given sales volumes and margins for the high end cameras, there's room for custom design and manufacturing in some manufacturer's profit calculations. They may even outsource the design to specialist design shops in parts and may have shopped around for separate foundry capacity for fabrication, treatment and packaging of the chips. There's only a handful of foundries who can produce small pixel pitch sensors I understand incl. Sony Imaging and Towerjazz, but the later were bought by Intel.

OnSemi (former sensor devision of Kodak) would be another manufacturer capable of making these chips. They've been collaborating with Arri for decades with their ALEV sensors.

Its most likely, in my view, that Sony Imaging is producing these, but w/o confirmation you are right its hard to tell - could also be another foundry or multiple. I am not deep enough in the semiconductor industry to know how these custom chips were put together as I understand the new cinema cameras also have custom CFAs which allow for more light gathering and to downsample perfectly to 8k and 4k.

The RGBW CFA choice is interesting as it helps improving the usable dynamic range for downsized output resolution. In the demosaicing the approximately two EV more sensitive unfiltered W pixels can still have a usable signal in the deep shadows when the levels of the RGB pixels are already in the noise floor. On the other hand you can blow the W pixels while still having excellent signal from the RGB pixels.
Regarding the dynamic range claims, it really depends on how it's measured, what acceptable SNR threshold is used and to what output size it's scaled.

In cimema the ball game is different with Red, BMD and Arri designing their own chips specifically optimized for video with custom CFAs and read-out circuitry, e.g. ALEV 4 sensels in the Arri 35.

The ALEV 4 sensor in the Arri 35 is the only image sensor I've seen come out with significantly improved pixel level dynamic range for more than a decade. There have been other advancements in sensor design like BSI and dual gain for improved low light sensitivity. But when you look at Bill Claff's photonstophotos database and compare the Nikon D800E from 2012 against any of the newer cameras with a 35mm full frame Sony sensor there has been less than 1/4 EV improvement in PDR at base ISO.

What it shows though is that we are indeed on the cusp of 2.8 micron cameras if the cinema guys already bring out high DR 100 megapixel video cameras ... and the IMX811 platform scales down to 100 and 180 megapixels in the standard photo formats sold in the 411 cycle.

I wouldn't call the IMX811 sensor a platform. The datasheet refers to the 54x36 mm version only. There haven't been any other sensors with the 2.81 micron pixel pitch announced yet from Sony. As you know, they used the 3.76 micron pixel design across a range of formats: 26 MP APS-C (IMX571), 60 MP FF (IMX 455), 102 MP (IMX461) and 151 MP (IMX411)
FWIW, the IMX461 and IMX411 were announced together in March 2017 (with projected availability in 2018). It remains to be seen whether we'll see the 2.81 micron pixel design in different formats than the IMX811 and whether it's used in consumer cameras at all.
Since you mentioned Leica confirmed the development of a mirrorless S, and they went to great length (custom size) with their previous S versions to keep their preferred 3:2 ratio, they could design the mirrorless S lenses with the larger 65mm IC of the IMX811's diagonal in mind, go for this larger chip and target a higher price point anyway. But this is only speculation.

 

[Paul Spinnler]

My understanding is they don't want go down the spec route again to avoid a 20k mirrorless S4 for various reasons incl. cost and familiarity with Sony chips. You'd want to hit 10-12k for the body due to the competitive landscape in MF mirrorless and then its better to just take the nex-gen off the shelf Sony sensor which then most likely will find its way into the Fuji, Hassy bodies at one point as well.

The S3 never really budged from the 20k price point and a big cost driver was the sensor and required internal margins. Fuji and Hassy are now squarely below 10k, so there is room for the S4 to be a bit above, but not thaat much. I think they'll be far better off selling the S4 at say 10k-12k, but then be 30-50% more expensive on premium optics.

My understanding is also that they'll do a compact F2 APO line of MF optics similar to the SL line which means they'll have efficient manufacturing with similar lens sizes across the range and therefore still very good margins if they are a bit above Hassy / Fuji.

They've learned a lot with regard to efficient manufacturing through the SL APO line and apparently they are further improving the design. SL is mid 2010s Leica high end, the new MF optics will be Leica's best to date - mid 2020s manufacturing technique and know-how optics with improvements also in the AF dept. with new motors, low moving mass elements for fast AF, etc.

Its gonna be very interesting to see the new S4 and the accompanying sensor.

 

[buildbot]

Blackmagic probably sells 10x these cameras than Phase Does backs, so it makes sense for them to engineer a custom sensor just for themselves. I doubt anyone else will get this version even if Sony makes it.

There are actually a lot of smaller sensor manufacturers, TowerJazz, OnSemi, Dalsa, GPixel, Teledyne e2v, I'm missing some for sure.

 

[Paul Spinnler]

17k video sensor is badass. And yes, at 3k they will sell a ton of box cams. I mean the NA market alone most be double digit thousand units p.a. at this price point.

 

[TechTalk]

Blackmagic probably sells 10x these cameras than Phase Does backs, so it makes sense for them to engineer a custom sensor just for themselves. I doubt anyone else will get this version even if Sony makes it.

There are actually a lot of smaller sensor manufacturers, TowerJazz, OnSemi, Dalsa, GPixel, Teledyne e2v, I'm missing some for sure.

Here's a list of image sensor design companies, foundries, and manufacturers. http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/p/image-sensor-companies-list

A number of earlier Blackmagic Cinema cameras used Fairchild (now BAE Systems) simultaneous dual-gain sensors and sensors from CMOSIS (now ams-OSRAM).

 

[iiiNelson]

I’m pretty sure that the company making these sensors for the Ursa line that aren’t IMX410 based is Fairchild. BMD and them have had a longstanding relationship and they made the 12K sensor in the S35 version as well.