Nikon are at it again, filing patent applications to keep us all guessing. This is not the full colour patent that I found last time, but a variation of the current Bayer sensor design. Once again, it comes from Hideo Hoshuyama, the engineer behind the D2x and the Nikon Full Colour Sensor patent. Whether the new sensor ever see’s the ‘light-of-day’ is another story.

In a regular bayer array of 4 pixels (2×2), there is 1 pixel that captures the red light, 1 for the blue light and 2 pixels that capture the green pixels. Arranged something in a pattern below:

R G
G B

The sensor Nikon is looking at would be very similar, except that the green pixels will vary a little. One of the green pixel (G1) will be the normal pixel as used today, the second green pixel (G2) will capture the wavelength between red and green or blue and green. It will also not be as sensitive as the other pixels.

Here are a few of pages from the patent.

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3

A whole lot of processing then takes place which compares the luminance levels between the pixels, white balance etc, to put the image into a regular RGB output. The at the from of this article is something like what the patent application describes.

R G1
G2 B

This will allow for a great colour range in the image. The lower sensitivity of the G2 pixel will allow better capturing of the highlights, so dynamic range should be improved. This particular concept is similar to what Fuji was doing in their SuperCCD. What they did was place a small pixel in between each other pixel which allowed for capturing the highlights. As far as regular bayer is concerned, this would probably be fair to say that Fuji cameras have excellent dynamic range.

The problems with the Fuji sensor is that it placed an enormous load on the sensor, the RAW files were huge and processing files was time consuming. Though there may be a couple of extra steps involved in processing the file, Nikons approach shouldn’t see as much penalty as the Fuji’s suffer.

All the camera manufacturers are always looking to squeeze a little bit more out of their sensors. With the recent introduction of the Fuji F200 EXR, let’s see if Nikon in bold enough to come out with something like this new technology. Time will tell.

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