How does EXR sensor work?

29Sep/090

How does EXR sensor work?

If Fuji is really making a Micro Four Thirds camera it will have Super CCD EXR sensor. How does it work? The best explanation you will find on dpreview. The sensor has similar structure to normal Super CCD sensor - with diamond shaped cells instead of square ones. But in EXR version the colors are arranged differently:

fujiexr

It allows better binning of the pixels. The sensor works in three modes:

high resolution (12Mpix) - like normal Super CCD, it should have more DR than typical CMOS though judging by Super CCD compact cameras.
high DR (6Mpix) - half of the pixels are read at different ISO than the others. After binning you get much more DR. It's probably the most usefull ability of this sensor.
low noise (6Mpix) - the pixels are read normally but binned afterwards. It leads to lower noise - at least that is what Fuji claims.

The newest camera with EXR sensor is Fuji F200EXR - the review on dpreview shows how the modes work in practice.

There isn't any camera with RAW that uses Super CCD EXR so it's hard to tell how well the three modes perform (and what is just Fuji noise reduction).