Canon earlier today unveiled a jaw-dropping new multi-purpose camera with a maximum ISO of over 4,000,000. In layman’s terms, this bad boy can effectively see in the dark.
Dubbed the ME20F-SH, Canon’s latest creation can record full color HD video in extremely dark conditions. How dark? Well Canon’s press release notes that it can capture video “with a minimum subject illumination of less than 0.0005 lux. ”To put that in perspective, Petapixel writes, “a full moon on a clear night is about 0.27 to 1.0 lux, and 0.0001 lux is a moonless, overcast night. The camera can capture high-quality images of things the human eye cannot see.”
DON'T MISS: The latest big iPhone 6s leak brings some bad news along with it
Touting the devices incredible low light recording capabilities, Canon explains what makes the ME20F-SH so unique:
While capturing video in extreme low-light conditions often requires the use of infrared illumination (a technique that only yields video in black and white), the ME20F-SH camera achieves impressive high-sensitivity performance enabling the capture of color Full HD video with reduced noise in low-light conditions without the need for infrared illumination.
This thing seems unreal, and Canon has already laid out a myriad of possible real world applications, including nighttime surveillance and security, cinematic production, reality television, and nature/wildlife documentaries. What’s more, because of the camera’s design, Canon boasts that it can be “easily incorporated into existing infrastructures and systems to provide high-quality video capture even where subjects might not be seen with the naked eye.”
As for the technology used to make this camera of the future of a reality, Canon explains:
The ME20F-SH camera’s CMOS sensor has pixels measuring 19 μm square3, which is more than 5.5 times the surface area of the pixels on the CMOS sensor featured in select top-of-the-line interchangeable lens cameras4. Furthermore, the sensor’s pixels and readout circuitry make use of Canon proprietary technologies to achieve both reduced noise and exceptionally high sensitivity on subjects with a minimum illumination of less than 0.0005 lux. This multi-purpose camera allows users to discern subjects under even some of the dimmest lighting conditions, such as environments lit by artificial illumination or under a moonless night sky. Furthermore, similar to Canon’s Cinema EOS System of professional digital cinematography cameras, the ME20F-SH camera includes Canon Log and Wide DR, which make possible a wide dynamic range, delivering high-image-quality video results across a range of illumination environments, from low- to brightly lit conditions.
