How Much Does The Sensor Cost?

Does anyone know the percentage of manufacturing costs that is attributed to the

sensor on an a 40D or a 5D? Just curious about the extent to which sensor prices

drive total cost. Thanks

The only ones who know are Canon's internal management accountants who keep it a closely guarded secret. There are a lot of fixed costs associated with producing sensors, so production volume is important. Marginal cost depends strongly on yield of sensors per wafer. Sensor yield is mostly determined by sensor area (the relationship involves an exponential function as a first approximation - it is not linear) and degree of experience in producing a particular sensor. For APS cameras, sensor yields are now quite high, and unit cost is of the order of $50-$100, maybe less. We know that a third party manufacturer (Cypress) was willing to sell APS sensors for $90 in 2005.

 

http://www.photo.net/news/cypress_9_MP.html

 

Canon produced a White Paper which tries to suggest that full frame sensors cost up to 20 times as much as APS. While that was true when the 1Ds first came out (sensor yields were under 5%, Canon admitted at the time), it is fairly obvious that technology has moved on. There are now steppers and lenses capable of exposing an entire full frame sensor at once, although these have only just come on stream and are not used for the 5D. With three years of production experience on the 5D line, I suspect that yields are now comfortably above 25% - maybe even nudging towards 40%. There were some indications from Canon of 25% yields fairly early in the 5D's life. Allowing for the difference in area makes 5D sensors somewhere between 6-9 times more expensive than APS ones in marginal cost terms. Of course, lower production volumes will added a higher fixed cost per sensor. We are certainly comfortably below $1000, IMHO, but the sensor is clearly the largest cost item.

 

Another cross check is to consider Canon's camera division profitability and financial commentaries. From this it is clear that margins on DSLRs have been substantial. Moreover, margins on cameras for which there is little or no competition tend to be much bigger than those that face a lot of competitors. Do not confuse cost with price!

Thanks Mark - do you have a link to that white paper? I've tried a couple of times to search

for it to no avail

Andy - Here's a link to <a href="http://www.robgalbraith.com/public_files/Canon_Full-Frame_CMOS_White_Paper.pdf" target="blank">the Canon white paper</a>. The sensor costs typically include the wafer fab, the wafer tests, the package, and final tests. In addition, there's the non-recurring costs that also need to be accounted for. The figures are well guarded by the manufacturing companies and I seriously doubt that you'd be able to find them.

You may have to add on the cost of the associate low pass and IR filter, plus the ultrasonic mechanism used to shake the dust off if you want the price of the sensor assembly rather than just the silicon chip. In the case of an APS-C sensor, that could possibly double the cost.

Costs I have seen quoted were $43 for a 4/3rds sensor, $91 for an APS-C and $650 for a full frame sensor.

Too much ! The sensor on the 5D is why that camera is just a soupped-up version of the 20D nothing more. If they could bring the cost down a bit then the camera could be outfitted with more professional type features. Sorry if insulted anyone.

Lifepixel (who do IR conversions and scratched sensor filter replacements) sell sensor filters for $145 in APS size and $250 for full frame. I guess that puts some limits on the costs of those items.

Thanks Mark!

http://www.sensor-film.com/filter.html has some close-ups of parts of the filter assembly

to (partly) explain the costs quoted for those items.

In a lot of industries you can figure that cost of materials and components for a manufactured item would probably run in the range of 1/3 of the sale price of the final product. Figure that the cost of the basic camera body (not counting the sensor and processor) is probably about the same as a film body. A digital SLR body sells for quite a bit more than a comparable film body, so let's assume that the cost of the digital body is dominated by the sensor, and to a lesser extent the processor. A canon XTi body sells for something less than $600 street price. Part of that $600 goes to markups by the middle man. Given all this I don't see how the sensor of an XTi-class camera could possibly cost more than $200, and probably more in the range of $100.

 

The sensor of something like a 40D probably costs slightly more... most likely not more than 20% extra, assuming that the microlens array represents a relatively small portion of the total sensor cost. (The main difference between an XTi and 40D sensor is the microlens array, which is slightly enhanced in the 40D.)

 

On the other hand, if the camera business is a low margin business (from the manufacturers point of view that is) then the cost of the sensor could be a bit more than my estimate, but I am sure it could not possibly be as high as $300 on an XTi class camera or else the company could not make a profit on the camera.