Have you felt recently that the quality of smartphone
photos and videos has been improved?
you can capture even the delicate beauty woven by the stars glittering in the jet-black night sky in high contrast
Sony’s image sensor that responds to your desire to take pictures
Something that increases your creativity, that is the evolution of the image sensor behind the lens.
An image sensor is the most important part, converting light into electrical signals. Sony has created many innovations in smartphone photography in numerous technological developments.
“I want to express and share my impressions more freely”
“I want to take pictures beautifully whatever the scene and conditions”
“I don’t want to miss a momentary inspiration” -
LYTIA will continuously evolve to respond to those expectations.
HDR that can
shoot things beautifully
“just as you see”
shoot things beautifully
“just as you see”
Shooting scenes with mixed bright and dark places,
which was a weak point of conventional image sensors.
With LYTIA’s HDR technology, even in a scene with contrast difference, like shooting a landscape in the sunlight from a dark indoor environment, both the light and dark areas can be expressed beautifully while avoiding blackout and blowout.
Auto-focus that
captures all subjects
quickly and accurately
captures all subjects
quickly and accurately
The auto-focus (AF) feature is one of the essential components for ensuring the best shot moments.
LYTIA’s all-pixel AF technology enables to mobilize all pixels to obtain focus information.
LYTIA realizes fast, accurate AF action for dark places and subjects without a clear outline, which have been difficult to focus on until now.
The evolutionary history of the image sensors
that Sony has pioneered
that Sony has pioneered
Sony started on the development of CCD image sensors, “electronic eyes,” from the 1970s,
and commercialized them ahead of the world in the 1980s.
Subsequently too, Sony continued to run at the cutting edge in this field.
It was 2004 when Sony made a big turn towards the development of the fast,
low power consuming CMOS image sensors,
with an eye on the high definition (HD) future.
Since then, the company has created high performance CMOS image sensors
incorporating new technology one after the other,
and continues to lead the image sensor world at present too.
The following introduces some of those technological innovations.
Towards the evolution of stacking technology
following the evolution of pixel technology
following the evolution of pixel technology
Bright and low noise
with the
“idea of reversal”
with the
“idea of reversal”
By inverting the conventional sensor structure, Sony developed a back-illuminated CMOS image sensor that expands the volume of light that enters a unit pixel by receiving light from the back of the silicon substrate. By doing so, the company realized high image quality with roughly double the sensitivity and low noise compared to conventional sensors. Its performance even went beyond the human eye.
Sony realizes the strengthening of various functions,
not just high image quality
not just high image quality
Sony developed a stacked CMOS image sensor using a chip on which a signal processing circuit was formed instead of the supporting substrate of a conventional back-illuminated CMOS image sensor, and combining the pixel part with back-illuminated structure pixels formed on that. This made it possible to mount a large-scale circuit on a small chip. Moreover, Sony realized higher image quality, higher functionality and smaller size simultaneously by specializing the pixel section in improving image quality.
Highly accurate additional information
captured by sensors changes the future
captured by sensors changes the future
Sony fused the imaging technology it had cultivated over many years with sensing technology that measures the distance to a subject by detecting the flight time of light to return to the sensor surface when an optical pulse is reflected on the subject, to develop a back-illuminated time-of-flight image sensor with the industry’s smallest pixel size*.
This expands the potential for convenient, enjoyable applications and realizes new experiences.
*As of the public announcement of June 5, 2017
LYTIA is the crystallization of
the Sony’s technology and passion
that have supported the culture
of smartphone photography
from the background.
We will continue to create
a future where everyone
can enjoy with a life full
of creativity
while we also fuse cutting-edge
technologies like AI and AR.
