Sensors & Digital Capture
60 terms · page 2 of 3
Hot Pixel
A photosite with abnormally high dark current that records as a bright coloured dot in long exposures.
Sensors & Digital CaptureImage Sensor
The silicon chip that converts light into an electrical signal, forming the digital equivalent of film.
Sensors & Digital CaptureInfrared Cut Filter
A filter bonded in front of the sensor that blocks infrared and ultraviolet light to which silicon is sensitive but the eye is not.
Sensors & Digital CaptureISO Invariance
The property of a sensor whose noise is essentially the same whether a file is brightened by raising ISO in camera or by lifting exposure…
Sensors & Digital CaptureLine Skipping
Reading only a fraction of a sensor's rows to produce a lower-resolution image quickly, discarding the rest.
Sensors & Digital CaptureLinear Response
The property of a digital sensor that its output is directly proportional to the number of photons received.
Sensors & Digital CaptureLong Exposure Noise Reduction
A camera function that records a second, unexposed frame of equal duration and subtracts its noise pattern from the image.
Sensors & Digital CaptureMegapixel
One million pixels, the standard unit for stating a sensor's resolution.
Sensors & Digital CaptureMicrolens Array
A layer of tiny lenses, one above each photosite, that gathers light which would otherwise fall on the gaps between them.
Sensors & Digital CaptureMoiré
A false pattern of wavy bands or colour that appears when fine repeating detail in a subject interferes with the sensor's pixel grid.
Sensors & Digital CaptureNoise Floor
The level of background noise below which no real signal can be distinguished.
Sensors & Digital CaptureNyquist Limit
The highest spatial frequency a sensor can record correctly, equal to half its sampling rate.
Sensors & Digital CaptureOptical Low-pass Filter
A birefringent layer in front of the sensor that slightly blurs the image to prevent detail finer than the pixel grid from being recorded.
Sensors & Digital CapturePhase-detect Pixel
A photosite masked on one side, or split in two, so it sees the scene through only part of the lens and can contribute to focus measurement.
Sensors & Digital CapturePhotodiode
The semiconductor junction within a photosite that converts arriving photons into electrical charge.
Sensors & Digital CapturePhotosite
A single light-collecting element on a sensor, corresponding to one pixel in the final image.
Sensors & Digital CapturePixel Binning
Combining the signal from several adjacent photosites into one output pixel to improve signal-to-noise ratio.
Sensors & Digital CapturePixel Pitch
The centre-to-centre distance between adjacent photosites on a sensor.
Sensors & Digital CapturePixel Shift Multi-shot
A mode that moves the sensor by precise sub-pixel amounts between exposures and combines the frames into one higher-quality image.
Sensors & Digital CaptureQuantum Efficiency
The proportion of photons striking a photosite that are actually converted into measurable signal.
Sensors & Digital CaptureRaw Bit Depth
The number of bits used to record each photosite's value in a raw file, determining how many tonal levels are captured.
Sensors & Digital CaptureRaw Data
The minimally processed values read from the sensor, before demosaicing, white balance or tone rendering.
Sensors & Digital CaptureRead Noise
Noise introduced by the process of reading and digitising the sensor's signal, independent of how much light was captured.
Sensors & Digital CaptureReadout Speed
How quickly a sensor's entire array can be transferred off the chip, usually quoted as the time to scan the full frame.