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Gigafactory has announced that a partnership with Canon, Nikon and Sony has been signed yesterday.
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Gigafactory is a lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle subassembly factory near Reno, Nevada. The facility is owned and operated by Tesla, Inc. to supply the battery packs for its electric vehicles and stationary storage systems.
Canon approached Gigafactory about 18 months ago, driven by consumer sentiment to look at ways to evolve Canon camera products towards renewable energy. Since that initial approach, Nikon and Sony were invited into the project.
Beginning in the second quarter of 2020, Canon, Nikon and Sony will be introducing DSLR and Mirrorless cameras with solar battery recharging capabilities. The sensor in your digital camera will now also be a solar energy device capable of recharging your camera battery.
Working with Gigafactory engineers, design teams and dedicated ergonomics experts, the camera manufacturers are going to completely redesign the light sensitive device in a camera we all know as the sensor. We know that digital sensors capture light in the form of electrical energy, which is converted into a digital value, and further processed into an image.
Professor Julius Kelp of Gigafactory briefly commented that sensors can be reconfigured to use electrical output for both image rendering and power output.
Prof Kelp was unable to elaborate further due to proprietary IP limitations. By leveraging the ability to capture electrical energy, their research found that this energy can be subsequently amplified into higher levels, therefore negating the wasteful heat output that affects digital imaging sensor designs. This energy can then be diverted back to the battery.
The use of recently discovered advancements in super and ultra capacitor designs, and power MOSFET efficiencies have allowed scientists to apply such technology into every day products. The early prototype sensors are providing the ability to recharge the battery technology used in current cameras with up to 92% of the charge used to capture the initial image. With further improvements in design, and efficiencies, Professor Kelp believes that more than 100% of the charge used to capture the initial image could be captured to recharge the battery by utilising solar energy capture alongside the redistribution of existing energy within the camera at the time of each sensor exposure.
Preliminary testing has indicated that this re-use of electrical charge has further benefits of reducing noise, with flow on effects of higher ISO capability due to the lower noise floor level.
ISO equivalence testing so far has indicated that gain levels at ISO 4,000,000 with SNR levels equal to ISO64 in current generation cameras, and that equivalent high ISO (SNR) in current technology sensors could make possible ISO sensitivities well into the billions and trillions, ie. ISO1G and ISO1T values. This advancement has obvious benefits in high speed photography applications, whilst still maintaining high quality SNR points, and therefore minimal ISO noise intrusion.
Elon Musk made a brief statement via the internet on the future possibilities of this research:
" With the use of efficient photovoltaics on the camera sensor, and the related smaller battery requirements of the camera, the sky is the limit now ".
Initially, only one or two models from each brand will receive the recharging ability, with a drive to ensure that by 2025 all camera bodies include the new sensors to ensure sustainable energy demands are produced that will be able to efficiently recharge the camera battery without the need for fossil fuels.
Canon CEO Fujio Mitarai said that Canon will shift the focus of its imaging business to renewable energy supply achieving complete integration within 5 years.
Nobuyoshi Gokyu, General Manager of Imaging Business Unit at Nikon stated a more customer focused reason. Mr Gokyu stated that this development would mean photographers no longer need to take multiple battery packs to support long days of shooting. Especially we believe that our landscape photographers who spend days trekking into remote wilderness and sport photographers who can shoot hundreds, if not thousands of photos during a sporting event, will find the solar recharging invaluable.
With his company one of the more recent and successful companies entering the digital camera industry in a serious manner, Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai released a media statement that stated Sony was pleased to be able to engage Gigafactory and be part of the research and development that has created this significant and important development in camera design and function. This initiative to move away from traditional power sources is just another progression for future care of our environment.
Now that the agreement has been signed, Gigafactory will create the manufacturing line to produce the solar sensors and batteries needed for all three photographic companies. Pre-production camera models already exist for all three camera companies. Commercial production will begin during the third quarter of 2019, with the first camera ready solar photovoltaic sensors and battery packs for the 2020 models being supplied to Canon, Nikon and Sony around December 2019. Over the coming months expect to see more detailed information on the new camera designs showing the new sensors as the top three camera companies move to a more sustainable and environmental future.
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Sounds really interesting. Cannot wait to see the first images of how these cameras will look. As a landscaper, I think this is a great idea. And how often have each of us gone out to take photos and left our battery at home on the charger, or forgotten to check if it was charged? I am looking forward to hearing more about this in the coming weeks and months.
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Originally Posted by ricktas
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