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There is a full frame mirrorless now. That is the Sony A7 (24mp) and the Sony A7r (36.4mp). I have the Sony A7r. I had a Nikon D800e for a year and a half. The sensor is the same with the difference of the Sony has no AA filter (the blurring filter that reduces moire) and the Nikon had a double one to self cancel the blurring effect.
Both respond very similarly with the Sony having a touch more noise but I think its ISO6400 is brighter than the ISO6400 of the Nikon so it comes down to size. The Sony is very small and the Nikon about average for a DSLR.
DSLRs main gains over the last 8 years is in noise. They are a lot less noisy than they were just a few years ago. The bar has been set very high.
I think the popularity of nightscapes has come about by the good high ISO low noise performance started by the Canon 5D2 and now shared by practically any modern camera of the last 2 years.
Sensor developments are quite strong in the digital camera arena but seem stagnant in the CCD area. Kodak sold its sensor making business to True Sense Imaging about 2 years ago and they have put out very little and nothing groundbreaking since.
Sony has made some advance in CCD with the ICX694 chip being a very good sensor.
But DSLRs/mirrorless are advancing big time. Backside illuminated chips as in Sony RX10011 and in many smartphones now (a 13mp Sony chip) offer a 40% gain in sensitivity.
Fuji is working on an organic sensor with much greater dynamic range than any other sensor and possibly could have something to market next year.
Sony is rumoured to have a 54mp full frame DSLR sensor. It is likely to appear in the next year or so.
Canon going for split pixels to aid in phase detect autofocus is probably going the wrong way for astro as small pixels usually mean worse noise. 70D owners could advise there. It remains to be seen if Canon uses that approach on other camera models or if its a one off.
Panasonic developed an interesting colour matrix which uses prisms to split the light into colours rather than dye coloured filters.
There is development going on with the Foveon style sensor where photons are read at different depths of the sensor for RGB. The colours go different depths. One of the manufacturers has a patent for a sensor like this which is different to the Sigma Foveon which has superb colour and resolution but poor high ISO low noise performance.
The Fuji organic sensor seems the most interesting. Also I read about an organic sensor that is flexible.
Greg.
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