Sensors & Digital Capture
60 terms · page 1 of 3
Aliasing
The misrepresentation of detail finer than a sampling system can resolve, appearing as false structure rather than as blur.
Sensors & Digital CaptureAmp Glow
A coloured brightening at one edge or corner of a long exposure, caused by heat and stray light from on-chip electronics.
Sensors & Digital CaptureAnalogue Gain
Amplification applied to the sensor's signal before it is digitised, which is the physical mechanism behind ISO settings.
Sensors & Digital CaptureAnalogue-to-digital Converter
The circuit that turns the analogue voltage from each photosite into a discrete numerical value.
Sensors & Digital CaptureBackside-illuminated Sensor
A sensor design in which the wiring layer is moved behind the photodiodes so light reaches them unobstructed.
Sensors & Digital CaptureBanding Noise
Horizontal or vertical stripes appearing in heavily lifted shadows, caused by variations between readout channels.
Sensors & Digital CaptureBayer Filter
The dominant colour filter array pattern, using two green filters for every red and blue in a repeating square of four.
Sensors & Digital CaptureBlack Level
The numerical value a sensor reports for a completely unexposed photosite, subtracted during processing to establish true black.
Sensors & Digital CaptureBlooming
The spilling of charge from a saturated photosite into its neighbours, spreading a bright highlight beyond its true boundaries.
Sensors & Digital CaptureCCD Sensor
A sensor type in which charge is shifted across the chip to a single output amplifier for conversion.
Sensors & Digital CaptureCMOS Sensor
A sensor type in which each photosite has its own amplifier and the charge is converted to voltage at the pixel itself.
Sensors & Digital CaptureColour Filter Array
A mosaic of coloured filters over the photosites that allows a monochrome sensor to record colour.
Sensors & Digital CaptureDark Current
Charge that accumulates in a photosite from thermal energy rather than from light, growing with exposure time and temperature.
Sensors & Digital CaptureDark Frame
An exposure made with the shutter closed, at the same duration, temperature and ISO as the real image, used to characterise sensor noise.
Sensors & Digital CaptureDead Pixel
A photosite that records no signal at all, appearing as a permanently black point in every image.
Sensors & Digital CaptureDemosaicing
The process of reconstructing a full-colour image from the single-colour samples recorded under a colour filter array.
Sensors & Digital CaptureDual Conversion Gain
A sensor design offering two selectable amplification circuits, one optimised for dynamic range and one for low noise at high ISO.
Sensors & Digital CaptureEffective Pixels
The number of photosites actually contributing to the final image, as distinct from the total on the chip.
Sensors & Digital CaptureFalse Colour
Coloured artefacts appearing on fine detail, caused by the colour filter array sampling different colours at different positions.
Sensors & Digital CaptureFixed Pattern Noise
Noise that appears in the same places on every frame, caused by small manufacturing differences between photosites.
Sensors & Digital CaptureFlat Field Correction
Dividing an image by a frame of evenly illuminated field to remove vignetting, dust shadows and photosite sensitivity variation.
Sensors & Digital CaptureFoveon Sensor
A sensor that records all three colours at every location by stacking three photodiode layers at different depths in the silicon.
Sensors & Digital CaptureFull-well Capacity
The maximum number of electrons a photosite can hold before it saturates and stops responding to further light.
Sensors & Digital CaptureHigh ISO Noise Reduction
In-camera processing that smooths noise in high-sensitivity images before writing the JPEG.