Canon recently聽released details on its聽, a small video camera with a headline-grabbing spec: four聽million ISO.聽

Let's put that in context.聽ISO is a metric used to measure how sensitive film and聽digital sensors are to聽light, and four聽million ISO is astronomically high. For comparison, most other high-end聽digital cameras these days can hit聽100,000. 鈥攚hich is known as one of the best low-light cameras on the market鈥�maxes out at聽409,600 ISO.聽

The ME20F-SH, which goes on sale in December, will be capable of shooting color HD video in near-total darkness, thanks to its four million ISO. It's rated to record subjects in聽as little as 0.0005 lux (lux being a measure of how much an object is illuminated). For reference, a bright summer day can be about 100,000 lux, while an overcast night sky might yield 0.0001 lux.聽

This is possible in part because of the聽camera鈥檚 pixels鈥攖he array of tiny 鈥渂uckets鈥� on the sensor聽that聽collect light and turn it into electrical signals that are processed into an image. As a general rule of thumb, the larger the pixels are, the higher the camera's resulting ISO range.

To get to four million ISO,聽Canon uses聽gigantic 19-micron聽pixels.聽A micron is a millionth of a meter, and while 19 of them together are聽still聽skinnier聽than聽a human hair, that鈥檚 enormous聽in the world of digital imaging. One of the聽ME20F-SH's聽pixels聽takes in roughly 10 times聽the amount of light of聽a standard-camera聽pixel, based on surface area, and as much as 160 times as much as a smartphone pixel. Canon goes even further,聽making聽sure to point out that the ME20F-SH's聽pixel area is more than five and a half times larger聽than in some high-end cameras, including its own聽EOS-1D X.聽聽

“A 19 micron pixel is huge,” says Joyce Farrell, executive director of the聽Stanford Center for Image Systems Engineering.聽“It's amazing how huge that is.”聽

Wait, you might聽ask, why then does聽the聽ME20F-SH only have聽a 2.26-megapixel resolution, which is significantly lower than an iPhone 6's?聽The reason: the pixels are so big on the ME20F-SH that Canon could only squeeze 2.26 million on the full-frame 35mm sensor. But that鈥檚 okay, because to achieve HD video resolution you only need about two聽megapixels.

Canon smartly suggests using the ME20F-SH for nighttime surveillance, and low-light movie production聽or聽nature documentaries. Filmmakers who love to shoot in these conditions will be clamoring to use the camera, but they might have to rent instead of buy, due聽to the $30,000 pricetag.聽

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