A full-frame image sensor, like in the 5D Mark II or Nikon D3s, is the equivalent of 35mm. This image sensor is 300mm. This is how well it can see in the dark:
The sensor is on the left compared to a simulation on the right of what the squishy things inside your head can see at 1 lux of illuminance. It’s designed mostly for applications in astronomy, but it’s not so hard to imagine this kind of physics-cheating sensor in your phone, one day.
murry
Friday, September 3, 2010 at 6:52 AMThough you’d need a pretty big phone to fit a sensor like that.
al
Friday, September 3, 2010 at 8:55 AMthe Droid 2 should do it
tbone
Friday, September 3, 2010 at 11:40 AM“compared to a simulation on the right”
Bollocks!
Show us the actual output as raw files not something jimmied up for a trade show and shown on plasma’s with high contrast ratios. There is clearly a torch or some light of reasonable illumination behind the model and I think even a front light hitting her and the wall plus you can see the trees silhouetted against the sky so there may be a sliver of moon or ambient light from some other source. Perhaps if a human eye were closed down to focus on just the torch and had cataracts it might approximate this image but an open eye would see far more than this.