CMOS is an acronym for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor. This makes CMOS sensors considerably cheaper to mass produce. It also consumes less power, so battery life is better and there is less heat produced.
They can be made more easily to maximise sensitivity and, therefore, deliver lower noise and higher dynamic range. The next step is to read the value accumulated charge of each cell in the image. In a CCD device, the charge is actually transported across the chip and read at one corner of the array.
An analog-to-digital converter turns each pixel's value into a digital value. In most CMOS devices, there are several transistors at each pixel that amplify and move the charge using more traditional wires. The CMOS approach is more flexible because each pixel can be read individually. CCDs use a special manufacturing process to create the ability to transport charge across the chip without distortion. This process leads to very high-quality sensors in terms of fidelity and light sensitivity.
CMOS chips, on the other hand, use traditional manufacturing processes to create the chip -- the same processes used to make most microprocessors. Based on these differences, you can see that CCDs tend to be used in cameras that focus on high-quality images with lots of pixels and excellent light sensitivity. CMOS sensors traditionally have lower quality, lower resolution and lower sensitivity. CMOS cameras are usually less expensive and have great battery life. Sign up for our Newsletter!
Similarly small interchangeable-lens cameras provide DSLR-like performance without all the heft. If you look around on the street, you'll see more people snapping photos with phones. Imaging devices are becoming smaller, more powerful, and more versatile--simultaneously.
Tucked inside all those cameras, CMOS complementary metal-oxide semiconductor sensors are being used as the building blocks for that versatility. It becomes a question of 'Now that I can capture many images every time I want to take just one, how can I enhance what I've got? The fact that CMOS sensors are capable of performing some of the heavy lifting themselves--image-processing tasks such as analog-to-digital conversion and noise reduction--gives the sensor technology an edge over CCD charge-coupled device sensors when it comes to speed.
With CCD, key processes such as analog-to-digital conversion take place outside of the sensor. We have an 8-channel readout on some of our other cameras.
0コメント