Graphene is regularly touted as a "super material" in electronics manufacturing—one able to do everything that silicon does, except better. But that isn't good enough for one team at Berkeley Labs. They've combined graphene with two other cutting-edge materials to create the world's first 2D field effects transistor.…

Hasselblad just announced that they are re-vamping the sensor tech for their 50 megapixel medium format digital back. A new CMOS sensor will replace the older CCD technology previously used.

While grand-scale robotics programs like DARPA's Big Dog project may spark our sci-fi fancy, they're still years away from the front lines. This half-pint unmanned ground vehicle, however, will immediately start saving lives by acting as a Special Forces scout.

Sharp's boasting that their new 12.1MP sensor module is the world's thinnest, allowing it to squeeze completely unnoticed into newer, svelter smartphones. What users will notice is its built-in optical stabilization, reducing the amount of blur in their photos.

Last year, when we asked what could possibly need an 8-square-inch low light sensor, Canon replied with, "Space stuff". Totally proving them right, the Schmidt telescope at the University of Tokyo's Kiso Observatory now employs it to records faint meteors in the night sky.

Panoramic photography can be tricky. What's better? Canon's camera that shoots a single, 360° image. The tech uses a giant, 50 megapixel CMOS sensor and aspheric mirror to capture a sharp, sweeping photo, exceeding the human eye's measly 120° view.

A full-frame image sensor, like in the 5D Mark II or Nikon D3s, is the equivalent of 35 millimeters. This image sensor is 300 millimeters. This is how well it can see in the dark:

You're not seeing the full picture—the picture that the world's first single-shot multi-band camera can see, because it's got six color filters mounted on its 50-megapixel CMOS sensor. Here's what it sees:

As well as popping out news of a massive 120 megapixel sensor last week, Canon's technicians have today announced its biggest ever CMOS sensor—which measures 202 x 205 mm. That's about eight inches square.

The Canon PowerShot SD4000, the company's first compact with a back-lit CMOS sensor, achieves an elusive point-and-shoot camera feat: crisp, clean nighttime photography. And it's not even that expensive.

Digitimes' patchy sources are claiming that OmniVision Technologies—the current manufacturers of the iPhone 3GS' 3.2-megapixel CMOS image sensor—has won a new contract with Apple to provide the Cupertino company with new sensors for the next-generation 2010 iPhone.

CCD and CMOS sensors take great images, but that doesn't mean they're perfect. They're bulky and bad in low light. It turns out that flash memory can actually double as a light sensor, and could solve both these problems.

What's wrong with that video from last night? Things seems a bit skewed, distorted, and wiggly-jiggly. No, I'm not focused on that redhead in the tiny pink shirt, I'm talking about a fixable issue with CMOS-based video cameras.

German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems have embedded a head-mounted microdisplay into a pair of glasses—allowing the user to access and manipulate data with simple eye movements.

Minuscule sensors and crappy fixed lenses are only partly responsible for cellphone cameras taking such terrible photos; that they tend not to have proper shutters is a huge factor. Samsung wants to fix this.

There's a rumor afoot suggesting that Canon will be ditching CCD and adopting CMOS chips for a new pro-level camcorder. Digital cameras and camcorders never been so indistinguishable.

Almost a year ago, we explained image sensors. This week, with all the camera news, it seems fitting to mention that, along with our explainers on the upside of lenses and the downside of megapixels.