Mensa AG 2016

Photons to Electrons: A Bit About the Image Sensor in Your Camera (Room Town & Country)

02 Jul 16
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM

Tracks: Speaker

Speaker(s): Eric Fossum
Inventor of the camera-on-a-chip that is used in a billion+ smartphones. The image sensor is the chip at the heart of every camera. It converts light (photons) to electrons and bytes. We’ll talk a little about how that works, from microlenses and color filter arrays to the device physics of semiconductor pixels and circuits for their readout. We will also talk about a possible next-generation image sensor, the Quanta Image Sensor that counts every photon that hits the camera chip and a possible real paradigm shift in creating images in the future. This talk will inform an audience with a wide range of backgrounds, from photography enthusiasts to physicists and computer scientists.