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As someone that owns a high end imaging studio that shoot "big stuff" every day for a living, we would love it if someone came along and built a sensor using a full 4x5 capture area. It hasn't happened since Better Light and their digital scan backs (and we still use and love our Super 8K-HS), which is now 15 year old technology. The current state of the art is the Phase One 80 megapixel digital back, and Phase One has cornered a very large percentage of the medium format digital market at this point. Both the DSLR and medium format guys are going to start to run up against physical limitations inherent to the sizes of their capture areas, including sensitivity (evidenced by this new Canon's relatively low ISO ratings), and, most importantly, the details of what the optics can resolve. If you want to capture more actual *image information* and not just pixels, you need to scale things up. My guess is that that 50 MP Canon will just make it that much more obvious how soft most lenses are at the corners.

To build what you describe, someone would have to pay for the R & D to design and fab a chip that large. That's no trivial effort. Only a few foundries in the world right now are even capable of producing it. I believe Phase One is using Sony silicon in their latest iterations; previously, they had used DALSA for awhile. Yield per wafer is obviously way lower too with a monster sensor -- maybe two at the most? These guys look at the potential market and have to cost-justify it that way, and the market is just too damn small, unfortunately. If the selling price is six figures (and I don't see how it couldn't be, given that a new Phase One IQ280 is $50K), how many potential buyers are really out there? I just don't see it happening unless someone like the Federal government steps in and commissions their own cameras, like it did with Hasselblad back in the 60s for the space program. With the NSA and Homeland Security's "needs," you never know.

>>They simply don't make 4x5" digital sensors, period.

BS. They may not make practical 4x5" sensors for everyone's budget or application, but they DO exist.

Scanning sensors have been around for years (check out companies like Better Light), and even a few full-frame sensors are out there. They may be several orders of magnitude outside your budget, but they're available.

http://www.betterlight.com/

http://www.phaseone.com/Content/p1digitalbacks/Discontinued%20hardware/Studiokit.aspx

MadCow.

Look at Better Light scanners, but keep your eye on your wallet. These are $20,000 for the top-of-the-line. The downside to scanning in-camera is that the scans take quite a while (for a scan equal to a 4x5 transparency). Don't try to take a picture of anything that might move in that time period - like leaves moving in a mild breeze, ocean waves, people, ... and expect it to look 'right'. They are best used on static oblects like making archival images of paintings and the like.

Yeah, next thing you know, they'll be cramming view cameras in there, too.

My esteemed article author, do you know what a scanning back is? It's like a flatbed scanner, only it scans the projected image from a lens one line at a time. But like a flatbed, there is a moving sensor which captures one row of pixels at a time. Only someone ignorant of what this camera is would suggest putting one in a mobile phone. Yes, my irony meter works perfectly, so does my ignoramous meter.

And this is not the largest one you can buy. That honor goes to the BetterLight SUPER 8K-HS, which has 384 Mpixels at 12,000 x 15,990.

http://www.betterlight.com/

Scanning backs for large format cameras have been available for years, though a lot of the digital back manufacturers have been switching to full CCD sensors lately. See www.betterlight.com

Scanning... too much work. Try one of these:

http://www.betterlight.com/products4X5.asp

Yes, not the least expensive device, and it requires infrastructure, but for $10K you get 36mp @ 48-bit, 12-stops of DR.

BetterLight makes many scan backs for large format, essentially what the Seitz back is, but the BetterLight models have a less panoramic ratio, and are cheaper. See http://www.betterlight.com/superModels.asp for their list of the high end models, but the highest end is the Super10K-2, 10200 x 13800 pixels - Native CCD resolution, 402 MB max. file 24-bit RGB (804 MB in 48-bit RGB). They don't call it a 140 megapixel back, because that would imply that it takes the entire 10200x13800 image at once, instead of by scanning, and they're a bit more honest than Seitz. Doing the scan in 1 second is impressive, but it's still a scan back.

These guys:

http://www.betterlight.com/products4X5.asp

Have been making high resolution scanning backs for large format cameras for years now.

The amazing thing with these is that all you need to but one is the money - I mean they aren't only available to NASA and the like.

Currently, to get similar resolutions, you need to use a scanning back for a 4x5" camera (calm down, it's not that big of a piece of film, there are still cameras being made that take 20x24" sheets of film), and about the only ones I know about are the BetterLight scanning backs, http://www.betterlight.com/, up to 10200x13800 pixels (140 megapixel) for an 852MB file at 24-bit scanning. The operative word is scanning, these are like a very high-end small flatbed scanner in the back of your camera. Exposures take a long time, up to several minutes. Not so practical for field work, as they need to be tethered to a computer. They're also not a full 4x5" frame, but then, neither are Polaroids.

This new CCD at 4x4" (probably actually 100x100mm) is quite impressive. The largest medium-format scan back that I know of right now is the Phase One, http://www.phaseone.com/ P45 with a 39 Megapixel, 7216 x 5412 pixel, 49.1x36.8mm sensor. They call it "full frame" even though it's designed to be used with 6x4.5cm (actual film area 56x41.5mm) cameras. Not quite full frame, but damn close. It doesn't work like a scanner, but just like your crappy little digital p&s, but much MUCH better.

Even film bigots like myself acknowledge the 16.7MP Canon to be equal or better to 35mm film, and the P45 and similar to be equal or better than medium format film. This new sensor should be the equal or better than 4x5" film, maybe even up there with 5x7" (13x18cm) film, and possibly approaching 8x10" film. Of course, if it were available to the common peasant, it would probably cost in the range of a Bentley or so, so I'll stick with my film cameras for now.

http://www.betterlight.com/superModels.asp

Something like a Betterlight back seems pretty reasonable price-wise and weight-wise.

For backpacking landscape photography, the best compromise is probably a digital medium format camera, or a high-end FF dSLR plus occasional stitching.

None of these setups can even hope to reproduce the possible detail of 4x5 format using film. The max resolution on their highest end model of the BetterLight is about 2600dpi.

Maybe I'm misreading the specifications, but it seems to me that the BetterLight's max resolution (without interpolation) is 4M-dpi for the current top-end (Super 8K-HS), and will be almost 7M-dpi for the upcoming model (Super 10K-HS). This is a far cry from a 2.7K-4K dpi film scanner, in fact it blows away the highest-resolution drum scanner I know of: the 12K-dpi ICG 380.

While it's absolutely true that even 7-megapixel/inch at 48bit color still cannot capture the full tonal range of analog film, this is probably more than adequate for most types of images where 4x5 is used (commercial versus fine-art use).

I have a feeling that this is not the be all end all of film replacments.

Of course not. Digital sensor technology and storage systems will improve every year. I don't know enough about the techology of film to say if or when digital will surpass analog in theoretical quality, but I think we're soon approaching the point where digital becomes more practical, particularly for commercial photography, where most images wind up being digitally processed before final output in any event.

Also, CCD performance and readout speed are not quite fast enough to mimic equivalent film speed and detail.

In any event, I'll grant you that digital film backs can't match the speed of film; after all, it takes over 8 minutes to record the image. But neither one is exactly appropriate for action photography. In terms of film sensitivity, Better Light claims ISO ranges up to 3200, which is a lot more than I've ever wanted when I used to shoot large format.

You're a fucking idiot.

Exactly, I am still waiting until digital can allow me do to what a 4x5 view camera does.

Why wait? There's several choices in digital backs for large-format cameras, and Sinar even sells a complete, turn-key setup.

• http://www.betterlight.com
• http://www.phaseone.com/
• http://www.sinarbron.com/sinar/digital/p3p1.php

You overestimate the resolution of film camera systems. An 8x10 camera does not have proportionately more pixels than a 35mm camera. It does have higher resolution, but the main reason for using it is tonality (i.e., more silver grains available to represent one pixels--kind of the film equivalent of bits-per-pixel).

Velvia at 4x5 doesn't really give you 200 MPixel of resolution; outside a camera, it may give you 13000x16000 lines of resolution, but photographic lines are not like pixels--a pixel contains a lot more information than a line on a resolution chart. Furthermore, inside a real large format camera pointing at a real-world scene, you simply won't be able to get that kind of resolution out of the film.

You also underestimate the resolution of digital. Digital doesn't stop with 10 Mpixel SLR hacks, you can get digital backs for medium and large format cameras. Something like that gives you 140 Mpixels with 16 bits per channel, something that film doesn't even remotely get close to.

In fact, if it's resolution you want, you can even build one yourself: common letter sized scanners can be adapted to fit on the back of 8x10 view cameras.

Well this company has 4x5 digital camera back. I don't know how long until they would go to an 8x10. They work with photographer Stephen Johnson who has does all or most of his work digitally.

• Better Light. Prices range from $10000 to $20000.
• Fuji Film. See this distributor's page on one model. Prices run from $13000 up.
• Kodak Digital Camera backs. $12000 to $25000 range.
• Leaf digital backs. $10000 to $25000.
• Megavision. $25000.
• Phase One. $12000-$25000.

I have some experience in this, so i will interject.

Home scanners and digital cameras are definitly not suited for the task if you need very near digital reproduction of an object. The reasons for this are many, but mainly, the all interpolate colors between what imaging elemaents they have. And not that accuratly.

When you move up to the midrange of scanners/digital camers (~$2000), the problem can still be there, but its less pronounced. I worked on a project requireing digital photos of a very hard to photograph subject, and tthis range of cameras produced sub-par results for the task (the shots look incredible, but zoom in and youll see fuzziness and interpolated color).

Then, you have the ~$20,000+ cameras and scanners. This was eventually what we had to go with. One camera delivered particularly good results, and achived it through actually moving the CCD so that there were no interpolated pixles. It was accurate enough that if you shot a Greytag/Macbeth chart, right from the camera, the greys would be the same value for evey pixel.

As with all these [camera] setups, You need a very controlled lighting situation (ie. photo studio), but you can shoot just about anything.

As far as scanners, the same applys. You will need to get in toe the pricy professional line to get accurate pixles, and from that, better analysis.

Your test for any product should be if you scan a greyscale, if you go in to photoshop and look at the pixle color values, are they all the same value (like 125,125,125) and, is it consistant across the swatch (if you move your mose a few pixles over, does the value change?)

The other aspect you have to contend with is your computer and monitor and its interpretation of what your seeing. Again, if any amount of accuracy is needed, you will need a controled lighting setup. No direct sunlight, try not to wear clothing that will project a color cast on the monitor, a lightbox to properly illuminate the scaned subject for proper color editing, etc.

This is where you buy a macintosh. you dont need to do all the ColorSync stuff, just keep your monitor and scanner/camera in line.

So based on the three levels in imagry equipment (home, semi-pro, pro) you can determine what level of final output you need and judge your costs from there.

For full setup, id guess:



Home 5-8k Semi-Pro 10-15k Pro 20-40k

Some useful links:

Greytag Macbeth
Apple:ColorSync
Imacon 3020 is camera i mentioned above
megavision
leaf
Sinar
Phase One
Betterlight

This is mostly high end stuff, but, you should be a good starting point in findieng the mix of price/performance you are looking for for the overall project.