Thanks to Jeff for the heads up on this, according to an article posted yesterday by Reuters, Canon is to invest 55 billion Yen ($451 million) in a new CMOS production factory at its existing site in the Kanagawa Prefecture near Tokyo. The interesting snippet in this news article comes from the following statement: "The CMOS chips will be used in both single lens reflex (SLR) models as well as in some compact models. Canon's compact cameras have to date used a different type of image sensor called a charge-coupled device (CCD)." This is interesting from an image quality point of view but will also be big news for Canon's existing sensor suppliers such as Sony.

Phil: This could be very significant news, if accurate we could see slightly larger CMOS sensors in compact cameras delivering better quality than todays CCD sensors. I also wouldn't be surprised (or concerned) to see a slight step back in megapixels if it delivered better noise performance and dynamic range.

Click here to read the story on Reuters.com

Click here for more info on Canon CMOS sensors
(this page only about DSLR sensors)