MNB Reader Generated: BSI Sensors Explained

While presenting the 1020 Elop made a point to mention that it had a “BSI” sensor, or Back Illuminated Sensor, but what the hell does that mean? Well thankfully Nabkawe has made another helpful post detailing it:

See BSI is short for “B”ack”S”ide “I”lluminated sensor   and its a relatively new tech that solved a common FSI problem.  (BSI is also abbreviated as BIS with the S standing for Sensor)

You see an FSI sensor would look like this

 

Yes not a brilliant technology as you can see above wires were placed above the light sensitive diodes which reduced the amount of light captured. because light had to go through the space leftover between the wires.

Note: In the figure to the right , those wires kind of look like an aperture;  this meant that  intensive rays of light wouldn’t miss with your end picture , like the lights of lamp posts for example.

now a BSI sensor would look like this

As you can see , light can now hit the diodes directly instead of passing through those wires. this creates a 60% to 90% increase in the amount of light captured and thus better night time photography.

Note2: As that accidental aperture formed by the wires in FSI sensors isn’t present in such sensor there is the chance of an off angle light ray registering on the wrong pixel.

If you added the above note to the fact that the Lumia 920 has a wide aperture”f2.0″  you’d understand why the Lumia 920 can misbehave in areas where there’s lots of artificial lights ( oil residue can create similar effects too though in the image bellow the lens was just cleaned with a microfiber cloth.)

So you can now understand why the #lumia1020 went for slightly smaller aperture 2.2 then.( as second generation OIS is much better now , they can make up the decrease in light easily.)

 

 

Btw if still don’t get what a BSI means , here’s a short video

 

I hope this was a good read for those of you who are new to the photography scene.

 hit me with any “LIGHT” questions you might have (its no pun , I’m not much of an expert :D)  on twitter @nabkawe5 or here in the comments.

Category: Lumia, Nokia, Windows Phone