IMX071

IMX071 is a CMOS Active Pixel Sensor (APS) made by Sony. It is used in D5100 and D7000 driven by a 54MHz master clock. Sensor features gapless microlens array and 14bit column parallel ADC (Exmor). Image sensor is interfaced with SPI lines and 8 channel LVDS data output with an additional clock pair. SPI is 4 wire includes SCK, XCE, SDI and SDO. SDO does not seem to be connected. XCE is low enabled and bits are sampled at rising edge of SCK with LSB transmitted first.

Known Register map

Sync Pulse and Control

Sensor is operated in slave mode. Synchronization pulse XVS and XHS are fed from EI-155. Each XVS pulse initiates a new frame with each XHS for a new row. EI-155 output a data valid signal starting at 13th lines from XVS. Duration of the data valid pulse depends on sensor mode. 3362 lines for all-pixel scan (Both normal image acquisition and liveview super zoom) or 1126 lines for 1/3 vertical elimination during liveview. VMAX is determined by XHS pulses for each XVS pulse in slave mode.

Zone Definition

When factory overscan mode is enabled, camera records 5056x3358 pixels.Offset to non-overscan coordinates is: 8, 74.

During making a photo there are 3482 pulses of XHS from sensor bridge EI-155. The image received by Milbeaut-4 digital frontend in Expeed during making a normal photo is 5010 x 3356. NEF RAW data contain 4992 x 3280 points from offset 9, 38. Finally JPEG L size contains only 4928 x 3264 points.

In LiveView 1632 x 1088 picture is generated from sensor frame offset 4,12 and size 1664 x 1100.

XHS signal

In order for SHS register setting to function properly, XHS pulse must be generated continuosly, even between frames. This was observed in LiveView mode, where usual mechanical shutter is not operated.