Why don’t high-end DSLR cameras use cooled image sensors to reduce noise?

Asked 6/20/2012

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Cooling a sensor can reduce thermal noise, and cooled CCD/CMOS cameras are common in scientific imaging and astrophotography. So why don’t high-end DSLR cameras include some form of sensor cooling to improve image quality? What are the main practical reasons this isn’t used in mainstream cameras?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

14y ago

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Cost. Every price raise results in fewer sales.

Size. Cooling has to fit somewhere, those handgrips are already full of batteries...

Weight. There's a reason P&S are popular and not lugging around a brick is one of them =)

Battery Life. Cooling costs energy, lost energy means fewer shots in each battery pack.

Minor Improvement: only shots pushing the envelope would even benefit.

Condensation: artificially lower temp + humid air = water. Water + electronics = brick.

Heat Sink: all that heat has to go somewhere, in this case probably your hand.

Complexity: one more thing to go wrong in the field.

Originally by user8258. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user8258

14y ago

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Because for mainstream DSLR use, the tradeoffs are usually worse than the benefit. Active sensor cooling typically uses a thermoelectric (Peltier) cooler, which adds significant power draw, size, weight, cost, and complexity. It also needs a way to dump heat somewhere else, so the camera would need extra heatsinking and could end up with hot exterior surfaces.

Cooling can also create condensation risks when a cold sensor meets humid air, which is bad news for electronics. Startup time and reliability would suffer too.

Most still-photo exposures are short enough that sensor heating is not severe, so the noise improvement would be modest except in edge cases such as long exposures and astrophotography. That’s why cooled cameras do exist, but they’re specialized products rather than general-purpose DSLRs.

In short: cooled sensors are useful, but mostly for niche applications where long exposures justify the extra power, bulk, and expense.

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14y ago

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