Sony not only showed the RIALTO 65 sensor block at Cine Gear, but also showed something more interesting: the wafer behind its new 65mm cinema sensor. That makes the RIALTO 65 a solid Sony Semiconductor achievement. The RIALTO 65 was announced as a new 65mm format image sensor block for the VENICE 2, planned to arrive in the first half of 2027. Sony says the sensor measures approximately 64.60 mm diagonally, with a width of 53.75 mm and a height of 35.83 mm. It supports 9.6K 3:2 open gate recording and offers about 2.2 times the light receiving area of a full-frame sensor.
The sensor starts on a wafer
In a booth demonstration, Sony showed the new 65mm RIALTO sensor next to a full-frame image sensor, along with a silicon wafer used to illustrate the manufacturing origin of the sensor. A large cinema sensor is not just a bigger rectangle inside a camera. It is a much larger die cut from a silicon wafer. The larger the die, the fewer sensors can fit on each wafer. The larger the die, the more sensitive manufacturing becomes to defects. A tiny defect that might miss a smaller sensor can ruin a much larger one. That is why the wafer makes it interesting and challenging.
Full frame suddenly looks small
For years, full frame has been marketed as large format in digital cinema. Sony’s own VENICE helped push that language into the mainstream. However, when a 65mm sensor is placed next to a full frame, the hierarchy becomes very clear. RIALTO 65 is not slightly larger than full frame. It belongs to another imaging class. The sensor’s 2.2 times larger light receiving area gives cinematographers a much broader canvas, deeper spatial rendering, shallower depth of field, and a more immersive large format look. This intriguing comparison was demonstrated in CineGear as well.
A Sony Semiconductor achievement
The coolest part of this reveal is that Sony is quietly flexing its semiconductor capability. Cinema camera manufacturers can design camera bodies, workflows, mounts, menus, cooling systems, and recording options. But the sensor is the heart of the system, and very few companies can develop and manufacture sensors at this scale. Sony is taking the VENICE 2 ecosystem and extending it upward into 65mm, while keeping the modular RIALTO concept alive. The sensor block can be mounted directly to the VENICE 2 body or separated from it by cable, similar to the VENICE Extension System. That allows cinematographers to use a much larger sensor in configurations that still make sense on real productions. And now it shows from where this sensor was cut.
