Happy Accident Opens Door to Cheaper, Higher-Resolution Cameras

[digirebelva]

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/12/gallery_photodetector

[neilwood32]

I wonder how soon it will be before one of the camera manufacturers buys this work up?

[digirebelva]

I wonder what it will do for lenses..since they won't have to compsenate for the difference between a curved lense and a flat chip..will they get lighter, smaller etc..?

[StewartR]

I wonder what it will do for lenses..since they won't have to compsenate for the difference between a curved lense and a flat chip..will they get lighter, smaller etc..?It won't do anything for lenses, at least in the SLR world. The manufacturers have to worry about compatibility. No point introducing a new sensor if it means (a) none of your existing lenses work with it, and (b) the new lenses which you make for it don't work with any previous cameras. It would be a much bigger change than Canon's FD-to-EF switch in the 1980s, because at least then all they were redesigning was the mount and the electronics, not the entire optical configuration.

[tiziano]

The idea of a curved sensor is old, and not revolutionary. Film cameras have been produced this way for managing distortion in panoramic images. Not a winning technology.
More interesting is the nano size of the photo sensors, but... I guess that, because technology for sensors is already close to the limits of the resolving capabilities of lenses, the vantages will be limited, until there is a breakthrough in opticts.