Canon has announced a shiny new full-frame 410-megapixel CMOS sensor. It’s a world first, and it’s very impressive. But it’s highly unlikely to be appearing in a mirrorless camera near you any time soon. It’s designed primarily for medical, industrial, and surveillance uses.
With a resolution of 24,592 x 16,704 pixels, it captures a lot of detail and absolutely hammers Canon’s previous record of 250 megapixels. Being full-frame, the new sensor is also physically larger than the previous APS-H format 250MP sensor.
Canon 410MP sensor – Why?!?
A 410MP sensor that shoots roughly 24K video and photos might seem pretty ridiculous. And for many of us, it is. Even editing 8K footage pushes the abilities of many people’s computers. You’d need something insane to be able to edit 24K.
The newly developed CMOS sensor features a resolution equivalent to 24K (198 times greater than Full HD, and 12 times greater than 8K). This enables users to crop any part of the image captured by this sensor and enlarge it significantly while maintaining high resolution. While many CMOS sensors with a super-high pixel count are medium-format or larger, this extreme resolution sensor is compacted into a 35 mm full-frame format.
– Canon Press Release
It’s a backside illuminated stacked sensor, which allows it to provide a readout of up to 3,280 megapixels per second. Per second. That means it can shoot that 24K footage at 8 frames per second. Canon says that it can shoot 100-megapixel video at 24fps, thanks to a “four-pixel binning” mode that works similarly to Quad Bayer sensors for smartphones. At 4K, you’re potentially talking close to 400fps.
But this sensor doesn’t need that speed for shooting fast action. It’s going to be used primarily for medical and industrial imaging, as well as surveillance. We’ve seen examples of Canon’s 250MP sensor being used for surveillance, but they don’t appear to have published a video for this one yet to show off its abilities. We’ll update this post if we spot one.
Tech trickles down…
Who really needs this much resolution for photography? VFX artists, maybe? Landscape photographers that like to print huge? With a 24,592 x 16,704 pixel image at 300PPI, that works out to about an 82″ x 55.7″ print. And that’s a print you can get really close to and still see detail – as if you were looking at a 6×4″ print in your hand.
While the new 410-megapixel sensor may not be destined for mirrorless cameras, it’s allowing Canon’s R&D to really push itself. In terms of both speed and sheer resolution, it’s extremely impressive. Some of the technology developed for this sensor will undoubtedly make it into our hands at some point, even if it’s not quite this high resolution.
It’s anyone’s guess as to exactly what we’ll get and how soon we’ll get it, though. But if you want to find out more, Canon says that the new sensor will be on display at the Canon booth at SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco from January 28-30, 2025.
If you want one of Canon’s high-resolution sensors, even if it’s quite not full-frame, you can buy their 120MP APS-H sensor to build into your own projects.
