Slashgear reports on the new innovation unveiled in Tokyo today. The sensor’s output is 125 times higher resolution than 1080p Full HD and 30 times greater than 4K. Captured images using the full 250 million pixels will have a resolution of around 19,580 x 12,600 pixels.
Canon claims the sensor is able to capture images with such detail that the lettering on an airplane flying 18km away can be clearly distinguished. It writes the photo used a combination of optical and digital zooming and the enlarged image represented approximately 1/40,000th of the entire shot.
The sensor uses a conventional APS-H size and measures 29.2mm x 20.2mm. Canon says that this makes it the world’s highest resolution camera sensor that is smaller than a 35mm frame.
Canon has overcome some of the traditional limitations of ultra-high resolution sensors. Despite the 250 million pixels that have to be saved for each image, the sensor has a signal read-out time of 1.25 billion pixels per second.
Ars Technica notes that the 50MP Canon 5DS available today has a read-out time of around 250 million pixels per second. Canon has enhanced the processing technology and further miniaturized its circuitry in order to achieve the new ultra-fast rate.
Such a large sensor won’t be of much use to many people. It will produce images with huge file sizes that modern devices won’t be able to handle. Canon isn’t intending to create a consumer device from it but is exploring where 250-megapixels would be most useful.
The company is looking into specialized surveillance and crime prevention tools as well as ultra-high resolution measuring instruments and visual expression. It seems unlikely that anybody will be holding their 250MP DSLR above a crowd for quite some time to come.
