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Digital cinema systems for theaters, at 1080 x 2048 pixels ("2K") at 24FPS, use about 300GB to store a movie. A typical movie server stores 2TB of uncompressed video. "4K" systems, which have 4x as many pixels, are now being deployed.

4K cameras and data recorders are already available. 16 bits per color channel. "In one shot Origin can handle both the naked flame of a candle and the delicate, nuanced shadows on candlelit faces. It can handle the full glare of the sun reflected from a window and still resolve the subtleties of the shadows below." 402MB/s output, delivered over four fibre optic strands using Infiniband.

Now we have to deliver all, or at least most, of that data to the living room.

Then retrofit it to the surveillance cams.

"You make some good points, but I think your assertion that cameras can't be shoe-horned into a phone may be a bit off. For example, Canon has some amazingly compact little consumer market cameras that surely could be grafted onto a cellphone. If you glue an ELPH onto, say, a RAZR, you'll get something about as bulky as a standard old style Nokia."

An ELPH is OK, but still is incredibly grainy at high ISO's, has a crappy maximum aperture around f3.2, a crappy minimum aperture of f4.5 (because the lens is so tiny anything smaller puts you way over the diffraction limit), a crappy 2-3 x optical zoom, and a terribly flash. Not good enough for many casual photographers I know. And with all that, it's still bigger than an iPhone. One of the smallest Elphs I could find is 3.78" x 1.78" x 0.94", or 6.3 in^3, and weighs 3.70 oz without a card or battery. The iPhone's 4.5" x 2.4" x 0.46", or 5 in^3, and weighs 4.8 oz with the battery and memory. So to pack an already low-quality ELPH into a modern cellphone, the ELPH would have to be an order of magnitude smaller than it already is. It doesn't sound like it's going to work out anytime soon.

Yes, if people would just go back to a mid 90's sized cellphone, that's the same size as a crappy camera plus a cellphone. And if they'd just go back to a late 80's sized cellphone, they could put a full SLR with three lenses and a toaster in it. People aren't going back to inconveniently large cellphones just to get one with a decent camera shoehorned into it. I'll bet you no product like that even comes to market- that is, a cell-phone where more than half of the product's volume is dedicated to camera functionality. People will just deal with crappy camera phones, or use real cameras. I wish they could pack the equivalent of a Hasselblad H3D-31 into my wristwatch, or heck, why not a Dalsa Origen, but I'm not holding my breath.

Well, if you really want to get into it, the Seitz sensor (actually made by Dalsa) is a TDI sensor. It is referred to as a "high-sensitivity linescan". In linescan sensors, there is a single row of pixels. You capture the image one row at a time. A TDI sensor works the same way as a linescan, capturing the image one row at a time. However, the difference is that there are more rows of pixels on the sensor. The electrons are moved through the sensor at the same rate that the image moves across it. This means you can get longer integration times per row, without decreasing the speed of the sensor readout.

Dalsa has a website that describes the different types of sensors and has diagrams that explain the functioning of TDI sensors.

The Dalsa sensor itself is not 60mm x 170mm. It is 60mm tall, and scans across an area 170mm long. The sensor itself actually pans across the back of the camera, to capture the entire image.

You can already do this kind of high-res surveillance using a line-scanning camera (which would be a mounted CCTV type camera). It works very well.

wrong, big time. I've seen this camera in action. it kicks ass.

The biggest problem they're going to have in digital cinema is the fact that the beautiful babe actress
actually has a more than noticable moustache. She's going to need a lot of time to be ready for her closeup, Mr DeMille.

http://www.dalsa.com/dc/index.asp

The link to the SBIR page appears to be defunct due to bookmarking data called from a session. I wasn't about to ask the submitter to give me his cookie and I tried finding info about the Dalsa project on the SBIR site, but wasn't having any luck, so here's a press release from the company that built it.

It sounds like the interest for the navy is along the lines of astro-navigation, but I'm not really sure. It's definitely not something general photographers need or even want. It's kind of pointless if your lenses aren't comparably impressive, or if you're not printing it out at a couple feet in size and to be displayed in a way that someone would get close enough to appreciate the quality. Plus once you take all that data, then you have to store it. I'm not sure how RAW images are stored, but if my math serves, a 24 bit BMP at that size would take about 300 MB per image.

Here's a pic of the sensor itself: http://www.dalsa.com/shared/content/images/STA1600 _1_1200w.jpg. (Too bad there aren't any pics from the sensor...)

I wonder if the guys who invented the CMOS will also get a prize.

Comparison and history of both types of chips.

http://vfm.dalsa.com/products/areascan.asp

Have at it! But bandwidth is still an issue.

Thanks, that was very informative. What do you think about Dalsa's 4K Origin camera? I wrote an entry about it a week ago. Is there information in the industry about when Texas Instuments or JVC will release a 4K DLP? Will moviemaking really start switching over to digital at that point? I saw Episode 1 with DLP at the Sony Metreon and of course loved that there was no jitter or grain, but the resolution was a letdown.

Most square one megapixel CCDs (such as this one) are in fact 1024 by 1024 pixels. Often, not all of the picture elements are used so the resulting image may very well be 1000x1000 pixels.

Just get a high-end digital viewfinder and use the LCD when you need precise framing.

Ahh, interesting suggestion -- I wasn't aware of these. How much would something like this cost, and what sorts of benefits would it provide? I'm assuming that it may not be compatible with my old cameras, but I'm thinking of a new film camera body anyway, so that's not a showstopper.

But then, a decent camera body should have a mechanism that allows you to preview the image as it will be exposed. So for example both of my cameras let you set up the shot based on a wide open aperture, but you can hold down a button to close the aperture down to wherever you currently have it set, and everything gets darker and the focus shifts accordingly.

Pretty much the only unaccounted for variable at that point is exposure time -- is this where a digital viewfinder can help? I'm trying to find examples on Google, but not having much luck.

The top few hits are for some rinky-dink looking "digital viewfinder camera" which, because it seems to be there as the result of some kind of Google-astroturfing, I refuse to link to. Then there are several hits for camera reviews where the digicam's viewfinder is discussed, which doesn't sound like what you're talking about. The closest thing I see seems to be this thing, but it seems to be meant to attach to some kind of digital video camera (the note about being for cinematographers is a tipoff).

Can you cite a product or two along the lines of what you're describing here? Thanks :-)

See it yourself here. Not so good resolution thought.