- A 410MP sensor applies previous Pixel records for a full frame, and is equivalent to 24k resolution
- It is capable of 410MP up to 8 fps, or 100MP up to 24 fps
- It’s designed for surveillance, medical, and industrial applications, and is unlikely to land on a Canonical consumer camera.
Try this for size: Canon has announced a new 410MP full-frame sensor that applies any previous resolution record. It packs 24,592 x 16,704 pixels to be precise, which is roughly equivalent to 24k resolution.
Canon notes in its global announcement that 24k is 12 times the resolution of 8k and 198 times the resolution of HD, and suggests that the unprecedented resolution “allows users to crop any part of the image captured by this sensor and enlarge it significantly while maintains high resolution”.
The newly developed back-illuminated stacked sensor is capable of a super-fast 3,280MP P/S readout speed, meaning it’s possible to shoot those 410MP images at up to 8fps, a speed that can be increased to 24fps by selecting a pixel binning function that reduces the resolution to 100MP.
It’s an amazing and presumably incredibly expensive sensor that is unfortunately unlikely to reach consumers, even if a trickle-down effect from its technology is possible – Canon has positioned this lens for surveillance, medical and industry applications. The ability to crop heavily into highly detailed images is paramount.
Do we need it in the era of scale?
In 2024, Sony impressed us with a new 247MP medium format sensor that offers much more detail than any sensor found in a consumer camera. However, that’s a lot fewer pixels, in a much larger sensor format, and Sony’s sensor has now been put in the shade by Canon’s newly developed wonder.
Furthermore, the best-in-class resolution for full-frame cameras available to consumers is 61MP, a sensor used by the Leica SL3 and Sony A7r V. This sensor is not stacked like Canon’s, and therefore cannot match Reading Speed: is slower and less detailed. Simply put, we haven’t seen sensor technology like this before.
Recently, Canon has been pushing what’s possible with camera technology. We loved its new exclusive feature in the camera that is capable of increasing the image size by 400 percent. Upscaling debuted on the Canon EOS R5 Mark II and Canon EOS R1, and in the case of the EOS R5 Mark II it increases the resolution from 45MP to 180MP, with impressive results.
Now I’m imagining this exclusive technology together with Canon’s new 410MP sensor, we’d be talking about a resolution of 1.64 gigapixels! That potential level of detail is mind-boggling, but whether or not the necessary lenses with the optical quality exist to fully support this potential is another matter, and sadly, out of my own curiosity, it’s unlikely I’ll see the new sensor in action. .
