Dalsa was founded in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada in 1980 by imaging pioneer Dr. Savvas Chamberlain, a former Professor in Electrical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Originally the company concentrated in developing and generating technology in the area of Charge Coupled Device (CCD) image sensors. Since then the company has grown into an industry leader in semiconductor technology, employing approximately 700 people world-wide and sales revenue of more than $100 Million. The company was capitalised in November 1984 and went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: DSA) in May 1996. Headquarters remain in Waterloo, but DALSA has expanded operations into Colorado Springs, Colorado; Bromont, Quebec; and Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in addition to sales offices in Germany and Japan.
Dalsa designs and manufactures a variety of digital imaging products for various industrial applications. Notably many of the cameras employed in the most recent unmanned mission to Mars were manufactured by Dalsa.
Dalsa has most recently entered the field of digital cinema, having designed and built the Origin camera system. The Origin is scheduled to be released in January 2005. Dalsa touts its camera as offering sufficient increases in quality including a roughly 4K by 2K, uncompressed, Bayer Pattern, image output with 12 stops of linear exposure lattitude sampled at 16-bits per channel. The company also claims that there camera is the first digital camera "designed with the cinematographer in mind" citing the fact that the camera uses ordinary 35mm lenses (Digiprime), focuses on a single charge coupled device that is the size of a 35mm film gate, and features an optical viewfinder.
While the specifications of this camera are impressive to many cinematographers, Dalsa's system appears to have many drawbacks that could prevent the current model from replacing film as the most desirable medium and oversteping its competition in the digital market. Most notable is the problem of storage. The camera has no onboard storage capability and must be tethered to a digital storage device such as a RAID array or an HD deck. The cost of recording the large amount of data generated in its highest quality mode, is similar if not more expensive than 35mm film at this time. Most likely the first niche that this camera is suited for is special effects photography employing digital compositing and travelling matte photography on larger budget productions. At this point the system remains untested by the filmmaking world.
Dalsa is also one of the only digital camera producers that has a vertically integrated supply chain.
Dalsa owns the wafer forge where its imaging sensors are manufactured and boasts to be one of the few companies that uses both CCD and CMOS sensors depending upon the application.
Dalsa has most recently entered the field of digital cinema, having designed and built the Origin camera system.
DALSA'scorporate slogan is Technology with Vision, most appropriate for a semiconductor designer and builder whose specialty is imaging chips; both CCD and CMOS designs.
DALSA continues to operate the previous Philips design center in Eindhoven, Holland, and also has their wafer fabrication plant in Bromont, Quebec, outside of Montreal.
DALSA fabricated the CCD chips that were used in the two Mars Rovers, based on a NASA design, in collaboration.
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