Foveon's F19 imager for compact digicams
By
Mike Tomkins
(Friday, August 8, 2003 - 04:44 EDT)
We notice this morning that our friends over at the Digital Photography Review have posted an item on an imager from Foveon, the F19X3-A50.
Phil's article describes the sensor as "brand new". We actually first mentioned it back in March, and it was initially listed on Foveon's site around the start of the year - but being that Phil has called attention to the spec sheet, we're doing the same to avoid a flood of emails telling us we missed an announcement. ;)
The 1440 x 1088 pixel (1420 x 1060 pixel effective) sensor's 1/1.8" size is obviously aimed at being used in a compact digital camera. Many existing digicam designs use the same sensor size - so a 1/1.8" Foveon chip would be able to "plug" into existing camera designs. (The optics would be the same, but of course the processing on a Foveon sensor is quite different to a traditional sensor - meaning that it isn't just quite as simple as switching sensor chips really.)
The F19 sensor replaced Foveon's 1344 x 1024 pixel (1280 x 960 pixel effective) 1/2" F10 sensor that was announced when Foveon's X3 debuted in February of last year. That sensor was never used in any camera and quietly disappeared from Foveon's site, and likely was replaced for exactly the reason mentioned above - because manufacturers wanted a sensor size that matched the most commonly available optics.
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