# Canon 7D Mark II - Finally using Canon's newer fab?



## jrista (Nov 9, 2014)

So, I was poking around on sensorgen.info, and noticed the 7D II was listed. I clicked into it, and saw this:









A larger format Canon sensor with 59% Q.E.!! I've only seen that on their small sensors, the ones that come from their other fab. It hasn't topped 60% yet, but overall it's quite a jump from the 40% range that the vast majority of Canon's prior DSLRs fell into. 


Given the fact that DR hasn't improved despite the increase in Q.E., I am more certain than ever that Canon's problem is in their ADC units. I think this correlates well with the fact that as the readout frequency increases, read noise increases (1D X, 70D, 7D II...all have higher read noise.) That gives me hope that if Canon does move in the future to an on-die hyper-parallel readout system that operates at a lower frequency, that they should be able to reduce their read noise. 


Read noise aside, seeing a Canon APS-C sensor with 59% Q.E. is a good sign. Certainly nothing conclusive, however it does indicate that they very likely have move at least 7D II sensor production to a better fab. It's a stepping stone, and hopefully one of very few to get to a better place on the sensor technology front. Here's to hoping the 5D IV sensor tops 60% Q.E. (and gets to around 65%...that would be another nice jump), and also gets an on-die readout system.


----------



## 2n10 (Nov 9, 2014)

Good catch Jon. I wonder if the 5DIV or the 1DXII will be the sweepstakes winner.


----------



## Don Haines (Nov 9, 2014)

jrista said:


> So, I was poking around on sensorgen.info, and noticed the 7D II was listed. I clicked into it, and saw this:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


we knew it was just a matter of time.....


----------



## Dylan777 (Nov 10, 2014)

@ 59% Q.E would that apply to JPEG or RAW? 

We have seen great high ISO photos from 7D II. However, most(all) of photos were shot in JPEG.


----------



## jrista (Nov 10, 2014)

Dylan777 said:


> @ 59% Q.E would that apply to JPEG or RAW?
> 
> We have seen great high ISO photos from 7D II. However, most(all) of photos were shot in JPEG.




The data on sensorgen.info is based on the raw-derived data from DXO, before DXO mucks with it. DXO gets a LOT of raw data, from countless individual RAW images, so I'd say it's pretty accurate.


----------



## swampler (Nov 10, 2014)

DR may not have improved at base ISO, but it has improved at higher ISOs where most sports and wildlife shots take place (high shutter speed and low light). Improvements where it's needed.


----------



## LetTheRightLensIn (Nov 10, 2014)

If they went to a new fab then why on earth would they not have implemented any of their column ADC or dual ISO read out patents?

Maybe it's just from the CFA filter having been made even more color blind.


----------



## Don Haines (Nov 10, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> If they went to a new fab then why on earth would they not have implemented any of their column ADC or dual ISO read out patents?
> 
> Maybe it's just from the CFA filter having been made even more color blind.


They are very conservative... this might be a case of step one - get the photodiodes/microlenses/support circuitry transferred over to the new fabrication run, and step 2 being to implement the A/D on chip. Don't forget that they are currently using A/D chips from a third party and that might complicate the move as they have no experience designing them... it could be a licencing of the design problem... or countless other reasons. It will come, but with Canon expect it to take time and when it does arrive, to be good.


----------



## Marauder (Nov 10, 2014)

jrista said:


> So, I was poking around on sensorgen.info, and noticed the 7D II was listed. I clicked into it, and saw this:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Great catch Jon!


----------



## jrista (Nov 10, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> If they went to a new fab then why on earth would they not have implemented any of their column ADC or dual ISO read out patents?
> 
> Maybe it's just from the CFA filter having been made even more color blind.




Highly, highly doubtful it has anything to do with the CFA. The CFA "color blindness" might have a minor impact on color noise, but overall the primary source of read noise is the off-die stuff.


I think this is just a baby step. Don said it already, Canon is a very conservative company. Who knows why they did not implement CP-ADC or dual-scale ADC or anything like that. (As far as I know, Canon does not have a dual ISO readout patent...they have a dual-scale ADC, which is used to switch to a slower readout when possible (i.e. longer exposures/slower frame rates) which allows for lower frequency ADC operation, which does reduce noise, but not like a dual-ISO readout would.)


----------



## Woody (Nov 10, 2014)

I don't think sensor QE tells us much. Consider the following Nikon camera models:

Camera QE
D3	90%
D3X	42%
D3s	57%
D4	52%
D4s	52%
D610	51%
D800	56%
D810	47%


----------



## Coldhands (Nov 10, 2014)

I would like nothing more that for Canon to finally move on from their 500nm process, but I can't help but think that if they went to all the trouble to implement a new fab, that they would use it to create an all-new sensor that provides market separation from the 70D. In other words, why spend so much on R&D for your top-of-the-range APS-C body only for people to think "oh, its just the same as the old sensor with a few tweaks."

Then again my knowledge of CMOS production is elementary, and there could be a perfectly good reason to use a new process on existing architecture. Here's hoping that Chipworks analyses one so we can know for sure.


----------



## Harv (Nov 10, 2014)

You lost me at.... A larger format Canon sensor with 59% Q.E.!!


----------



## AlanF (Nov 10, 2014)

jrista said:


> Dylan777 said:
> 
> 
> > @ 59% Q.E would that apply to JPEG or RAW?
> ...



Quantum efficiency (QE) is the efficiency at which photons are converted to current, which is prior to and independent of the processing of data to RAW or JPEG. Right?


----------



## Marsu42 (Nov 10, 2014)

jrista said:


> So, I was poking around on sensorgen.info, and noticed the 7D II was listed. I clicked into it, and saw this



Interesting, changing the fab probably is the reason why Canon calls it another sensor than the 70d when at first sight they're very similar. Is the qe also the reason why it has nearly as good (for Nikon trolls: worse) dynamic range as the 6d (iso200: 7d2: 11.2ev, 6d:11.4ev and ... 70d: 10.8ev )?

It would be interesting to know what sensorgen-like values would result if this sensor-qe would be upscaled to ff size.


----------



## racebit (Nov 10, 2014)

Coldhands said:


> I would like nothing more that for Canon to finally move on from their 500nm process, but I can't help but think that if they went to all the trouble to implement a new fab, that they would use it to create an all-new sensor that provides market separation from the 70D. In other words, why spend so much on R&D for your top-of-the-range APS-C body only for people to think "oh, its just the same as the old sensor with a few tweaks."
> 
> Then again my knowledge of CMOS production is elementary, and there could be a perfectly good reason to use a new process on existing architecture. Here's hoping that Chipworks analyses one so we can know for sure.



Intel, the leading CPU manufacturer, uses a TIC TOC method for their CPUs, where one changes the the manufacturing process and the other changes the architecture, but Intel does not change both at same time, too difficult / risky. They prefer to consolidate the manufacturing process first, and only on next iteration change the architecture. 
Let's hope the same is happening with Canon, but I still find too good to be true.


----------



## privatebydesign (Nov 10, 2014)

Woody said:


> I don't think sensor QE tells us much. Consider the following Nikon camera models:
> 
> Camera QE
> D3	90%
> ...



Just goes to show, the further the measurement moves away from actual best processed images, the less interesting and relevant the metric becomes. D810 9% less than the D800 and 12% less the the 7D MkII.


----------



## tayassu (Nov 10, 2014)

Woody said:


> I don't think sensor QE tells us much. Consider the following Nikon camera models:
> 
> Camera QE
> D3	90%
> ...



90% with the D3?! That can't be true...

But otherwise, a nice improvement!


----------



## Sporgon (Nov 10, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> Woody said:
> 
> 
> > I don't think sensor QE tells us much. Consider the following Nikon camera models:
> ...



That's nothing: we should all be still using Nikon D70s, QE two hundred and something percent ! 

I'm not convinced on how this quantum efficiency is calculated using SNR. I have both the 5DII ( QE 31 %) and 6D ( 49%) and am struggling to see how this is relevant in practice. Perhaps in low light there is an advantage in over exposing the 5DII slightly compared with the 6D, but it's unclear. I presume that if enough photons have been retained by the pixel to record a 100% accuracy and converted to an appropriate charge, that is all that matters: once it's 100% accurate it doesn't matter what percentage it was of the total available. 

I guess that as QE goes up ( in the way it is calculated) the sensor can withstand less exposure, but this doesn't necessarily relate to pushing under exposure. This then also allows more acceptable results at higher ISOs. That also matches the characteristics of the 5DII and 6D. 

However I do often look back at images from the Nikon D70 that I had - replaced it with a D200 - and think 'that D70 was a damn fine camera'. 

Just a bit of additional information: I believe the 'equivalent QE' of film was in the region of 10%.


----------



## Lee Jay (Nov 10, 2014)

jrista said:


> Dylan777 said:
> 
> 
> > @ 59% Q.E would that apply to JPEG or RAW?
> ...



The fact that the D3 is listed at 90% QE would seem to indicate otherwise.

I suspect the problem is that DxO doesn't take into account any fiddling companies are doing to their raw data.


----------



## AcutancePhotography (Nov 10, 2014)

I was not aware of http://sensorgen.info/ Thanks for posting the link.


----------



## Lee Jay (Nov 10, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> That's nothing: we should all be still using Nikon D70s, QE two hundred and something percent !



Pfft. D2Xs is 476%.

http://www.sensorgen.info/NikonD2Xs.html


----------



## ajfotofilmagem (Nov 10, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > That's nothing: we should all be still using Nikon D70s, QE two hundred and something percent !
> ...


If the Nikon D2Xs has quantum efficiency of 476%, there is a spell that multiplies the luminous rays. I call this magic of
"RAW has already been cooked."


----------



## Coldhands (Nov 10, 2014)

racebit said:


> Coldhands said:
> 
> 
> > I would like nothing more that for Canon to finally move on from their 500nm process, but I can't help but think that if they went to all the trouble to implement a new fab, that they would use it to create an all-new sensor that provides market separation from the 70D. In other words, why spend so much on R&D for your top-of-the-range APS-C body only for people to think "oh, its just the same as the old sensor with a few tweaks."
> ...



Ah, right. I'd heard Intel use the "tic toc" term with respect to development, but didn't know what it actually referred to. Figured it was just a bit of marketing speak. Thanks for the info.


----------



## Lee Jay (Nov 10, 2014)

ajfotofilmagem said:


> Lee Jay said:
> 
> 
> > Sporgon said:
> ...



Yes, I believe I said that just above.

http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=23616.msg461491#msg461491


----------



## jrista (Nov 10, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > Woody said:
> ...




I never posted this as a means of bringing up exposure pushing. 


All I see is that the quantum efficiency of a Canon sensor has jumped quite a bit from it's predecessors. As I've been watching Canon for some time, and have seen 59% Q.E. on some of their smaller sensors that use the 180nm/Cu interlink fab process, and have never seen more than a 2% jump in Q.E. between any successive APS-C or FF generations in the past, it seems to me as though Canon has started moving to a newer process.


I think the idea that Canon may be borrowing Intel's "TIC TOC" approach is reasonable. Canon is currently moving production to a new fab, and once they have settled in on that new fab, they will ramp up production on a newer sensor design. (My guess is that's actually already happening...a layered sensor that will hopefully be revealed sometime Q1/Q2 2015.) 


As for the value of Q.E....more Q.E. means less gain for a given exposure (at any ISO setting.) That's a good thing, regardless of how you slice it. It's better for high ISO, and is probably one of the key reasons the 7D II gained as much as it did at the high ISO end of things. It's also better for low ISO, however the benefit at low ISO for Canon is currently being masked by their read noise (which I am totally convinced now is due to the use of only a handful of high frequency ADC units off die.)


Regarding accuracy, I am not sure exactly how that plays into things. Quantum efficiency is a rate...it determines the rate of photon to electron conversion. At 59% Q.E. then roughly 59% of the photons incident at the photodiode actually push the potential high enough to free an electron. In other words, for every 100 incident photons, you end up with 59 electrons worth of charge. Accuracy isn't a factor here.


Higher Q.E. means more photons are collected in a given time span. So, if for a 1/30th exposure there are 35,000 photons median incident at each photodiode, then a sensor with 40% Q.E. will end up with a charge of 14,000e-, while a sensor with 59% Q.E. will end up with a charge of 20,650e-. If the FWC of both sensors is 30,000e-, then the former will need more gain to produce the right output voltage than the latter (in other words, you would need to use about 2/3rds stop higher ISO, or simply more gain at base ISO), and therefor will be noisier.


As far as I care, it doesn't matter if you prefer high ISO or low ISO or use a mix of the two...higher Q.E. means lower noise, across the board. At low ISO on Canon sensors, thanks to post-sensor read noise, the benefits at low ISO are swamped. However Canon still has relatively low read noise at higher ISO, so the benefits of higher Q.E. should be apparent. In the case of the 7D II...I think they are, at around 2/3rds of a stop improvement or so.


----------



## Suri JV (Nov 10, 2014)

This is my first post but I always read the discussions in the CR with interest and benefit. This one about QE also made clear to me some new ideas. Can we take it that bigger pixels are also better for that reason? I shall be happy to have a clear answer. Thank you.


----------



## DominoDude (Nov 10, 2014)

jrista said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > privatebydesign said:
> ...



Interesting conclusion! Could, in your mind, something besides the design and positioning (in the signal chain) of the A/D converters explain the structure and level of the read noise for example?


----------



## Don Haines (Nov 10, 2014)

jrista said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > privatebydesign said:
> ...


exactly!

The more electrons you have, the less gain you need. The problem with gain is that you are amplifying the signal AND you are amplifying the noise... realistically, you get nothing out of gain....

Imagine you have the worlds greatest A/D converter and it can count every single electron... You have a sensor operating at 30% QE and it collects 1,000 electrons. your A/D converter spits out a 10 bit number..... but there is noise in the circuitry and your last 4 bits are toggling at random due to that noise.... this gives you 6 bits of signal to noise ratio... If you amplify the signal by a factor of 8, you now have a 13 bit number, but the noise is also amplified and you have 7 bits of noise and your signal to noise ratio remains as 6 bits.

You have three things you can do to improve this.

The first is to get rid of some of the noise. The closer to the source the pixel is sampled, the less noise there will be. This is one of the big reasons why it is best to sample it on the sensor. The other reason is rthat on the sensor you can have many times more A/D units than on a separate chip (connections to an external A/D are restricted by wiring complexity) and with more converters, they can run at slower speeds, and that reduces noise and improves accuracy. In our above example, this might knock off a bit or two worth of noise and improve your signal to noise ratio.

The second thing you can do is to get a bigger pixel. A bigger pixel gathers more electrons.. A pixel twice as large will now gather 2000 electrons, as opposed to the original 1000 electrons, and your A?D converter will now spit out an 11 bit number instead of a 10 bit number, and you have just gained a bit of S/N ratio. This is the reason why FF cameras work better than crop cameras in poor light. 

The third thing you can do is to improve quantum efficiency. If you bumped the sensor from 30% up to 60% efficiency, you get twice as many electrons, and like above, you gain another bit of signal. ... and this is why the bump up in QE has some of us quite excited for the future.

Put all of this together and you have some very significant improvements. You might just end up with the next FF sensor having 2 stops or more improvement over the 5D3.....


----------



## Woody (Nov 10, 2014)

jrista said:


> Higher Q.E. means more photons are collected in a given time span.



Not quite. QE is the number of electrons created per incident photon. If QE > 100%, then more than 1 electron is created per photon.

This begs the question: if the D3 has QE of 90%, then why doesn't Sony/Nikon maintain that number for later models (e.g., D4, D800, D610 etc etc)?


----------



## jrista (Nov 10, 2014)

Woody said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Higher Q.E. means more photons are collected in a given time span.
> ...




Sure. When I say "collected", I mean the photons actually released an electron. Photons can reflect, convert to heat, etc. and when they do, they are not actually "collected" or converted. 


I have wondered if more than 100% Q.E. is possible with a sensor. I read something a while back that >100% Q.E. has been achieved with new materials for solar panel cells...but I've never heard of an image sensor that had more than 100% Q.E. Getting to 90% is actually quite difficult, and I don't know of many Grade 0 CCD sensors that top 90%. 


Regarding Sensorgen.info data, he regenerated it all recently. After the site went down, a lot more data was brought over. I think there is a bug in whatever code brings the data over, because some sensors have wild read noise values and several hundred percent Q.E. I don't believe any of those numbers are valid...I think they are flukes generated by a buggy algorithm. I am not sure that the D3 has 90% Q.E....DPR lists it's Q.E. at 40% on this page:


http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/34581894


That seems to be more in line with the generation the D3 came from. 


Given this, it is entirely possible that the 59% Q.E. value for the 7D II is also wrong.


----------



## Woody (Nov 10, 2014)

jrista said:


> Regarding Sensorgen.info data, he regenerated it all recently. After the site went down, a lot more data was brought over. I think there is a bug in whatever code brings the data over, because some sensors have wild read noise values and several hundred percent Q.E. I don't believe any of those numbers are valid...I think they are flukes generated by a buggy algorithm.



If so, how then can we trust their QE value of 59% for 7D2? Or for that matter, any sensor listed on that site?


----------



## jrista (Nov 10, 2014)

Woody said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Regarding Sensorgen.info data, he regenerated it all recently. After the site went down, a lot more data was brought over. I think there is a bug in whatever code brings the data over, because some sensors have wild read noise values and several hundred percent Q.E. I don't believe any of those numbers are valid...I think they are flukes generated by a buggy algorithm.
> ...




If you would read everything, I already said as much:




jrista said:


> Given this, it is entirely possible that the 59% Q.E. value for the 7D II is also wrong.


----------



## jrista (Nov 10, 2014)

lintoni said:


> I shouldn't laugh... :
> 
> Sorry jrista.




I still think the 7D II numbers are valid. If you look at the data for all the cameras that have "odd" Q.E. numbers, they also all have odd read noise/saturation numbers. The D3 is no exception...oddly, at ISO 6400, the numbers get wonky. I am pretty sure it's those perturbations in the data that are causing crazy Q.E. numbers. The 7D II read noise levels and saturation points look fine, so I am pretty sure the data is accurate.


----------



## lintoni (Nov 10, 2014)

Well, let's hope so, and hope this is a step by Canon to improve the readout of their sensors.


----------



## jrista (Nov 10, 2014)

lintoni said:


> Well, let's hope so, and hope this is a step by Canon to improve the readout of their sensors.




I am really hoping they ditch their current sensor designs entirely and go with something radically new. A layered sensor with on-die readout would be awesome.


----------



## Lee Jay (Nov 10, 2014)

jrista said:


> Regarding Sensorgen.info data, he regenerated it all recently. After the site went down, a lot more data was brought over. I think there is a bug in whatever code brings the data over, because some sensors have wild read noise values and several hundred percent Q.E. I don't believe any of those numbers are valid...I think they are flukes generated by a buggy algorithm.



There's evidence to support this.

http://www.sensorgen.info/NikonD2X.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20140715194150/http://www.sensorgen.info/NikonD2X.html


----------



## Aglet (Nov 10, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> Maybe it's just from the CFA filter having been made even more color blind.



The low color measurement on DxOmark does seem to indicate they may have picked up a little QE from a looser CFA.


----------



## Lee Jay (Nov 10, 2014)

Aglet said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > Maybe it's just from the CFA filter having been made even more color blind.
> ...



I don't think one has to do with the other. I've been told in the past that the QE modeling approach makes it effectively ignore the CFA.


----------



## jrista (Nov 10, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> Aglet said:
> 
> 
> > LetTheRightLensIn said:
> ...




Agreed. I believe the Q.E. is referring to the actual response of the silicon itself (that's usually how sensor manufacturers report it...as the *silicon's *response to light). That is the Q.E. of incident photons that make it all the way to the sensor.


So, to be clear, that means that even if you had a 100% response in the silicon itself (at 565nm, green light...the Q.E. is usually for green light), you could still increase overall light gathered by improving your filtering, or by eliminating filtering and going with MCS, or by improving microlens design, or by using ISOCELL in a BSI design, etc. Anything that increases the incident photon count at the photodiode will still increase overall efficiency...for whatever Q.E. you have.


----------



## LetTheRightLensIn (Nov 10, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > If they went to a new fab then why on earth would they not have implemented any of their column ADC or dual ISO read out patents?
> ...



Perhaps, but I still tend to doubt that.


----------



## LetTheRightLensIn (Nov 10, 2014)

jrista said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > If they went to a new fab then why on earth would they not have implemented any of their column ADC or dual ISO read out patents?
> ...



But this didn't improve the late stage read noise at all. The 59% rating would be on photon shot noise, not read noise.


----------



## LetTheRightLensIn (Nov 10, 2014)

tayassu said:


> Woody said:
> 
> 
> > I don't think sensor QE tells us much. Consider the following Nikon camera models:
> ...



Yeah, something is wrong with those numbers, at least the D3 one for sure.


----------



## jrista (Nov 10, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> Don Haines said:
> 
> 
> > LetTheRightLensIn said:
> ...




I doubt the bit about licensing the ADC. Canon already has their own patents from in-house R&D that describe how to do dual-scale on-die CP-ADC. They patented the technology, they own it, and one has to figure they've prototyped it as well. I think they implemented it on the 120mp APS-H...given the frame rate, and the wording of one of the press releases about that sensor, I honestly cannot think they achieved those results in any other way than some kind of on-die hyper-parallel ADC. 


I think it seems logical that Canon would still take it a step at a time. It would probably be more complex to move to a new fab and start cranking out a brand new design. Moving an existing design onto the new fab without changing it, then refining it later to take advantage of the new fab's increased capabilities, seems logical to me.


----------



## LetTheRightLensIn (Nov 10, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> Sporgon said:
> 
> 
> > That's nothing: we should all be still using Nikon D70s, QE two hundred and something percent !
> ...



Hmm the site seems to be riddled with typos or is not being very clear at all what they now mean by QE since many of the numbers are beyond patently absurd.


----------



## LetTheRightLensIn (Nov 10, 2014)

Lee Jay said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Regarding Sensorgen.info data, he regenerated it all recently. After the site went down, a lot more data was brought over. I think there is a bug in whatever code brings the data over, because some sensors have wild read noise values and several hundred percent Q.E. I don't believe any of those numbers are valid...I think they are flukes generated by a buggy algorithm.
> ...



Yeah now 23% makes a lot more sense.
The new site is totally messed up and lots of the data seems to be nearly random.


----------



## LetTheRightLensIn (Nov 10, 2014)

jrista said:


> Lee Jay said:
> 
> 
> > Aglet said:
> ...



well if they screen out the entire CFA effects then the 59% level seems even less believable


----------



## LetTheRightLensIn (Nov 10, 2014)

jrista said:


> LetTheRightLensIn said:
> 
> 
> > Don Haines said:
> ...



Seems foolish to me. A new fab costs tons of money and if they are using the newer but already existing copper pipe fab they are pushing some small sensors off of that and why do all of that if they get only a small benefit out of it? The fact that they are conservative would make that less likely I'd think. Since they are making a big switch and not even having much to show. I think if they really went to a new process, they'd take full advantage.

Although maybe their patents and designs turned out to be a mess and they had to go to an old design last second? (rumors of 20MP vs 24MP sensor, etc.)

Who knows. it seems doubtful to me. but of course i can't be sure.


----------



## jrista (Nov 10, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > LetTheRightLensIn said:
> ...




It depends on what they are doing. I'm basing my opinion off of Don's idea that Canon is doing two winddowns. The first is winding down production of smaller form factor sensors as that market collapses, which is opening up space on their newer 300mm fabs. The second winddown is of the old 200mm fab, in an effort to close it out (it's archaic, makes sense.) 


Also, if Canon really is moving towards layered sensors, then moving the 7D II over to the new fab is just to get it off the old fab (it's a camera that will likely be around for at least three years...would be stupid to start manufacturing a new camera's sensors on an old fab you want to close down when all the existing products being manufactured on it reach EOL). I suspect that, if Canon really does move on the layered sensor stuff, then the newer fab would primarily be used to manufacture that stuff. If Canon is indeed going to be announcing something awesome early next year, then that would mean they are already producing "new technology" sensors on the new fab, and not simply "wasting" it on a 7D II with old tech.


----------



## Lee Jay (Nov 10, 2014)

LetTheRightLensIn said:


> well if they screen out the entire CFA effects then the 59% level seems even less believable



Other way around. It could be 59% at the silicon, but the whole thing would be 59% _minus _whatever the CFA absorbs.


----------

