it's a bit weird because it often turns out that cameras with user interfaces are cheaper because of economy of scales. that being said, a market for almost barbone sensors on pcb's seems to be building and is lead by raspberry pi's camera modules, where the hq module has a reasonably sized sensor but is still a far cry from mft, aps-c and full frame sizes. the hq camera is almost on parity with most phones. from there it pretty much moves into cameras with ui's but controllable with some kind of vendor sdk or libgphoto. i imagine it's a matter of economy of scale and it's almost impossible to buy a good almost barbone sensor. If it's even possible e.g. the 61mp ff sensor used in the Sony a7rV is available almost barbone for astro photography, it's still very expensive. i imagine there's a pretty big market for all kinds of industrial cameras but from tip toeing into that, it seems very very very expensive.
it's a bit weird because it often turns out that cameras with user interfaces are cheaper because of economy of scales. that being said, a market for almost barbone sensors on pcb's seems to be building and is lead by raspberry pi's camera modules, where the hq module has a reasonably sized sensor but is still a far cry from mft, aps-c and full frame sizes. the hq camera is almost on parity with most phones. from there it pretty much moves into cameras with ui's but controllable with some kind of vendor sdk or libgphoto. i imagine it's a matter of economy of scale and it's almost impossible to buy a good almost barbone sensor. If it's even possible e.g. the 61mp ff sensor used in the Sony a7rV is available almost barbone for astro photography, it's still very expensive. i imagine there's a pretty big market for all kinds of industrial cameras but from tip toeing into that, it seems very very very expensive.