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Thanks Ray and Colin. The KAF16803 is in my opinion still the best sensor out there and likely to be for the foreseeable future.
Its got the FOV, the well depth, the good QE, the low noise and the ability to crop being so huge. The downside is the cost of the gear to be able to use it. Not all scopes can handle a 52mm diagonal.
Ray there have been developments in Bayer filters with some camera companies reducing the colour density of the filters to gain more throughput. Also there are some companies (Samsung is one) that are experimenting with a clear RGB or clear RB filters that get more throughput again like the Kodak Truesense.
Also Sony is working on a sensor where the colour filter array moves across the pixels so each pixel gets RGB. That would boost performance as well. Big time boost.
Additionally there are sensors being developed by Panasonic and Fujifilm that have an organic top layer which have much greater dynamic range.
Also Sony is working on a Foveon style sensor where the light hitting different depths into the sensor determines RGB. Foveon though has poor high QE performance.
Also the latest Sony sensor in the A7Rii is backside illuminated. With smaller sensors this represents a 40% gain in sensitivity as the surrounding circuitry is under the sensor. The pixels are closer to the surface and more light overlaps increasing performance a lot (said to help small pixelled sensors more than large pixelled cameras). So there is a lot of development going on in this area and we are seeing some of it hitting the market.
Samsung's NX1 also has a backside illuminated APSc sensor that is similar (probably not as advanced as the Sony one which is full frame).
I wonder also with the advent of 4K video with these super sensors becoming more common if this would make these cameras super for planetary work. You could image a planet in K video. The Sony RX100 4 is backside illuminated and capable of 240fps in 4K. That is phenomenal and the A7Rii is even more with full frame downsampling in Super 5 format into 4K. Planetary imagers may be able to take advantage of this.
A Sony A7Sii is likely to have backside illumination added very likely and that would make it crazy good.
Greg.
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