High Definition Cinematography, 2nd Edition

14

Single chip technology

14.1  What’s available?

Currently there are two types of sensors available that, between them, dominate the High Definition (HD) arena: CCDs (Charge Coupled Device) and CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor). Both have advantages and disadvantages. The purpose of any sensor is to convert small parts of an image, usually referred to as a pixel, into electrons in proportion to the amount of light falling on that pixel in such a form that the electrons coming out of each pixel can be assessed and recorded. CCDs and CMOS sensors do this in slightly different ways and the way they do it and, more importantly the way they utilize pixel space, is very important. Let us take a look at each type.

14.2  CCD sensors

In ...