Nikon Japan has been busy creating the next generation of 1″ stacked sensors. The latest is a 17.84 Megapixel stacked design with hyper-fast memory interconnect that shoots up to 1000fps at 4k resolution which is no slouch. The sensor is still in development but it will be a possibility to see it in a camera that could compete head to head with the Sony RX series which now dominate prosumer P&S sales. It was announced at ISSCC (International Solid-State Circuits Conference) held in San Francisco, February 15, 2021.
The sensor works by shooting in buckets of 16 x 16 pixels as one block, and then subsequently 264 x 264 pixel blocks (4224 x 4224 pixels) are conformed to form the final image at nearly 18MP. It is unclear at this time if 4k video will be a windowed resolution or a supersampled then reduced final image from the full sensor. The market for this sensor goes beyond consumer cameras as it is aimed at other applications like self-driving cars and production lines.
