Forza Silicon Presents 100+MP 60fps Camera Platform

Forza Silicon introduces the Forza 100+ MP CAM Platform featuring a customizable CMOS image sensor operating at 60fps and supporting multiple camera resolutions­. The dual-mode camera operates in B&W or color and has a proprietary onboard image processor. It can be configured to capture image sequences at resolutions approaching 200MP while maintaining 60fps speed. The modular platform includes a high resolution, visible CMOS image sensor module and camera reference design that can be customized to allow for fast integration into multiple camera hardware designs and applications.

Brandywine Photonics Shows 1st Picture from its Deeply Depleted BSI Sensor

Brandywine Photonics got first images from its FBX-640×512 BSI CMOS sensor with deep depletion, specifically designed for hyperspectral imaging with enhanced NIR sensitivity. The QE, dark noise, and frame rate numbers will be reported later. The sensor was first announced in May 2013 as being in the fab.

Invisage Announces $18M Funding Round, Sensor Sampling

Marketwired: InVisage announces $18M round of funding bringing the total amount that it has raised since its creation to more than $100M. Investors include GGV Capital, Nokia Growth Partners, RockPort Capital, InterWest Partners, Intel Capital and OnPoint Technologies. The additional funding enables InVisage to scale manufacturing capacity from its initial pilot production line to support high volume customers and further its mission to mass produce fast, thin, high performance cameras in ultra-small form-factors.

InVisage also expands its leadership team with two new additions: Ephraim Kwok as CFO and Emanuele Mandelli as VP of Engineering. Mandelli has more than 20 years of image sensor, x-ray detectors and particle physics detectors experience. Most recently, he worked for AltaSens.

Venture Beat quotes Invisage CEO, Jess Lee telling that "the company expects to deliver its final product samples to manufacturing partners within the next few quarters, and it will take another six to nine months before the technology can be implemented in future products".

Lytro Illum Features 40 Megaray Sensor

Lytro announces its second generation lightfield camera having DSLR look and featuring a new, custom-designed 40 Megaray image sensor (vs 11 Megaray in the 1st generation). As with the 1st Lytro generation, the number of pixels in the final image has not been disclosed.

Lytro Illum sensor

Venture Beat publishes a video interview with Lytro Founder Ren Ng explaining the features of the new camera:



DPReview publishes a Q&A session with Lytro CEO Jason Rosenthal and Ren Ng. Few quotes:

Q: "What's new about the sensor? It's listed at 40 megarays, but how would you explain that in terms that are more relatable to stills photographers?"

Rosenthal: "It's basically a 4x step up in terms of both number of pixels and underlying resolution, as well as sensor area size ... The sensor in the previous camera was 1/3", essentially a mobile sensor. This is a 1" sensor with an [underlying] 40-megapixel resolution."

ZTE Flagship Phone Features Aptina Clarity+ Sensor

Aptina reports that ZTE Star 1 smartphone features the company's Clarity+ color filter technology.

Sony Presents Security ISP Roadmap

Sony has updated its pages on Effio and Xarina ISPs for security and surveillance cameras. The high-end Xarina line is going to be split into 2K and 4K ones with added support for RGB-W CFA and few other features:

MTF at Different Wavelengths

Albert Theuwissen continues his "How to Measure MTF" series of articles. The latest part discusses MTF measurements at different wavelengths.

Himax Reveals Cooperation with ST, Array and Lightfield Cameras Plans

Himax investor presentation reveals a cooperation with ST and plans to start a mass production of 2x2 and 4x4 array cameras in Q2 2014:

Machine Vision Algorithm Advances

TechCrunch: Google Street View team reports that its recent text and street numbers recognition algorithm can be successfully used for solving CAPTCHA puzzles widely used on the web to determine a human versus a spam bot. The algorithm has been presented in a paper at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR).

I have a feeling that this algorithm has leaked outside Google, as starting from about Sept. 2013 the amount of spam comments in this blog has grown dramatically. On same days, per each real comment I get 10 spam ones, in spite of CAPTCHA protection.

Google algorithm recoginizes this with 99.8% accuracy

Google Project Tango Uses Primesense 3D SoC

iFixIt teardown of Google Project Tango 3D camera revealed that it uses Primesense's recent Capri PS1200 SoC and its IR illuminator projects a familiar structured light dot pattern: