Kodak Still Innovating

A lot of people in the industry, even old time film users who have switched to digital, may not realize, or  have forgotten, that they owe many digital innovations to Kodak.

In 1976 an Eastman Kodak researcher named Bryce Bayer invented what is now called the Bayer Filter, an arrangement of red green and blue color filters overlaying a CCD or CMOS sensor, allowing the camera to decode color information from photons, which exists to this day in almost every single digital camera on the planet.

Well 31 years later, Kodak has announced a "replacement" technology for the Bayer mosaic. Called the Color Filter Array 2.0, the new array adds new panchromatic (or all-color sensing) cells to the mosaic chip. These cells are sensitive to all wavelengths of the visible spectrum of light and collect a far greater amount of light.

What does it all mean for photographers? Well, these panchromatic cells, coupled with the proper software, allow for 1 to 2 stops of increased sensitivity to light. The difference is startling, as seen in the image here from Kodak's A Thousand Nerds blog. Image noise is severely decreased even in the prototype and higher available shutter speeds lower the likelihood of blur.

The technology is not without its caveats, however. Placing the new cells lowers the overall amount of color information captured, so it remains to be seen whether, properly tweaked, the chip produces sufficient color quality to be adopted by the major manufacturers.

Read more on Kodak’s High-Sensitivity Technology in our news section.
—Matthew Panzarino
Contributing Blogger