What does a webcam’s “1/4-inch sensor” mean, and can it be used to estimate pixel pitch?
Asked 11/2/2019
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I’m trying to estimate the physical sensor size and pixel pitch of a Logitech BRIO 4K webcam. I found an unofficial claim that it uses a “1/4-inch” sensor, but Logitech doesn’t list the dimensions.
What does “1/4-inch” mean for an image sensor? Is it the actual sensor diagonal, or an older naming convention? If that 1/4-inch format is correct, can I combine it with the webcam’s maximum resolution of 4096 × 2160 to estimate the physical size of each pixel?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
6y ago
2 Answers
1
I have no idea if the 1/4" description is valid for your camera, but in general, the tiny CCD digital sensors are often described by comparing their size to the video vacuum tubes used until about 1980. It represents the outer glass tube diameter, not the actual sensor portion of it.
Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor_format#Table_of_sensor_formats_and_sizes has a table that describes the 1/4" video tube size as being 3.60 x 2.70 mm, which was of course a 4:3 aspect ratio back then, not 16:9 today. If that is valid for your camera, and if it is using 16:9, then the maximum size would be 3.60 x 2.02 mm. Lots of "IFs" involved though.
Originally by user38978. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user38978
6y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
“1/4-inch” is usually not the sensor’s actual physical measurement. It’s an old image-sensor format naming convention derived from video camera tube sizes, where the quoted fraction referred to the outer tube diameter, not the active imaging area.
For a 1/4-inch sensor format, a commonly cited actual sensor size is about 3.60 × 2.70 mm in 4:3. If the active area is instead used in a 16:9 shape, the height would be about 2.02 mm for the same 3.60 mm width.
So yes, if the BRIO really uses a 1/4-inch format sensor, you can only make a rough estimate of pixel pitch:
- width pitch ≈ 3.60 mm / 4096 ≈ 0.00088 mm = 0.88 µm
- height pitch ≈ 2.02 mm / 2160 ≈ 0.94 µm
Those numbers are only approximate because the original “1/4-inch” claim may not be correct, and the full sensor area may not exactly match the recorded 16:9 image area. Without the manufacturer’s actual sensor dimensions or sensor model, you can’t determine the pixel size precisely.
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