Kodak’s Image Sensor Solutions Wins EDN Innovation Award in Sensor Category for 2008

ROCHESTER, N.Y., May - Eastman Kodak Company announced today that its Image Sensor Solutions (ISS) business has received the 18th Annual EDN Innovation Award in the Sensor Category for the KODAK TRUESENSE Color Filter Pattern. This groundbreaking new technology allows for the development of digital capture devices that take better pictures under low light or reduce motion blur when photographing moving subjects.

“We are honored to receive this award from EDN,” said Herb Erhardt, CIS Business Manager, Image Sensor Solutions, Eastman Kodak Company. “This recognition of the KODAK TRUESENSE Color Filter Pattern acknowledges our continuing advances in digital imaging technology, for both CMOS and CCD products.”

EDN presented the 2008 Innovation Awards in San Jose on April 14, 2008, at the Summit Center. An audience of engineers and engineering managers as well as a panel of EDN magazine editors selected the winning products based on their industry impact, innovation and excellence.

“Every year the difficulty of technical challenges increases, the pressures of schedule, cost, and energy efficiency grow, and the resources available to design teams dwindle. That makes the achievements of this year’s EDN Innovation Award winners all the more impressive,” stated Ron Wilson, executive director of EDN Worldwide. “Selected by their peers in the design community for their outstanding results, these innovators stand in the front rank of the best and brightest electronics engineering has to offer.”

The KODAK TRUESENSE Color Filter Pattern advances an existing KODAK Technology, the Bayer pattern based color filter, that has become a standard in digital imaging. Kodak researchers created the new KODAK TRUESENSE Color Filter Pattern technology as they sought to improve upon the Bayer pattern. The new technology adds panchromatic, “clear” pixels to the red, green and blue elements of the Bayer pattern that form the image sensor array, and enables a 2 times to 4 times increase in sensitivity to light (from one to two photographic stops). This increase provides much better pictures and video in low light conditions than are possible with conventional technology. It also enables faster shutter speeds that reduce motion blur when imaging moving subjects. Low light performance, for both stills and video, is a critical need in mobile phones, which is a major market for the new KODAK KAC-05020 CMOS Image Sensor that utilizes the KODAK TRUESENSE Color Filter Pattern. Kodak CCD products – used today in commercial applications such as Machine Vision and Security – can also benefit from the enhanced sensitivity provided by this new technology.

For additional information regarding this technology, please contact Image Sensor Solutions, Eastman Kodak Company at (585) 722-4385 or by email at imagers@kodak.com, or see the posting describing this technology on Kodak’s technology blog at PluggedIn.kodak.com. For more information on Kodak’s entire image sensor product line, please visit www.kodak.com/go/imagers.