60MP Phase One P65+ Digital Back Trumps Kodak’s 50MP

Phase One P65+ Digital Back

There’s a mega-war for megapixels going on in the niche market for digital backs. Barely a week after Kodak announced its 50-megapixel KAF-50100 image sensor the new Hasselblad H3DII-50 medium format camera, Phase One is countering with its 60-megapixel P65+ digital back.

The official announcement from Phase One still has to come out today, but already Michael Reichmann at Luminous Landscape has posted his musings on the new digital back and on that niche market in general.

Mr. Reichmann notes that Hasselblad and Kodak were able to get more megapixels into the same real estate (39 MP to 50 MP) by reducing the size of each photo site from 6.8 microns to 6 microns, but apparently with no reduction in image quality. Phase One and its design partner and chip fabricator Dalsa have also gone to a 6 micron pixel size, but are able to up the ante to 60MP due to the 20% increase in the sensor’s physical size, he adds.

Michael writes, “Phase One is claiming equal, if not enhanced image quality (compared with the Kodak/Hasselblad combo), with a dynamic range of 12.5 stops for the P65+, up from 11.75 stops on the P45+. This three quarter stop improvement may not seem like a lot, but if actual, will be worthwhile in real world shooting situations.”

[Via: Luminous Landscape]
[Site: Phase One]

Published by Chris Malinao

Chris teaches Lightroom as workflow software to photography students at the FPPF, Federation of Philippine Photographers Foundation. He also teaches smartphone photography.