FS-5 Sensor readout technique?

[Cliff Totten]

I'm curious about the FS5's sensor readout. (and yes, I guess this apples to the FS7 and FS700 too)

Sony states that it has an 11.6MP Exmor CMOS sensor in the FS5.

It's a UHD readout on the FS5 and DCI 4k on the FS700 and FS7.

Question: How does it scan and read out it's image sensor?

1.) Does it line skip? - I tend to doubt this. That would cause increased moire and I think Sony have gotten well past the old line skipping camera days of several years ago.

2.) Does it do a 1:1 pixel read out? Maybe, but with those extra, unused pixels and rows, that would cause some middle sensor crop or cut out. Is that the answer?

3.) Does it read all 11.6 million pixels and bin the values or scale the image down to 8+ million for UHD or 4K? We know Sony has a fantastic scaling engine in it's Handycam and Alpha cameras that handle over sampling in a fantastic way.

I dont know the answer but there are definitely 3 million or so of "leftover" pixels. What is Sony doing with them?

CT

[Jack Zhang]

From the ghosting we've seen in the noise reduction, the sensor may be scanning faster than the frame rate recorded to provide multiple samples.

1:1 would be the UHD 60p mode of the DVX200, which has a really bad crop factor introduced, so it's likely a scaling engine from the Alpha cameras.