CanonNews / Thursday, October 8, 2020

New Rumor: Canon has developed a new full frame global shutter sensor

CanonWatch is stating that Canon has developed a new global shutter sensor. Well, Canon is always developing new sensors, and developing a global shutter sensor is nothing new for Canon. Canon has a global shutter sensor in production, in the C700. You can also buy from Canon their 5MP 2/3" global shutter sensor as well. Read about it right here.

Could this end up in an EOS R? I think it's actually possible, for a video-centric camera it would be advantageous for Canon to use a global shutter and would seriously one-up the rest of the industry. Now that Sony has released the A7SIII, we know the technology used there.

With Canon's current global shutter sensors, there is a caveat. Because Canon uses front side illumination sensors and does not have any stacked sensor fabrication (yet), these sensors lose around 1 stop EV in "pure" dynamic range of the sensor. So tricks are used, to achieve a higher dynamic range. Canon uses a variety of means of multi-exposure or like on the C300, a DGO (dual gain sensor) to achieve a higher dynamic range. These technologies work well with video, but don't play as nice with stills.

Canon has done stacked sensor patents (which are usually by default backside illuminated) that also have a global shutter, however, this is at least 2 or 3 generations from where Canon is right now in production. While they may make the leap I certainly wouldn't count on it. Stacked sensors are the only way to get around the problem of losing 1EV of pure dynamic range since the memory store of the pixel value would happen on another substrate, versus happen at each pixel.

According to CanonWatch, the sensor would be;