Sony’s back illuminated CMOS sensor Camcorder
Here comes a long awaited first product HDR-XR520V that incorporates Sony’s newly back illuminated CMOS (Exmor R) sensor which company unveiled on June of 2008. The back illuminated CMOS sensor offers nearly twice the sensitivity of the traditional front illumination with five effective mega pixel resolutions capable of 60 frames per second. The back illumination sensor is irradiated from the back side of the Si wafer where there is no wiring allowing it to produce brighter images with the same light intensity. In order for Sony to adapt to the new sensor it focused on image reproduction technology. The camcorder also has an improved anti shake function by increasing the horizontal and vertical working distances of the optical parts by ten times by use of “Smile shutter” technology for image stabilization. These are the parts that move during the image correction processing. Sony also decided to change the shape of diaphragm from the original diamond shape to hexagon shape which is normally used in up scale professional camcorders. But Sony decided to keep the size of the hexagon diaphragm same as the diamond shape. HDR-XR520V is capable of shooting 1920X1080 video and 12 mega pixels of still pictures. It also comes with GPS receiver functionality and map data making it possible to view user’s current location on its LCD map display as well as being able to tag your shooting locations. The tagged videos and still images can be easily reviewed and played back using the Map index function on the camcorder or by means of PMB (Picture Motion Browser) software which can be downloaded to your PC. It comes with tones of other features to name a few are “Face Detection technology which was made possible through BIONZ image processing engine as well as 240GB of Hard drive. The HDR-XR520V retail price will be US $1,500 to be lunch in North America by March of 2009. Sony will also release the product in Japan.
