"With a 5-point lead over the Nikon D800E which was the previous best-performing sensor in our database, the Epic Dragon achieves the highest DxOMark score we’ve seen to date, at 101 points. Given that the Dragon is the new reference for sensor quality, it’s all the more impressive when you consider both its size (similar to an APS-H size sensor) and the fact that it shoots ultra-high frame rates at full resolution."
Red Dragon sensor is 19MP, 30.7 x 15.8mm Bayer pattern sensor with 16-bit ADC, and supports different resolutions including 6K video (6144 x 3160 pixels). For the tests, the camera was set to full 6K resolution at 23.98 fps.
"With a sensor area 0.56 x smaller by surface area than a 35mm (24 x 36 mm) full frame sensor, the results are very impressive. As the sensor and image processor can deliver very high frame rates, the Epic Dragon is certainly adopting multiple sampling techniques to reduce noise levels (also known as temporal noise reduction). Without such processing, such high SNR would only be possible from a sensor with an exceptional Full Well Capacity. Performances like this seem, to us, above the current technical capabilities of CMOS sensors.
As a side note, it’s interesting to speculate whether rivals such as Nikon, Canon or Sony are already adopting such techniques during video capture or in jpeg. But, this is the first time we can assess this type of performance on still RAW."
