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Canon Mistakenly Announces 11-Megapixel Digital Camera
RichardtheSmith writes " PC Magazine just confirmed
that Canon
mistakenly announced a new 11-Megapixel digital camera that wasn't
supposed to be announced for another two weeks. This caused quite a
stir on the digital photography message boards like DPReview, where Canon
apparently tried to have all links to the press release taken down.
The PC Magazine article is here.
The original press release can be found here."
11 Megapixels of pr0n goodness!
+ 9 megapixel monitor
+ 320 GB drive
Wow. [Insert pr0n joke here]
I would like to see comparison images taken with a low level megapixel device compared with this one.
11 megapixels is an impressive number - but means nothing to me until i see what that actually translates to - picure. 1K words. etc....
This caused quite a stir on the digital photography message boards like DPReview, where Canon apparently tried to have all links to the press release taken down.
Cannon sure will get pissed at Slashdot now, wont they!
When will a consumer version be anywhere near that, and why do we really need to have 11mpixels for most shots, after 2mpix it was really hard to tell the difference anyway.
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
Machievellian. I'm dying to buy one already.
At least by pretending they announced this by mistake, they just generated more buzz about it. :)
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Why?!?!
CMOS sensors look much worse than CCDs, so even a 11.1MP CMOS sensor will likely look worse than a 3-4MP CCD.
Has there been some breakthrough in CMOS sensors?
Well, now here's something CompactFlash/SmartMedia/MultiMediaCard manufactures' will be happily running to the bank with.
$cat
In case of slashdotting or other badness:
Canon Europe celebrates Digital Revolution at Photokina 2002
24/9/2002
Witness the launch of Canon Imaging Gateway an online digital imaging service for consumers
Canon takes its large format printers to high street print shops to deliver fast, large-scale image reproduction
Canon celebrates 15 years of EOS with the launch of the EOS 1Ds - the world's highest resolution professional camera
Cologne, Germany - Canon Europe will use Photokina 2002 as the launch-pad for its latest innovative digital technologies designed to meet the demands of both the consumer imaging and professional print markets.
Forecasting a stunning 70% increase in production of digital still cameras, 2002 has already been an historic year for Canon Europe as both professionals and consumers fully embrace digital imaging.
Mr Hajime Tsuruoka, Canon Europe's Chief Executive Officer and President, said: "Canon Europe is at the forefront of the digital revolution and we plan to remain there. Our strengths as an organisation lie in our implicit understanding of the digital process from start to finish. In addition, we are one of the only electronics companies that own and continue to develop innovative technologies for both the consumer and professional print markets and many of these products will be unveiled at this year's Photokina show, one of the most important industry events in the Canon Europe calendar."
Canon Consumer Imaging
Photokina marks the 15-year anniversary of EOS as a brand. Canon is announcing two new EOS models at the show - the world's highest resolution Pro-camera, the EOS 1Ds and the EOS 300V, which is predicted to become the world's number 1 selling SLR camera.
The EOS-1Ds features the first ever full frame 35mm CMOS sensor with 11.1 million effective pixels. The EOS-1Ds capture astounding detail & colour, almost doubling the resolution ordinarily considered state of the art for a digital SLR camera in the world today.*
Also new this year are three digital still cameras, all featuring the new high performance DIGital Imaging Core (DIGIC) processor. One of the trio, the Digital IXUS v, is claiming the position as the world's smallest 3.2 Megapixel digital camera with optical zoom and LCD monitor.*
Along with the new additions to the camera line up, Canon is announcing Canon Imaging Gateway (CIG), a digital imaging web site, which Canon Europe sees as the vital missing link in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) by creating a one-on-one communication channel to consumer users.
The online solution will allow users to download updates for their digital cameras, in much the same way that mobile phone users download personalised ring-tones. CIG also offers other services online, such as photo albums, photo-printing.
Canon Business Solutions
Canon, recently named one of the world's 'Innovation Elite' by Reuters Business Insight, will also announce the decision by its Business Solutions division to target high-street mini labs with its new range of industry-leading, large format printing devices.
On stand at the show, Canon will be demonstrating how large format devices, such as the W2200 and W7250, will offer the photographic and photo finishing markets innovative solutions to reproduce digital images in poster size, with speed and ease.
Accessible, easy to use, large format Canon printers will be installed in high street photo labs, a move that the market leaders see as a natural progression in the digital revolution. Consumers will be able to turn images from a digital camera, CD, floppy disk, print or negative into large scale versions of their images within an hour, at a considerably lower price than traditional photographic enlargements solutions currently on the market.
* As of September 2002
About Canon Europe
Canon Europe is a subsidiary of Canon Inc. of Japan, a world-leading innovator and provider of imaging and information technology solutions for individuals and businesses.
Canon Europe is a subsidiary of Canon Inc. of Japan, a world-leading innovator and provider of imaging and information technology solutions for individuals and businesses.
The main business focus for Canon Europe is in two clearly defined markets: Business Solutions (network peripherals: photocopy, printer, scanner and fax solutions) and Consumer Imaging (Input Solutions: photographic equipment including analogue and digital cameras and camcorders; and Output Solutions: Bubble Jet and other printers).
Canon Europe also provides Industrial Products including broadcast lenses, semiconductor and medical equipment.
Canon Europe employs more than 12,000 people across 19 countries.
You guys sure seem to post a lot of links you aren't supposed to.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Posted by timothy on Wednesday September 11, @07:33PM
from the lots-of-pixels dept.
RichardtheSmith writes " PC Magazine just confirmed that Canon mistakenly announced a new 11-Megapixel digital camera that wasn't supposed to be announced for another two weeks. This caused quite a stir on the digital photography message boards like DPReview, where Canon apparently tried to have all links to the press release taken down. The PC Magazine article is here. The original press release can be found here."
I don't think there are any consumer or prosumer printers that are going to be able to utilize an 11 megapixel image at this time..?
So not much use except for uber-professionals?
though this camera will undoubtedly be used by pros. Most people don't realize how big a file an 11mp camera would produce at the highest quality setting, not to mention raw mode! I have a D30 (3.25mp) and the best quality jpg's are around 1mb. The D60 doubles that. Once you get a large number of images, size matters. I have 10+GB of D30 images. It means you have to have a good backup solution (read: not CD-ROM).
The PC Magazine article implies that the Rebel Ti is a digital camera. It is not.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
Pretty impressive, but you still can't get the constrasts and subtle shadows and depth that you can get with film. I still happily use a 2mpixel camera. I don't usually print my photos and my monitor can't go past 1200x1600 anyway.
Perhaps what's most impressive about this leaked announcement is that Canon is not playing the release only in small increments game that companies usually do. Why release a product 4 times better than your competitors when you can keep releasing disabled products for the next 4 years that will still beat your competitors by 10% every year. Do you think Intel would just go ahead and release a 40 Ghz processor next week if they could figure out how to do it? The question is are they going to have 11mpixel cameras in their consumer and prosumer lines or just in their professional cameras?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
22 MegaPixel digital back now that's a lotta pixels
I wonder how many engineers died choking on someone elses vomit?
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
I wonder if this is a strategy that can be employed to promote the product... naw.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
for pr0n. Now you can view "lusty lolitas" in 11 megapixel glory.
Well, the next time I have $6k lying around and don't want to do things like buy cars or computers or tons of other cool stuff with it, I'll consider getting one of these.
This isn't really for the average layman, at least that is obvious. Is it only news on slashdot because some web author screwed up while he was proofing the draft? Mabye not. 11 megapixels is a huge jump (twice the current high-end professional ones).
The biggest question, however, is how many megapixels are needed before the quality is on par with analog cameras.
You can't see this if you have sigs turned off.
Taking even a very high-resolution (for a desktop) monitor, say 1600x1200, is less than 2 Megapixels. So anything higher than that will have to be downsampled to display on a monitor anyway (either that or you'll have to scroll around). The main advantage in going higher than that is for high-quality printing. Printing a standard 3x5" photograph at 300 dpi requires a bit less than a 5 Megapixel camera, though something less will probably do okay too. Of course the more megapixels, the bigger you can print and still have it look good.
Also, if you want to do image editing, you'll want to start out with a higher-quality image than what you want as a final image, since filtering/etc. will invariably reduce the quality of the image.
So is 11 megapixel necessary? If you're taking pictures to email to grandma, certainly not. If you want to print out 8x10" photographs on high-quality photographic paper, it could be nice.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The real news here is that the sensor is full-frame 35mm. That means that they can make a digital back for a standard 35mm camera (or a digital camera in a 35mm body, like most small pro cameras), and you will get full frame shots (ie, what you see in the viewfinder is the same as what will be on disk).
The other good news is that they didn't reduce the pixel size to increase the resolution. This gives better image fidelity (contrast and color saturation). That's the funny part about digital camera resolution - they keep increasing the number of pixels in roughly the same sensor area - they get fewer photons per pixel, but more pixels per frame.
This should be cool (I'll check it out at Photokina)
- The Sigless Wonder
People go on and on about how high the resolution on a camera is, but I rarely take a picture with my 2 megapixel camera that's sharp enough to take advantage of all 2000 of those pixels. If I jitter the camera just slightly, I cut the effective resolution in half. Most of the time I could've taken the picture at a lower resolution and scaled the picture up in the GIMP and gotten the same damn picture.
What I really want is a more sensitive CCD that can take sharper pictures with less light and more brilliant color. A razor sharp 1600x1200 picture can be printed at nearly any size and look great. Unless you have nerves of steel to hold the camera steady, you're not going to be able to take a picture sharp enough to take advantage of 11 megapixels. Unless it's high noon in Arizona and the blinding sun is at your back, your CCD just won't be fast enough.
Erik
I've never liked the term "megapixel".
Its inaccurate, and it says very little about the real width by height resolution offered.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Yup. Where have you been?
Lets hope they didn't pull a Palm and its really 10.9993949929 Megapixels. Whew, dodge a bullet there.
But in all seriousiness. I sure hope it's really 11 Megapixels and not "11 Megapixels if you count these as individual pixels even though the industry standard doesn't, rar rar rar rar rar.."
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
Canon apparently tried to have all links to the press release taken down.
Why fight to remove links on a message board when you can just take down the press release yourself? duh...
... $10 says it'll STILL ship with 8 megs of memory.
I was thinking the same thing. I have a 256 meg CF card for my 3MP camera, and I almost never use the highest resolution. The cost would be enormous if I took as many pictures as I do at 11MP, and my CDs would disapear too, when I need to archive them.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Canon Mistakenly Announces 11-Megapixel Digital Camera
Later, they remedied this announcement to read: 11 Megapixel Digital Cameras.
Which was the extent of their sales last quarter.
"Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil." -Philips
Canon apparently tried to have all links to the press release taken down.
.htaccess? Trying to pull links from external sites is just plain dumb.
Why didn't they just delete the release, or move it to another URL, or block it with
rooooar
Given that the camera was quoted as having "11.1 megapixel" resolution, and that the nominal aspect ratio of 35mm film is exactly 1.5:1, I'd guess that the pixel dimensions of an image from this camera are 4096x2688. (This works out to 11,010,048 pixels.)
To get as close as possible to 11.1 megapixels while retaining a nice horizontal dimension of 4096 pixels, the vertical dimension would have to be 2710 pixels. However, 2710 isn't a typical "round" binary number, so the actual dimension is likely to be 2688 (11.01 MP), 2752 (11.27 MP), or 2816 (11.53 MP).
begin 644
They are also going to come out with the 300000$ printer to go along with it......
Rob Timko
http://www.robtimko.com
Agreed,,,, for the end product. What film gives you that the digitals STILL don't is the ability to push the colors or crop and zoom at processing time and still have full size pictures printed with 180DPI of real detail with a full color range.
With a 48 bit color range, you can print 24 bit color even after shifting the colors. 48 is more like film and may be enough.
I've read that matching film in resolution and thus support for cropping and enlarging images will require something more on the order of a 100MP. Is there anyone out there who knows the resolution of film? I'd guess its limited by either the molecule size or the smoothness of the chemical distribution...
Yeah, I'm using a little 2.1MP camera with a 128M SmartCard in it. Knowing that at the highest resolution, I'm can only fit a few dozen shots, makes me wonder what hoops I'll need to jump through with one of those 11MP monsters.
On an interesting side note, though, if you're just doing static scenery stuff, or studio work, you can use something like ComCam, a tool written to interact with Olympus digitals (like my c2100uz), that gives you full settings control, as well as downloads the image after it's shot.
If the 11MP cameras are in an SLR body, they can be T-mounted to telescopes, which will really open the door for good resolution amateur astronomy.
There's more than one kind of photography geek. Sadly, I'm like, three.
- billn
The big deal isn't necessarily the 11.1 MP resolution, it's that the sensor is a full 35mm. Since most digital SLR's have a smaller sensor they only capture a small portion of the frame. This changes the effective focal length of lenses. A 300mm zoom may be a 500mm zoom on a digital SLR, and it will only capture a portion of the light, increasing exposure times. With a 33mm sensor the focal length is what it should be. This will be great for professionals.
I'm a retard.
s/ComCam/Cam2Com/g;
- billn
More interesting than an 11MP camera that no one can afford was the bit at the end of that article about a "second new digital SLR known as the EOS 300V...at an astoundingly low $1000".
As far as I have seen, no one else offers reasonably priced digital SLRs that can use standard commodity camera accessories. I like my digital camera well enough, but this viewfinder, built-in-3X-zoom crap has got to go. It's cheap amateur snapshot quality technology. I would LOVE a digital camera that could use my pile of Cannon lenses, filters, flashes, cable release, etc...
Hmmm... professional camera that shoots at 11Mp... must have a Firewire port on it...
Of course, you have to divide those pixel numbers by 3 or 4 to get a useful pixel count. Camera makers like to count each color as a separate pixel. Tacky.
I'm waiting for Foveon technology to go mainstream. All the colors for each pixel are sensed at the same location, so you don't get color artifacts on sharp edges like you do with other digital cameras. So far, they only make super high end cameras, but I went to a talk by their CTO, and the device isn't inherently expensive if made in volume.
Dealing with super high-res images is a pain, and is overkill anyway.
Give me a consumer grade camera with one of these.
If they can do this, why haven't they updated their aging DV camcorders with a real HDcam? I'm tired of 3 CCD camcorders with only 1/4" or 1/3" CCDs with only 400k pixels. How about producing something for 1080p resolution and 3/4" or 7/8" CCDs. The GL2 and the PD150 are both nice cameras, but Sony HDW-F900s (24FPS 1080i 2200k pixels per 2/3" sensor) they are not. How about some of this Uber-progress on other fronts?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Yes, it's 11 megapixel, which is great for very large prints. This also means that photographers using the camera will have that much more space to crop and still come out with a printable photo.
The other advancement that is very important is that it is a full-frame CMOS sensor. 35mm film is 24mm by 35mm. Today's digital cameras use sensors that are smaller than this. The side-effect of this is that you end up with what some call a focal-length multiplier. The Canon D60 digital SLR has a 1.6x focal-length multiplier, meaning that a 100mm lens turns into a 160mm lens. It doesn't really multiply the focal length, it just crops the image to only record the center portion of the lens' field of view.
This is great if you want to really zoom in on something, but if you're looking for wide angle, you have to buy expensive super-wide angle lenses to get the same effect. Now with a full-frame sensor, you actually get the focal length of the lens you buy.
This is speculation, but I imagine the 's' in 1Ds stands for studio. The Canon EOS 1D is a great pro digital SLR - it has super-fast AF, is built like a tank, has seperate color spaces, and can shoot up to 8 frames per second! However, it's 4 megapixel. The 1Ds is 11.1 megapixel, and will probably only be able to shoot about 2 to 3 frames per second. Perfect for the studio - not that great for sports photography.
I'm very interested to see/hear about the other improvements Canon may have made in the 1Ds!
- Eric, a Canon EOS D60 owner
It's been hyped to death and it's still vapourware. With 11MP sensor, you can group 4 pixels together so that you have full color on each pixel and you will still have almost 3MP.
This 1 GB Microdrive I've used suddenly becomes obsolete if you're a fan of compressed RAW images (as my Canon S40 and I are).
I think the issue you are having is more to do with your particular camera or camera model & lense than it is to do with the megapixel count.
I took these pictures of a laser I'm selling on eBay. Lasers are notoriously difficult photography cleanly without then photo editing them. I shot them with a Canon Powershot G2 4.0 megapixel camera and they look great.
Previously I had been shooting with a Canon Powershot Pro IS90 which did 2.6 MP. Even when shooting the G2 at lower resolutions the images are consistently better than the IS90. Why? Better lens and CCD.
However, you say:
A razor sharp 1600x1200 picture can be printed at nearly any size and look great. Unless you have nerves of steel to hold the camera steady, you're not going to be able to take a picture sharp enough to take advantage of 11 megapixels.
Stability isn't the issue. Exposure is. If you use a faster shutter speed blur will be less of an issue. The resolution you set the camera to will have nothing to do with it.
Additionally, if you plan to print at higher than 72dpi (yetch) you will need a higher resolution image to get the same width & height dimensions on the printed page. Which means more pixels!
I'd be interested to know what kind of camera that you are using that needs such a slow exposure to generate a decent picture. It sounds to me you have a camera that is doing less than midrange digitals currently can. Nevermind highend ones.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
I believe I heard that in order to recreate a "real" film photograph, as they are printed today, would take 20 megapixles. It's amazing to thing that we are half way there.
If Slashdot is where the spelling-challenged go when they die, I'm in heaven.
1) Aim camera.
2) Press button to activate shutter.
3) Push 500 MB file through USB connection to attached network storage drive.
4) Watch hard drive light for 30 seconds.
5) Wait.
6) Send to grandma's AOL dial-up via your own AOL dial-up.
7) Tell everyone to hold still again.
8) Repeat.
"Taking even a very high-resolution (for a desktop) monitor, say 1600x1200, is less than 2 Megapixels."
And don't assume that this will always be the case in the future. I predict that someday 1600x1200 screens will seem as quaint as 640x480 screens are now.
mahlen
History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history.
--Clarence Darrow
High pixel digital cameras allow for better security cameras. being able to resolve the liscense plate numbers off a car outside a store. ie. Things further away are resolvable to a useful level. There are a lot of implications to this, i think.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Most 35mm cameras use a ratio of 4x6 so 11 Megapixels roughly translates to
2708 pixels x 4062 pixels.
To print an 8"x10" picture with this resolution would require a printer capable of at least (2708 dots / 8 inches) 338 dots per inch which any new inkjet can do.
So the next question might be: Can a human eye detect the difference between a 5 megapixel and an 11 megapixel image once it is printed?
Again I would have to say yes.
As your resolution decreases the contrast increases.
In the real world that means if you try to enlarge and print out a low resolution image the final print will have poor contrast. Areas that should be light gray will look white, and your girlfriend's navy blue dress will look black.
I guess canon realized its been a while since I bought a D60 so they HAD to release something else for me to buy...and I thought the D30 was gonna last me a few years.
Bottles.
I have a canon s40 which is a pretty decent digital camera.
my only really big complaint about it is depth of field. except in extreme scenarios, EVERYTHING is going to be in focus with that camera. depth of field is one of the most important tools of photography to emphasize what you want to emphasize in the picture.
because the CCD is so much smaller than 35mm film, the lens is shorter. to accomodate the shorter lens and smaller sensor, the aperature is smaller than 35mm equivilent.
the 3 big ingredients to controlling depth of field are aperature, lens length and distance.
with todays smaller than 35mm digital cameras, the aperature is significantly smaller than 35mm equivilent (greater DOF)
the lens length is significantly shorter than 35mm equivilent (greater DOF)
so all you have is distance...
if you focus on something 2 feet away, maybe something across the street will be somewhat out of focus.
with a 35mm camera (digital or film), you can focus on something 2 feet away and then you, the photographer, can choose whether you want the thing across the street to be almost perfectly in focus or so out of focus that you can't even distinguish whether it's a tree or if it's a building.
this kicks a lot of ass.
my livejournal is interesting and worth reading - I swear. I know everyone thinks their blog is interesting. mine is.
Just a quick comment on megapixelling. Many in the camera world would have you believe that pixels == effective resolution of pictures. This is not true. The resolution of the CCD is analagous to the resolution of the film in a normal camera. As resolutions get higher, film is generally not the limiting factor to the sharpness of an image (or the color saturation, for that matter).
We tested a nice consumer level 6 MP (IIRC) camera informally with an odd shaped object. We found that we could not discern the shape of the object from a distance under any conditions, even though the camera clearly had enough pixel resolution to do so. (Yes we checked lossy compression was off) Therefore, the effective resolution was less than the resolution of the CCD. So maybe (not tested with our tests) a lower resolution camera will give similar results with a blow up in photoshop? I don't know, there are many variables.
In an SLR camera, light has to pass through as many as 15 glass elements before the light hits the film, these elements usually form the basis for the limiting resolution, not the film. So maybe you 6 MP fanboys don't need penis envy over the 11 MP camera afterall.... What we need to see is a affordable digital SLR that can take AIS (for nikon) or equivalent lenses so we aren't stuck with stock glass.
-Sean
I have a friend who's the head of a professional photographers guild in Hawaii. She explained why (a few years back) she thought digital photography would be a long time overtaking conventional photography. Film delivers the equivalent of about 14 megapixels. More importantly, film has far greater dynamic range than most digital processes. This means (as a previous poster mentioned) that you can shift color and contrast quite a bit without losing information.
High quality magazines print at 187 lines per inch (not DPI as another poster states, there IS a difference). In order to provide decent color information, a source file should have a DPI of twice the line screen, or nearly 400 DPI at 24 bit color for a high quality print. Say the magazine is 8.5x11 and you are printing a full page ad. You need 3400x4400 pixels for best quality.
So a professional 35mm that gives you the full 14 megapixels is good enough. This new 11 megapixel camera still isn't. This is not even counting larger format printing, like posters, which though usually printed at a lower line screen than 187, are much bigger than 8.5x11. This is why medium and large format professional cameras use larger film for even more resolution.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I have a Contax 645, and the digital backs available for that camera [ Kodak and Phase one ] are 16 megapixel. That is more than adequate to rival film resolution, but no digital solution will rival the contrast range of film and the low light performance and shadow detail of film.
Flamers can note I realize the camera in question is SLR with interchangeable lenses. But it is not affordable at 6,000.... Nor is it clear that the lenses in optimal conditions (high shutter speed, f-stop sweet spot) have a 11 MP effective resolution.
-Sean
As I said in This post 12MP is about what you need to match 35mm film. This is close enough that it probably doesn't matter. You can make some big ass posters with these images without seeing any graininess. My friend has a 5MP camera and you can already make A size plots that are indistinguishable from photos.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
So, to put that into megapixel terms: a 35mm frame is 36x24mm (strange, but true) That's roughly 7200x4800 pixels, or 34.56 MPixels - far and away better than any 35-mm size digital on the market.
This site has interesting information about digital photography vs. film.
- The Sigless Wonder
A real good film (e.g. Fuji Velvia) can distinguish 160 lines pairs / mm. That means 2 alternating black and white lines, thus you need 320 pixels/mm. Given the size of a 35mm is 24x36 mm^2(NOT 35), you get 320*24*320*36 = 84 MPixels.
_ id=001SWX for a somewhat aged, but photographically accurate analysis of film vs digital.
Eat that.
Note that no 35mm lenses can't reach 160 lp/mm, most pro lenses can reach 100. If you have 20/20 vision you can do about 5 lp/mm. Having said that' I'll give my right (20/22) eye for a EOS1Ds.... See http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg
Some film manufacturers give modulation transfer function data on their web sites. The very best color negative film (Konica Impressa 50) gives about 65 line pairs per millimeter, or 3120 x 4680 pixels for a 24 x 36 mm frame. Faster films are worse; some very specalized B&W films can give several hundred LP/mm. Consumer lenses don't do better than 100 LP/mm.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Not sure exactly,but for digital movie production 32 - 64 bit color depth is needed for for film out put.
Don't be surprised to see an 11 Megapixel Camera from SONY following soon. Last year during the World games in Edmonton, select press got a chance to use the cameras first hand.
Although Canon and Sony probably don't do as much joint camera and video development work together now as they used too (Sony used to do a major portion of the electronics development, while Canon would work on providing the opticas and such), rumor has it that the 11 million MegaPixel chip in both the new Canon and Sony cameras where developed together just over two yeasr ago.
Particularly with a large print, you're going to give your full attention to only a portion of the print at any one time. So, even if the eye can only see 800x600 or whatever (though calculations like this are pretty misleading because the eye does all sorts of image processing tricks and has non-uniform sensor density, IIRC), that doesn't mean a higher-resolution image is a waste.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
"I can't imagine anyone needing a digital camera with more than 640K pixels" -- Bill Gates 1973.
I've hear though that due to the non-random distribution of pixels in a digital array, you may have to have more than 2 pixels / LP in your conversion... Would you think that there is any truth to that?
A great deal of stuff is coded in number of pixels, so the higher resolution you go to, the smaller it gets on screen (unless you simultaneously move to a bigger monitor). Thus even if you solved the dot pitch problems and could run a 15" monitor at 3200x2400 crisply, you wouldn't be able to make out anything on screen.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If you buy really good, really slow speed film that has minimal grain, the film can hold a little less than 20 megapixels of data. But to get a good quality shot that will have enough detail to fill all that information, you need to have a very steady tripod, a very good quality lens and perfect focusing and exposure.
I have a new film scanner I use that has made scans up around 5500x3600 pixels. That's about the highest one needs to go to get all the information out of an image. Oh and that comes out to about 19.8 mega pixels, which is about a 60 meg uncompressed file (24bit RGB). You can also scan in using 16bit RGB channels resulting in an image around 120megs.
And think, that's just 35mm film, which is about 1 square inch. Imagine what a large format camera can shoot with it's 8x10" film. And the film can be even larger than that!
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
You may be right. There's a camera which a Foveon sensor, but it's still at "price and availability to be announced". I saw what was claimed to be a prototype early this year, but it doesn't seem to be in production.
Noone _said_ we really need to have 11 megapixels for most shots. Even Canon doesn't think that, hence the > $5500 US price for this camera (body only, mind).
Your post is like seeing an announcement for a server 1TB RAID array, asking when a desktop version will arrive, and why would most people need a 1TB RAID array on the desktop.
Feh.
This is seriously high-end equipment, and is intended by it's maker as such, and it's priced accordingly.
Also note, according to the premature press release, it's a 'full-frame' sensor, which will make it the first of its kind on the market. Couple that with Canon's excellent line of lenses, and this is a fantastic announcement.
Megapixels are going up right? So if you take a picture you can zoom more without losing quality.
So, this is kinda like binoculars. Does this mean when we reach 100Megapixels, we'll basically have something better than any binocular in the world, without the huge bulk of binoculars?
Where does this stop? How about 10000Megapixel cameras/telescopes?
Thanks...
According to this page EOS300V is a film camera0 V.html
http://www.eos-magazine.com/News_35_EOS30
a typo? or a new camera?
- Lights and shadows, make a photo -
You might want to look into this. The three layer technology will give you 2(4) times the resolution for your greens (reds and blues) that your usual CCD will give. Your CCD uses only one layer that is partitioned into a checkerboard of separate color elements meaning that you will have to take 2 times less resolution than your promised 11 megapixels. With this new Foveon detector, the three layers will give you a less modified image (CCD cameras pass through a DSP which inevitably destroys information) that is 2 times the resolution (if they make a 5.5 megapixel detector, thats 11 megapixels in terms of what we call it).
ummm
11 * say 6 for luck (65bbc) = 66MB
no problem if the camera can take an IBM micro drive
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Anybody else notice that the newest story has been there for like 30 minutes with still no first post?
What's going on?
Yeah ... but what if they were to bundle it with one of these?
Here is a very good article comparing
Film vs. Digital
Bottom line: This camera can beat some 35mm films in resolution, but not all of them.
Digital still has a long way to go:
8x10 format film is equivalent to ~1000 Mpixel
You a [bit] wrong,
I have lots of large prints arrond the house, if i go upto them with a magnifying glass there all grainy, why, beceuse of the emulsion on the film.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
--
I romp with joy in the bookish dark
I guess now we know why we need those new Maxtor drives.
--
I romp with joy in the bookish dark
a 35mm frame is 36x24mm (strange, but true) That's roughly 7200x4800 pixels, or 34.56 MPixels
And 35mm is small-format. Photographers going for higher quality go with "medium format" (70mm film, 60x60mm image size - think Hasselblad) or larger, roughly 12000x12000 pixels -- 144 megapixels. Digital still has a ways to go to catch up at the high end.
-- Alastair
Title of Article: "Canon Mistakenly Announces 11-Megapixel Digital Camera"
Sample content of parent post: "11 megapixel camera"
Moderation of parent post: "Offtopic=1"
Personality rating of Moderator: "Clue=0"
most pro cameras have a firewire port. we're talking about 5+ MB files here so a firewire port is necessary.
What everyone here seems to be missing is that the camera has a full-frame chip without any magnification factor. As a photojournalist, it is a real pain to not be able to use my wide angle lens as wide as I would like. My Canon 1D has a magnification factor of 1.3, which is pretty good. Many others are 1.5 (take your 17-35 lens and times it by 1.5 and you get a 25mm-52.5mm lens) which isn't wide enough in many situations.
11 Megapixels should be enough for anyone.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Commissioner Lal
no, it's not. at this stage in digital photography, there are already a lot of pro-level cameras that can match 35mm film quality (D1X, ID, D60, even the D30). "a few years back", pro level cameras might have been a 2MP SLR which of course pales in comparison to film. current hardware and software CAN match 35 mm film quality.
Currently I have an epson Perfection 2450 and a FSCKING BIG CAMERA which produces 4x5" negatives.
:)
:)
With the right film, exposure and developing I can scan those negatives/slides at 2400dpi and they look tack sharp.
Now it 48-bit colour that gives a 690Mb image file
Digital just cant match that - so i'm going to stick with analog for serious photos. Maybe go digital for snapshops
Interesting, I've found the exact opposite to be true. I'm going to first assume you're talking about slide film, which has a dynamic range of about four stops, since that's what most people are shooting professionally (save for photojournalists and wedding photographers).
I've found that the shadow detail in digital cameras (specifically the canon d60) can be absolutely stunning- through some Levels adjustment I've been able to take parts of a digital image that appear completely black, and get excellent detail out of them, something I'd never be able to do shooting on transparencies.
I'd recommend a look at Michael Reichmann's site, where he reviews the D60 vs. 35mm vs. Medium Format and concludes that for up to 11x17 prints, the Canon D60 is at least as good as 35mm. Furthermore, I've personally found that the raw images delivered by my D60 look better on screen and in print than scanned in images, since the pixel quality simply seems better (despite using a top of the line film scanner that's optimally configured).
In closing, as a professional photographer, I've never had a client need anything more resolution than what I've been able to deliver digitally.
No wonder they want it down.
"11" megapixels
Man, if I had this pent up I'd be releasing prematurely too!
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Crying 'Not Overkill' shows ignorance of the practical world of photography. Theoritical maximums and ideal values are meaningless when the end viewer can't tell the difference. There is no way an average human being can differentiate between a 200 DPI print from a 4 to 6 MP camera and a 400 DPI print from a 11 MP camera. Not even with a magnifying glass.
Many highly regarded professional photographers are shooting very successfully with a Nikon D1H with it's measly 2.7 megapixels. A high quality image has such more more to do with the person behind the camera, not the camera itself. An 11 megapixel, 400 DPI crap image is still a crap image.
If you can't create a very high quality printed image using the gear we have RIGHT NOW you can't blame the camera or printer. It's a blow to the ego at first, but liberating later on.
We're not there yet, but it's about time.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
I have to say I've worked with a few photgraphers for some magazines and more and more they seem to be going digital... Professional Digital SLR's within the 6-7 Megapixel range seem to be what they buy... I got to play with one briefly a year ago... I'm more up on the software end of digital photgraphy, but I've toyed with it off & on since the first 640x480 res B&W digitals came out...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
The best part about this it's a full frame CMOS sensor, meaning it has the same 24mm x 36mm frame size as a 35mm film frame would. Almost all other CMOS sensors (outside of the Contax N1, who$e co$t i$ not an ea$y $um to $ave for) are smaller than the standard 35mm frame. This changes the effective focal length of the lens, making it a longer lens. A 15mm superwide lens on a normal 35mm frame becomes a 22mm effective focal length on say a Canon D60. (As a side effect, because of this, all of the superwide SLR lenses are backordered, mine has been on order almost 2 months, grumble grumble.) Now you can buy a lens for your film camera and have it be exactly the same effective focal length for your digital cam. I have a Canon film SLR, good camera. I like the fact that now there is a decent upgrade path, though it pretty much is a given that this would have happened eventually.
1. Pixel bit depth?
2. Total file size of a RAW/TIFF file?
File size is everything. Megapixels are nice, but the more data a CCD spits out, the better the image.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Dunno how I ended up with 5,000,000...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
After shooting commercially for a year with a Phase One back on a Hassie after 10+ years of using Fujichrome and Ektachrome, I can tell you that's flat out wrong. The dynamic range of a digital back is about twice that of slide film.
And using that back changed the studio from top to bottom. Much more effecient and profitable. We shot double-trucks (with a little Fractal tools wizardry) that were beautiful. Digital is the way to for the pro now.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Whats the range of B/W print film? I know it's got a much stronger dynamic range than color print or slide film.
"If you think the current 9 -Megapixels are good, wait until the 11 -Megapixels come out in two weeks.... ..The mic is what!?!?!?!? Oh crap!"
| - | - |
with a 35mm film scanner at 4000dpi - a slide can be scan in at 42Mpixels to 102Mpixels... try that with your silly digital camera :-)
I've done some tests by photographing the exact same scene with my Minolta film camera and with a Canon D30. I sent the film to be developed and asked for a 20x30cm print and I printed the digital file myself on a Epson Stylus Photo 810 (6 colors) at 2880 dpi, premium photo glossy paper (260g).
The digital print was almost as good as the print from film, but not quite there.
When you examine a digital print, look at the small details close together (leaves on trees, grass, steam, sand texture). How detailed are they? Digital cameras tend to "wash" the fine detail probably at the processing stage when they get rid of noise. The resulting images are often too clean, which works great for plain surfaces but not for fine texture & patterns (and I haven't even talked about moire problems that I notice sometimes in fabrics).
Bottom line, digital cameras are getting better. Now if only they got cheaper too...
Normal CCD pixels are only sensitive to one light component (usually R, G and B). So when you have, say, 3 megapixels, you only have 1 million red samples, 1 million green samples and 1 million blue samples (actually this isn't exactly right, because green is usually given priority, so on most 3 megapixel cameras you have 1.5 million green samples, 750k red samples and 750k blue samples).
Basically what this means is that if you want a clean-looking image, with no coloured halos in high-contrast areas, you should have at least 3 times as many CCD pixels as you want to have in the final image.
Also, because CCDs can be quite "noisy" under low light, it helps to have more samples so that when you average them you get a more stable colour.
As a rule of thumb, with mid-range CCDs, you'll be able to get pretty good pictures at 1/4 of the camera's resolution (ie, if the camera shoots at 2048x1536, the picture will look better - without red/blue outlines and with a lot less noise - if you resample it to 1024x768).
Some cameras will do this automatically when you select a lower resolution (ie, shoot at maximum, then resample), others will capture the image directly at the lowest resolution, using only half the CCD's pixels. If you're not sure how your camera works, you should always shoot at the maximum resolution and then downsample in an image editing program if you want to get rid of halos / noise.
RMN
~~~
I have a Canon Powershot 330. It's far from a professional camera (2 mp), and I'm far from a professional photographer. My question is that in every photo I take with this camera, every element is perfectly in focus - even in macro mode, I can never get a nice looking shot with only the subject in focus. Is this an issue that is related to digital cameras specifically, or more to my model? How much more do I have to pay for a digital camera that will allow me to control the depth of field?
---- scrm
when scanning 35mm motion picture film for motion graphics or special effects work the industry standard is a 4k scan -- 4000 pixels vertical per frame. (Not too long ago 2k was used.) Film scanned at this resolution can be transfered back to 35mm and will be visually identical to material that was analog the whole way through. Of course the fact that the images are moving helps smooth things out -- and they use a 12 or 16 bit log scale for color.
In a 2 MegaPixel camera, there are 4 types of color receptors. So, at maximum resolution, each pixel in your photo is made up of of light that was received by at least 4 receptors. That's why your photos look 'blurred' when you zoom in on them..
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
The EOS1 models have always represented the MAXIMUM expression of Canon's engineering prowess. If they have the imaging technology, and are capable of packaging "it" inside an awesome armored body worthy of EOS1 status, Canon will build the camera and have bragging rights until Nikon manages to catch up.
I love all the jackballs on here saying 11MP is waaaaaay to much for most people. HA! This camera isn't for "most" people. It's intended for shooting professionals. Pros have a wide range of resolution requirements. It's really easy to downsample. It's not possible to go the other way without the result looking like crap, so having an 11MP capability would be welcomed by the guys in the trenches.
I've used an original EOS1 for 12 years. Even now, I'm still in awe of the greatness of that camera. When I first saw the EOS1v, I said to myself, "The professional 35mm SLR is done. This is enough. This design will stand until a paradigm shift occurs in photography." What else can they do for 35mm?! That model has stood unchanged for a few years, and remains the standard by which all other 35mm SLRs are measured. The EOS1d D-SLR is based on that EOS1v body, the EOS1s probably will be also. (I don't want to get into a pissing contest with the Nikon camp.)
I didn't buy the EOS1d because of the resolution. I knew they would bump the res., but I had no idea it would get into the 11MP range. I was thinking more like 8MP.
I will be counting the days until I get to hear how much buffer space that camera has! And how long will it take to flush to flash media once you fill the buffer!? In other words, how many full res frames can you shoot in a row? If that thing can manage 6 to 7 full res fps, or better, I'm a buyer.
11MP in the battle ready body of the EOS1v. Wow. My jaw is still on the floor. This will be the biggest, baddest stick in the playground. No doubt about it.
...Oh wait.
As far as I can see, there is no mention anywhere that the 300V is a digital camera. I read that the EOS-300V is a successor to the popular EOS-300, which is, of course, a film-based camera.
http://www.eos-magazine.com/
Damn - no good for pr0n, then...
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
wow, 11 megapixels is the highest ever? I better go take back my (16 MP)
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Having said all that, the move to a standard 35mm frame size is EXCELLENT for existing lens compatibility and creativity reasons (try restricting depth of field with a normal digital 8mm lens - you can't).
Don't bet on it.
You are assuming the pixels are square or otherwise equal dimensions horozontally and vertically. They may not be. For example, the Nikon D1X has rectangular sensor pits... twice the resolution horozontally than vertically. (The D1 and D1H had square sensors, and the D1X doubled the number horozontally in the same space, but has the same number vertically) D1X images are 3008x1960, but the sensor is 4,024 x 1,324.
The camera processes this data to interpolate and produce an image with more pixels than sensors vertically, and fewer pixels than sensors horozontally. Essentially the extra data horozontally is shifted to create more resolution vertically.
This new Canon is a $6k camera for pros like me. People comparing it to screen resolution or who think 2MP is more than enough are just idiots who don't know their arse from ED glass.
This resolution however, is getting to be close to the limits of resolving power for commercial lenses (about 120 l/mm at the film plane.) General purpose and even pro film doesn't surpasses this resolution (a few super hi-res B&W technical copy films do however). Your averave color negative film has resolving power of about 60 l/mm.
There are MUCH bigger digicams out there in larger formats... I've even used a 4x5 inch digital back that was over 30 MP. This is a pro camera, just like 300mm/f2.0 (original list of $30k) or 600mm/f4.0 big glass are pro lenses that you aren't going to use for pics of granny on the sofa.
Some more important info will be does it have a flat response curve? Does it capture 12 bits or 16 bits of data? How fast does it process the images? How big a frame buffer? How fast can I shoot until it can't keep up with me? How strong is the anti-alias filter in front of the sensor? What is the noise level?
What I really want is a cam with a 9MP full frame Foveon with a 512MB buffer, shoot at 3 fps with 40 frame burst, Nikon mount, dual CFII slots, and 150 foot radius Bluetooth to write the data straight to the computer.
I've found that the shadow detail in digital cameras (specifically the canon d60) can be absolutely stunning
True, but the problem with digitals is not shadows. It's that they tend to blow out the highlights. And a good print film will still provide much better dynamic range than contemporary digitals.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
"Sinar has today announced the development of a digital back (for medium format cameras) with an amazing 1-shot resolution of 22 million pixels." article here
I don't think it was neccessary this time.
Quote from the website: "Just a quick note to the tens of foreign websites who regularly copy our content without permission. We are now actively seeking you out." Full note here.
Speaking as a prosumer in both the SLR and Digital arenas...
m
A very good discusion can be found at : http://www.users.qwest.net/~rnclark/scandetail.ht
Thanks to Dan's Data - D60 Review for pointing me there!
you should rereadthe previous poster because saying something like "I've never had a client need anything more resolution than what I've been able to deliver digitally." Is silly.
As a "Professional" Graphic designer I can tell you that unless you are talking about material coming from a sinar digital studio camera or a leaf medium format camera back; a slick glossy Magazine Printing at 8.5X11 using even the lower line screen of 150 would still need 300DPI image, which very few Digital cam's can provide.
Which is why you don't see very many Digital originated images at full size in one of these magazines.
You do see some at sizes of 3X5 > which can be acceptable, when coming from a good Professional camera such as a Nikon D1 or a Fuji S1, or a Pro Canon or Minolta Camera.
But images form Prosumer or high end consumer models from sony, Olympus, Canon and nikon, just don't cut it.
No matter how nice their CCD's we are talking about, the dinamic range necessary for true photographic output is not there.
No matter what your eyes tells you from a casual look.
The differences that we are talking about are not in the traditional visual range, but most people can feel the difference.
a trained eye can show you the difference, but most people just feel it. Have you ever picked up a $35 design magazine and compared it to Linux Journal? Usually you can feel the richness and dept of the expensive mag as opposed to the trade mag.
(not dept of content)
The trade mag uses 35mm film scanned in with High end Flatbed scanner, or even flat art scanned in with The Flatbed. A high end flat bed scanner usually has shadow densities of between 3.0 and 4.0. A drum scanner on the other hand has shadow densities between 4.0 and 6.0, which really allows you to feel the richness of an image.
This is what is used to get information of a 4X5 or 2&1/4 transparency. These scanners scan at 1200dpi, at 48bit; and this is what is then downsampled by photoshop.
The difference between this process and a flatbed scanning at 600dpi at 36bits is HUGE.
A digital camera's CCD even the nicest fanciest Prosumer model is a cripled Flatbed scanner chip.
Crippled both because of the camera's usage (fast results, a lot of shaking moving objects.) and because of using less of the ccd's imaging area because of the economics behind the Optics systems.
The end result is that a digital camera, sure can win awards for nicest pretiest snapshots, but they certainly are not treatning Kodak and Fuji's cash cow; because no matter how many images are shot by casual users, the professional still shoots upwards of 1000feet of film in a two week period, as opposed to the 10 feet a year that most casual users shoot.
PS: Yes I know you shoot more with your digital camera. (it still doesn't compares to what a person who does this for a living shoots)
Content + Container; Content = Container; Content â Container... which is the question?
The argument goes both ways. The random nature of film allows bringing out higher resolution than the 2 pixels/LP, at the cost of lost contrast. On the other hand, visual comparisons often give digital the advantage in image attractiveness (unless there are problems with jaggies) because at the resolution limit film looks noisy.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
IIRC, the Hubble telescope uses a 16M pixels.
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
I thought Shannon's law of sampling applied to the frequency resolution of repeated discrete-time sampling (i.e. sampling audio data 44100 times/second, as on a CD). What does that have to do with a single sample?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I can see how it would be applicable here. Basically you're doing repeated samples at discrete distances from each other, so it's analogous to the audio sampling, only not in the time domain.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I too welcome the 35mm-size CCD, but this is not the last piece of the puzzle. For example, lenses ought to be designed differently for a digital camera. Film essentially doesn't care about the angle of light striking it, while CCDs want the photons to strike perpendicular to the CCD plane.
This is a shame, because it would be nice for a pro photographer transitioning to digital to be able to capitalize on his/her existing investment in 35mm lenses.
/. peeve #274: The word is neither "walla" nor "whala", it's voila. Phonics is a tool of the devil.
According to Basic Photographic Materials and Processes, there are 7MP cones (color-sensitive cells)
That said, the eye is a scanning device (most of this scanning is unconscious and you don't always realize you are doing it
Not all pixels are the same. The 990 has pixels that are about 9X smaller meaning that they have about 9 X the noise. Also, the pixels are much closer to the diffraction limit of the lens and that will hurt image quality. I routinely take 1D images up to 16X24 and get amazing results. The 990 tops out at about 8X10. There are of course differences in sharpening (The 1D does much less in camera), color balance, and Dynamic Range. But those are other issues.
In some areas, this will blow the socks off of true professional equip... Wait... This is true professional equipment.
Its ISO 200 is impressive. Its ISO 400 is really good. Its ISO 800 is not that bad. Its ISO 1600 is usable. Its ISO 3200 will take images. Its 1/16000 (that is right) shutter speed is the fastest out there.
The D30/D60/1D and presumably the 1Ds will have at least 12 bits/pixel. The 1D provides a +/- 2 stop exposure compensation after the fact.
USB to slow.
This might be the sharpest lens in existence.
Or a 400 F2.8
Or a 200 F1.8
Both Nikon and Canon make outstanding long telephoto lenses.
Heh - film cameras aren't cheap so why would you expect digital cameras to be any different? The expense isn't the storage medium, it's the lens(es).
- I am taking a picture of my dog.
- just as I press the shutter, aliens fly overhead.
So, I have a tiny fraction of the picture that I want to expand. If I had huge resolution, I'd be able to grab that portion and enlarge it without it going grainy.People will always want to do this, which is why I can't see the quest for resolution slowing down anytime soon.
Gah, Slashdot moderation doesn't work. Somebody should have modded down my post as over rated, as a bunch of professional chimed in to prove me wrong.
Obviously, I haven't kept up in the world of photography since then. I wonder if medium and large format cameras still in use professionally, and if so, where?
My guess is that there are still some applications for that etch, but it sounds like, more and more, digital is sufficient for most professional applications.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton