When you have a strategy that's been successful, you don't change it without a good reason. 

Getting good yardage in football with your rushing game?  Keep giving the ball to the running back.  Want to put out a late-inning rally in baseball?  Send in Mariano Rivera.  Want your next Pixar film to be a success?  Don't forget to include John Ratzenberger. 

Leveraging new technology into a family of image sensors?  Just keep extending the family portfolio. 

This week, Kodak announced the new KODAK KAI-08050 Image Sensor  - the latest addition to our family of products based on the KODAK TRUESENSE 5.5 micron Interline Transfer CCD Platform.  Like the other members of this family, the KAI-08050 shares features common to this portfolio of products - the same reduction in pixel size, the improvements to image quality, and increase in frame rate.  But now, these advances are available in an 8-megapixel sensor - running at up to 16 frames per second - providing a new level of detail to applied imaging markets. 

As the biggest member of this family, the KAI-08050 even has a few tricks up its sleeve.  A Region of Interest (ROI) mode in the sensor allows the center portion to be read out at even higher frame rate, letting customers trade resolution for speed.  Want to use the KAI-08050 as a 6 Meg, 16:9 sensor?  You got it - at 20 frames per second.  How about focusing on a VGA window at the center of the sensor (so you can do a high-speed focus of your image)?  Over 60 fps.

In short, this baby rocks.

With the KAI-08050, Kodak's new family of interline CCD sensors is really taking shape, with this new 8-megapixel sensor joining the 1-megapixel KAI-01050, the 2-megapixel KAI-02050, and the 1080p (16:9 HDTV format) KAI-02150.  And since all of these sensors share the same electrical design and respond the same way to light, manufacturers can easily leverage a single camera design to support the full family of sensors, making it easy for them to provide a full portfolio of products to their customers. 

More choices, more options, better performance.  All by leveraging a common technology into a family of world-class image sensors. 

That's a strategy that never needs fixing.

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