While reading through the specs of the just announced Sony Ericsson Xperia arc, one particular spec I wasn’t too familiar with and that was the Sony Exmor R camera. Since I’m sort of a photo-geek in my free time, I was interested in what this brought, so I looked into it. In short, it’s a back illuminated CMOS sensor that provides much better low light capabilities. For the long answer, keep reading.
According to Sony, the Exmor R has the ability to collect roughly twice the amount of light as a standard CMOS sensor of the same size. Doubling the light collection can create less noisy photos or faster shutter speeds in low light or a little of both, resulting in potentially better looking photos while keeping the physical size of the sensor small. Without going into too much detail, which is available on the linked Sony website below, a back-illuminated sensor moves some of the wiring and such behind the photodiode itself so that the light doesn’t have to pass first (and get reflected by) the wiring.
Front and Back-Illuminated CMOS Sensors
As you can see in the simple diagram above, potentially more light will be collected per time span. This is the same type of camera that is currently used in the iPhone 4 and hopefully more manufactures start to deploy back-illuminated sensors to help boost some of the sometimes lacking phone cameras.
