Brighter photos soon thanks to Panasonic

Thanks to Panasonic, we just might have a chance to get brighter photos in low light situations. Panasonic now enables cameras to capture brighter photos by introducing a new imaging sensor. So what did they change to make this possible?

But before we answer that, what is an imaging sensor? Image sensors work like film in a camera. And like film, an image sensor is the stuff that catches light which enables digital cameras to save it as an image. Image sensors are used in cameras just like the one in cellphones, web cams, surveillance cameras, video cameras, point and shoot cameras, digital SLR cameras and all other kinds of electronic camera. So what did Panasonic change?

Panasonic released an article with a technical explanation of what they changed, but to keep things simple, here is what I got from the article. Referring to the image above, we have a conventional image sensor design at the left and Panasonic's image sensor design at the right. The important difference are the color filters. Conventional color filters block about 30-50% (or even up to 70%) of light coming through the lens to the image sensors. Color filters are in place to help the detectors determine and capture the colors in a given scene with accuracy at the cost of reducing the light that reaches the detectors of the image sensors.

So Panasonic improves the image sensor by replacing the color filters with a deflector and some clever algorithms that allows accurate color representation without loosing light. The end product is seen in first image where we have a photo taken with a conventional image sensor at the left and the Panasonic's image sensor on the right. And this advancement in imaging sensor technology is a step forward towards brighter low-light photos.

So what does this mean for us folks who love to take photos? This means that we can take brighter photos in dimly lit places like restaurants with poor lighting without needing to use the camera flash, or allows us to shoot at faster shutter speeds in sporting events and reduce motion blur of competing athletes. For CCTV cameras, this will mean brighter video feeds and will help improve the identification process.

You can read Panasonic's official article here for a more technical explanation.