An AE mount rendering from Jay (SonyAlphaLab.com)

Year 2011 has been a difficult year for many manufacturer. In March a Tsunami hit Japan and for months after the Fukushima nuclear plant limited the energy access of factories in the area. Even worse the Thailand flood from October stopped the sensor and camera production for months. Full production capacity will be reached in late February early march only. That’s why the roadmap of almost all companies changed and some of the cameras and lenses I would have expected in 2011 haven’t been announced.

So what’s going to happen in 2012?

First, it’s very likely that also the original 2012 roadmap shifted for a couple of months. So it’s not easy to guess when exactly the enw cameras will eb announced. Let me take the chance and propose you a possible general roadmap of what to expect in 2012:

January: New Sony compact cameras
February-March: New NEX camera ad lenses. As you know the original Sony roadmap showed three new lenses for 2012. I can guarantee you that the roadmap changed…in better! There will be more lenses than expected and one-two new pancakes too.
April-Mai-June: More new NEX camera and lenses + high end compact camera + new NEX camcorder + the new A99 camera. If the roadmap didn’t change because of the Thai flood the A99 with 24 Megapixel should be announced around that time. And it will come with a bunch of new lenses (high-end wide angle zoom, high end tele zoom, new Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 and the 500mm f/4.0).
August-September: It’s Photokina time and the biggest news could be the new high end FF camera with 36 Megapixel and the sort of hybrid AE mount NEX-7 alike fullframe camera. There will be again new NEX and Alpha lenses.

In general the big new technologies in 2012 will be the Fuji organic sensor, Sony new 36 Megapixel sensor, Olympus new viewfinder and Global shutter (Sony/Panasonic). I haven’t heard anything revolutionary coming from Nikon and Canon.

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Sony fulfilled a new patent describing a sensor with global shutter (Click here to see the original patent). This is Sony’s description:
“In the CMOS type image sensor, the photoelectric conversion unit reads out the signal charges for each pixel or for each row where a plurality of pixels is arranged. In this case, exposure time for accumulating the signal charges is difficult to match in all the pixels, and thus in some cases, a captured image is distorted. Particularly, if the motion of a subject is great, this defect is noticeably generated. In order to prevent this defect from being generated, a “global exposure” is performed in which all the pixels start exposure at the same time and finish the exposure at the same time. The “global exposure” is performed by simultaneously driving all the pixels through an electrical control without using the mechanical shutter”

The same patent describes also how Sony wants to increase the number of Megapixels without to lose image quality. It’s the “foveon” alike approach. It’s not the first time we see such a patent:
“In order to realize the high sensitivity, there has been proposed one where a chalcopyrite based compound semiconductor film such as a CuInGaSe₂ film with high light absorption coefficient is used in the photoelectric conversion unit (for example, refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publications No. 2007-123720).
In addition, there has been proposed a “lamination type” where photoelectric conversion units for respective colors are laminated and disposed in a depth direction perpendicular to an imaging surface, instead of disposing the photoelectric conversion units which selectively sense light beams of respective colors in a direction along the imaging surface. In the “lamination type,” each pixel senses not only light of one color but also light of plural colors. For this reason, a light sensing surface is extensively formed and thus use efficiency of light can be improved, thereby improving sensitivity (for example, refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publications No. 2006-245088).”

Can’t wait to see such a sensor coming soon!!!