With the increased brilliance of state-of-the-art synchrotron radiation sources and the advent of free-electron lasers (FELs) enabling revolutionary science with EUV to X-ray photons comes an urgent need for suitable photon imaging detectors. Requirements include high frame rates, very large dynamic range, single-photon sensitivity with low probability of false positives and (multi)- megapixels. At DESY, we are developing the CMOS-based soft X-ray imager PERCIVAL. It is a monolithic active-pixel sensor back-thinned to access its primary energy range of 250 eV to 1 keV with target efficiencies above 90%. The roughly 4 cm x 5 cm, 2 million pixels operates at frame rates up to 300 Hz (commensurate with most FELs) and use multiple gains within 27 mm pixels to measure 1 to 3.5Me- simultaneously arriving photons. DESY is also leading the development of the AGIPD, a high-speed detector based on hybrid pixel technology intended for at the European XFEL. The AGIPD allows single pulse imaging at 4.5 MHz frame rate into a 352-frame buffer, with a dynamic range allowing single-photon detection and detection of more than 10000 photons at 12.4 keV in the same image. This review describes the AGIPD and the PERCIVAL concepts and systems, including some recent results. It also gives a short overview over other FEL-relevant developments where the Photon Science Detector Group at DESY is involved.
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