Quote:
Originally Posted by Bassnut
I had a bit of fish through Sonys sensor web site, it seems all the premium "industrial" sensors they make are CCDs. Cant imagine Sony would bother with CCDs at all if CMOS was superior generally.
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I think that CCDs are still favoured for industrial uses, because precise measurement of moving objects is required - that is not possible with rolling shutter CMOS. However, new CMOS designs with global shutters are coming onto the market and this last refuge of the CCD could be under threat. In other respects, CMOS is up there in quantum efficiency, read noise, etc. A good example of the way things are changing is found in the planetary imaging field, where the premium CCD cameras have now been joined by CMOS ones with at least equivalent sensitivity and noise performance, higher speed readout, more pixels and lower cost.
In terms of Lee's original question, expect a wider variety of choices in dedicated astro cameras in future, with high performance at lower cost as CMOS and it's derivatives makes inroads.