Canon’s camera boasts incredible low-light video

Canon announces new HD-video camera that promises to record full colour in near-absolute darkness thanks to an ISO in excess of 4 million.

Published: July 29, 2015 at 11:00 pm

Camera companies are never willing to leave us in the dark about their new cameras but Canon have gone one step further and shown off a camera that can record full-HD colour videos in near pitch black.

With an ISO of 4 million (that’s 4,000,000, or a number that will never fit on your point-and-click’s dial), theCanon ME20F-SHcan shoot video at 0.0005 lux, or 1/2000 of a tiny candle if you will, thanks to some enormous 19-micron pixels. To put that in perspective, that’s 7.5 times larger than your industry-leading DSLR. These bigger megapixels mean more light on the sensor, avoiding the need limit yourself to monochrome infrared shooting.

Don’t throw away your carrots just yet though, if you want to get your hands on this all-seeing piece of kit you’re going to have to start saving before its December release - at $30k this is purely aimed at the specialists. In fact Canon go so far as to say that the camera would be perfect for “TV productions of nighttime wildlife, deep sea/cave exploration, astronomy and surveillance.”

Still, if you’re spending that much money on a 1080p video camera you might as well shoot what you like, just don’t bother bringing a flash.

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