GL2

3 CCD with Pixel Shift Technology

The Canon GL2 has three CCDs, delivering outstanding picture quality, highly accurate color reproduction and a wide dynamic range with virtually no color noise. On top of that, Canon has improved a broadcast technology to create a new form of Pixel Shift, producing greater picture quality than that of camcorders using CCDs with almost twice the number of pixels.

Pixel Shift
In the GL2, Canon uses Pixel Shift, a signal processing method used in broadcast TV cameras, to exceed the overall picture quality achieved by camcorders using nearly twice as many pixels.

With the light coming into the camcorder split into three color components, each of the three CCDs then handles one of three primary colors: Red, Green and Blue. The green component of a video signal contains 60% of the picture detail, and the red and blue components only 40%. The green CCD in the GL2 is shifted the equivalent distance of 1/2 pixel from the red and blue CCD. The green signal is then sampled more frequently to extract the maximum picture detail from the video signal.

In addition to outstanding clarity and natural color, Pixel Shift provides wider dynamic range, reduced vertical smear from bright light sources and sharper still images.

Super High Resolution and Super Low Light

There are 410,000 pixels on each of the three CCD image sensors in the GL2. With the new Pixel Shift technology, the GL2 rivals the resolution of camcorders using CCDs with 680,000 pixels.