Equivalent cameras to the Photometrics Kinetix?

Hardware
1

Hi all,

I am re-entering the camera market after a long hiatus and am wondering whether any Photometrics competitors offer a camera that is the equivalent of or similar to the Kinetix?

I am assembling a spreadsheet of data for comparison and will gladly share it here once I’ve finished.

Thanks for your help!

Kyle

2

The ORCA-Halo from Hamamatsu looks similar in terms of number of pixels and QE, but the pixels are smaller. Is there a specification that is particularly important?

3

Thanks @Hazen_Babcock . I’m mostly looking for QE >= 95%, full chip frame rates >= 100 Hz and moderate dynamic range so that I can quickly switch between fluorescence and transillumination without needing to change the imaging mode on the camera. Unless I’m mistaken, read noise doesn’t seem so important nowadays as nearly everyone has a sensor between 0.1 and 2 e-.

So far the Andor Sona-6 Extreme and Kinetix22 are the only models I’ve found that meet these specs.

To be honest, I’m a bit surprised how much camera specs have diverged between manufacturers relative to 2010 - 2020. I recall that there wasn’t so much of a difference back then, but maybe I’m misremembering things :slight_smile:

Edit: The Sona-6’s full well capacity drops from 42,000 e- at 74 fps to 1900 e- at 135 fps, whereas the Kinetix22 provides 15,000 e- at 111 fps. The Kinetix therefore appears to be superior in terms of dynamic range at frame rates > 100 fps.

4

I asked Claude to identify other camera manufacturers that use the same chip as the Photometrics Kinetix:

Good — I found the actual sensor name. The Kinetix uses the GPixel GSense GSENSE6510 CMOS sensor , a 3200 x 3200 array (10.24 megapixel) sensor with 6.5 x 6.5 µm pixels and 95% peak quantum efficiency.

Let me check which other companies use this same sensor.That search didn’t turn up a direct hit. Let me search more specifically for the sensor’s other camera implementations.Found it. The sensor is made by Gpixel (a Chinese sensor manufacturer), not Photometrics itself — Photometrics just integrates it. So the real question is which other camera makers use the same GSENSE6510BSI sensor, and yes, at least one well-known name does:

  • Tucsen (Tucsen Photonics) has announced it’s integrating the GSENSE6510BSI sensor into its own sCMOS camera line Tucsen Photonics announced its intention to manufacture cameras based around the Gpixel GSENSE6510BSI sensor, offering the same large-FOV, high-throughput performance as the Kinetix.

A couple of things worth noting:

  • Gpixel doesn’t sell finished cameras — it’s purely a sensor foundry/IC design house. Companies like Photometrics, Tucsen, and others buy the raw sensor and build their own camera electronics, cooling, firmware, and software around it. So “same sensor, different camera” is common in this market — the differentiation between brands comes down to noise processing, cooling design, interface options, and software (Photometrics touts its own “Pattern Noise Reduction” and “Correlated Noise Reduction” processing on top of the raw sensor, for example).
  • Other well-known scientific camera brands (Hamamatsu, Andor/Oxford Instruments, PCO, Teledyne’s own other lines) tend to use different Gpixel GSENSE variants or entirely different sensors (e.g., Hamamatsu’s ORCA-Quest uses a proprietary qCMOS sensor, and the Prime BSI mentioned earlier uses the smaller GSENSE2020BSI). I didn’t find evidence that Andor, Hamamatsu, or PCO currently ship a camera built on this specific 6510BSI sensor — but Gpixel actively markets it to multiple OEMs, so it’s worth checking with each vendor directly if you want the latest lineup, since this space moves fast.
5

Thanks again @Hazen_Babcock . It’s a good point to look at the sensor itself.

Here is the spreadsheet I compiled of similar cameras: Proton Drive

The cameras I looked at were:

  1. Photometrics Kinetix
  2. Photometrics Kinetx22
  3. Photometrics Prime BSI (mainly to compare against our current camera)
  4. Hamamatsu Orca-Fusion BT
  5. Andor Sona-6 Extreme
  6. PCO Edge 9.4 bi CLHS
  7. PCO Edge 10 bi CLHS

In all cases data originated from their respective manufacturer’s datasheets. Columns to the left of the column entitled Mode are constant across all modes; columns to the right vary with the mode setting.

I’d be happy to add any that I have missed so long as they fall within the same rough category as the Kinetix.