Sony Teases New IMX686 Smartphone Camera Sensor
I’m a bit of a fan of the two new Sony Xperia 1 & Xperia 5 smartphones, for filmmaking purposes at least. They haven’t received too many rave reviews, but almost no reviewers focus on two elements important to filmmakers. Namely, manual control combined with operational stability.
If you’re filming in a situation where you’re under time pressure, camera stability becomes an issue. So Sony’s own Cinema Pro app for manual control in those two Xperia phones becomes an unmentioned plus. The app should be more stable than a 3rd party camera app.
However, Sony’s Xperia has been going through troubled times, losing almost a billion dollars in the year up to their restructuring in March 2019. In April, the Xperia Mobile division became part of a new division called Electronics Products and Solutions. This means Xperias are now being developed alongside TV, audio, and camera product lines. They also moved their Xperia factory from China to Thailand.
Sony’s new IMX686 sensor
Despite it’s struggling mobile arm, Sony is one of the biggest suppliers of camera sensors in town. Its IMX586 sensor is used in many modern smartphones and was among the first 48MP sensors. Now Sony have just released a teaser in a recent post on Weibo for their new IMX686 sensor.
Sony says all still images in the video were captured using the IMX686 “on a prototype board and PC”. The video was shot with an alternative device, presumably. Neither do we know what lenses were used. Captions also say Sony will release the sensor next year, so we can expect to see it in next generation smartphones.
From a glance at the still images screen-grabbed from the video, the sensor seems to achieve a wide dynamic range for a smartphone. But we’ll have to wait to see how it performs as part of a smartphone camera system.
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