New Sony Sensor Opens up 8K for MFT Crowd

43Rumors.com reports that it has some corroboration for earlier reports that Sony will come out with a Micro Four Thirds (MFT), 30+ megapixel sensor this year that can record 8k video. This appears not to make complete sense, as the MFT format’s aspect ratio is 4:3, and that ratio would require a minimum of 48 megapixels to accomplish a sensor-pixel-to-image-pixel ratio with the long side being at least 8,000 pixels wide.

“8k video” with a sensor in the 30-40 megapixel range could be produced if the manufacturers were to line-double, or use other cheesy effects to check the box of 8k without delivering much in the way of superior performance to 4k.

The most obvious problem with MFT 8k is simply the fact that the sensor is so small, making the extra resolution a great computational and heat downside for relatively little sharpness upside. MFT camera image quality degrades above 400 ISO relative to that of APS-C sensor cameras. That said, Sony’s 61 megapixel full frame sensor in the A7 Mark 4 would have roughly a similar pixel pitch, and no one begrudges the pixel quality of that package.