Sony Working on 1:1 Sensor

Larger than the A900?

I told Olympus to do it, but it appears that Sony might beat them to it. I'm not surprised. Again, Sony has shown a desire to innovate, Olympus and Panasonic have not. Is it any surprise that one of the boldest yet most obvious ideas comes out of the House That Walkman Built.

Why is a 1:1 sensor so cool, you may ask? Because with it, framing becomes a non-issue. No matter which way you are holding the camera, it can be portrait or landscape. It is a stunningly liberating experience to be able to use the full scope of a sensor and crop the image however you please.

Importantly, in the digital age, sensor size correlates with noise performance. The larger the sensor, the better the noise. There is simply more light hitting the sensor. So you can understand why I wanted Micro 4/3 to adopt this; their primary disadvantage is noise. A square sensor does not extend outside of the image circle produced by the lens, meaning that systems remains compatible. And since I am not a psycho purist, I don't care about post-production and I love to crop!

I don't understand Panasonic most of all. The GH1 and GH2 have the multi-aspect sensor which was legitimately innovative. Why on God's green Earth they failed to capitalize on that and innovate further is beyond me.

I'm not the biggest fan of the SLT technology. I actually prefer a good, old-fashioned mirror and prism setup, and really dislike the slight drop in sharpness and noise performance caused by the light loss of the ST mirror. Still, if Sony produced a 1:1 camera... I don't know. That's the kind of thing for which you toss caution to the wind.