CMOS or CCD Sensor?
In a previous article, I talked about how a sensor works, and that inspired me to write this article. This is another topic that is going to be tough to answer, but that has both a short, simple answer and a longer, more complex answer.
The short answer is that CMOS senors are cheaper, use less power, can process images faster and are for most people going to be the better option because of this and because the image quality is pretty similar to a CCD one with modern advancements.
A CCD sensor will perform better in low-light, have higher-quality pictures with less noise in them and will have higher color depth, resolution and dynamic range. All this while costing more and using, sometimes, 100 times more energy.
Now, here comes the long answer.
Most digital cameras originally used CCD sensors for developing images (although, the CMOS sensor was actually invented in 1963, six years before the CCD). These sensors are considered to produce higher quality images, because of less noise production during the processing, much higher dynamic range (sometimes as much as double a CMOS sensor). Those benefits came with the caveat of slower image processing, because of how the pixels are measured sequentially, and significantly higher cost.
The image processing taking longer is also a result of not having the main processes taking place on the sensor itself, but on other boards in the camera. This limits the number of readout channels that can be used to get information quickly.
The CMOS sensor arose with the want for people to be able to have smaller and smaller cameras that could process images quickly. Unlike a CCD, a CMOS censor processes all of the pixels at once, which results in pictures being produced quicker and higher shutter speeds. The whole idea behind these sensors was versatility.
The cheapness of the CMOS sensor was a main factor in how widespread cameras have become in all of our electronic devices. Your phone has a CMOS sensor, which played a key role in getting photography and videography into the hands of every person on the street. You can snap a picture quickly and move on and always be ready to snap another one.
In previous years, CMOS sensors were considered significantly inferior to their CCD counterparts, but as technology advanced, so did the quality of the CMOS. The modern CMOS is so close to the CCD in quality that the latter has been almost entirely phased out in the mainstream market.
You can still find high-end point and shoots with the sensor and sometimes in the camcorder market. They do still have their advantages over CMOS, but the average user will most likely not notice unless they’re shooting a lot in low-light or shooting in flickering lights.
