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Each year, sensor manufacturers fabricate sensors with smaller pixel sizes. About 15 years ago, it was common to find sensors with pixels as small as 13 µm. It is now common to find sensors with standard 5-µm pixel sizes. Recently, sensor manufacturers have produced pixel sizes of 1.4 µm without considering lens performance limits. It is also common to find sensors that contain 5 Mpixels and individual pixel sizes of 3.45 µm. In the next generation of image sensors, some manufacturers expect to produce devices with pixel sizes as small as 1.75 µm.
In developing these imagers, sensor manufacturers have failed to communicate with lens manufacturers. This has resulted in a mismatch between the advertised sensor resolution and the resolution that is attainable from a sensor/lens combination. To address the problem, lens manufacturers now need to produce lenses that employ higher optical performance, lower f-numbers (f/#s), and significantly tightened manufacturing tolerances so that these lenses can take advantage of new sensors.
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