Micro 4/3 80 mp mft camera, when?

[Herman]

Sony has developed a new 80 mp mft sensor.
Sony’s High Speed 80 MP Quadpixel MFT sensor with full-pixel 2x2OCL phase focusing now available for all third party manufacturers – 43 Rumors

 

[ahaslett]

The OM1 has a variant of that with PDAF and group read modes.

 

[Brian]

"2×2 OCL means quadbayer. 4 pixels share same microlens ."

Not really 80MPixels of resolution. Like calling a Nikon D1 a 10MPixel camera, pixel binning combined 4 pixels into one.

 

[ahaslett]

I have an OM1. PDAF read gives a huge array of fast AF points. Group read with a shared CFA and microlens, gives 20Mpix RAW files.

Andrew

 

[Herman]

Output 20 mp?

 

[Brian]

Output 20 mp?

Yes- that is what is does. So what is the advantage? You have 4 pixels being Averaged, which reduces Random Noise of the individual pixels influencing the final image. That is a factor of 4 improvement.

 

[Cederic]

Conversely you have the light that would have illuminated a single pixel now being shared between four, giving all four less information with which to work as a result.

So you have noisier pixels being averaged to create a single pixel. Is that single pixel noisier than the equivalent pixel in a 20mp sensor? Is its dynamic range improved or reduced?

Isn't this why 80mp phone cameras still can't compete with 12mp full frame, despite having all those lovely pixels to average?

 

[Brian]

Random noise is the prevalent factor- and that is averaged out. True in 1999 when Nikon used this technique in the D1 and still true.
The same number of photons fall in the area, so saturation of the smaller pixels is not an issue. The Lenses cannot resolve down to the size of the individual pixels, they essentially see the same part of the image. The lens is the AA filter.
An 80MPixel sensor for a u43 camera is the equivalent to 320MPixels in a full-frame (24x36) sensor.