Atik Cameras - White Paper - Characteristics of CCD and CMOS Sensors
CCD and CMOS sensors both accumulate and convert light into electronic charges at pixels. However, CCD sensors move charges between pixels along shift registers before conversion to voltage, while CMOS sensors convert charges to voltage directly at each pixel for parallel readout. CMOS sensors are advantageous as they allow for faster frame rates and integration into systems-on-a-chip due to leveraging of CMOS fabrication processes. Binning pixels improves low-light performance but reduces resolution, and is performed more efficiently on-chip for CCD sensors than mathematically after digitization for CMOS sensors.
