At 410 megapixels, Canon’s latest sensor can claim the title of the world’s biggest 35mm full-frame sensor. But you won’t see it in a camera any time soon.
They say that bigger is better, and that is sometimes true. A bigger battery in a phone or laptop means you should get better battery life, though the processing power and screen has something to say about that. A bigger engine can mean a faster car, but there’s typically more going on than just the engine.
And in a digital camera, a bigger sensor can mean more flexibility and better quality, though not always.
In the case of Canon’s big new sensor, you should definitely be able to claim the former, though the latter may not be as easily judged simply because it’s not likely to come to any camera being sold in stores or online.
The new sensor is beast, delivering a whopping 410 megapixels inside a 35mm full-frame sensor. That is to say it’s the same sensor size as to what went in the Canon EOS R8 or even the flagship R1, but it’s a different beast altogether.
Instead of a 24 megapixel sensor, Canon’s new sensor offers 410 megapixels, delivering what is the video equivalent of 24K oe 24,592 x 16,704. There’s no plan for a 24K TV at present, with HDMI 2.2 maxing out at 16K, and no real plan for TVs that high, either.
So what’s the point of 24K and 410 megapixels in a camera sensor? Industries where you typically capture once and need to pick out the details by cropping.
That could be surveillance or medicinal, or even fields where you need as much detail from one image as possible.
It’s unlikely we’ll end up seeing Canon’s massive new sensor in any new cameras for either the consumer or prosumer market, meaning photo-enthusiasts keen on getting their hands on this sensor will probably just have to be happy with what they have. It’s a probably a good thing, too: given the sensor size, we don’t expect this thing would be cheap.
