NEW CAMERA SENSOR MAY REVOLUTIONIZE TV, FILM PRODUCTION

A new type of camera sensor that is reportedly 1,000 times more sensitive to light than those used in cameras today could revolutionize movie and TV production by allowing scenes to be shot in low-light conditions without attendant graininess, “noise,” and fuzziness. The sensor, created by a team of researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, is made of graphene, a material of astounding strength and flexibility that earned scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov the Nobel Prize in physics in 2010. Wang Qijie, an assistant professor at NTU’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering who is credited with inventing the sensor, told LiveScience.com that he expects it to have wide applications in both the consumer and communication industries as well as in satellite imaging. Existing cameras, he said, will only need to swap out the old sensors and for the new, but that cameras built around the sensors will eventually be lighter and require less power to operate than those in use today.