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How Spirit Takes Pictures
Some Clown writes "MSNBC has a great article on the details of the camera system on the Mars Rover titled How Sprit makes great photos. Apparently the high resolution images are all done with a 1-megapixel camera. All the money is in the CCD and Lens. The hardcore digital photographers in the crowd will probably find the article to be only a teaser on the technical specs, but the rest of us in the unwashed masses should find it interesting."
It is also interesting to see how it produces color photos. Instead of using a 3 color sensor, it uses a B&W camera with 3 colour filters that recombine into a colour image. This is calibrated by a colour wheel on the rover itself.
Neat stuff
No, I read it; obviously the sensors in my little 1MP cam won't be anything near what's in the pancam, but I can do something about the lens. Grab an eye doc friend who can get some decent prescription-ground lenses and go for the stereo effect. I'm not sure; one might have to write a small program to make it work, but it could be fun to see the results.
The NASA guys had to start somewhere. Their biggest advantage will be the sensors, but there's no reason we can't replicate the rest. If one wanted to go all-out, it might even be feasable to use an array from a high-mp camera and configure it to use multiple sensors to produce 1px.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
Nasa uses a 1MP camera but 3 filters. The 3 filters are combined to give you a color image.
Consumer 1MP have the same number of pixles buy each pixle has only 1 filter. The image is then interpolated to get a true color image.
Even if your optics and ccd were the same quality as Nasa's you would still only have 1/3 the resolution.
A lot of people see the prints from my digital SLR, a gracefully aging Nikon D1h and are astonished to learn it's from digital. Most then refuse to believe it's only a 2.7mp camera.
Near all my pictures at www.gavincato.com in the photography section are with the Nikon D1h.
The Nikon D1h has only a 2.7mp sensor, but the output is fantastic. The pixels are large, and the noise is pretty low. It's pretty much noiseless until you hit 800 ISO, and even at 1600 ISO it's significantly better than 1600 speed film.
NASA is very correct in saying the lens & sensor are important, for example most of my lenses are ludicrously expensive (often more than the camera body) and the majority of them are fixed length lenses and thus have incredible optics.
I've previously owned a Nikon D100 which had 6mp, but I found to my surprise that I preferred the output & prints from the D1h. I originally bought the D1h to complement the D100 (the D1h is a crazy fast camera designed for sports), not replace it, but after a while I ended up selling the D100.
The guys in the Canon camp have said the same thing, they much prefer the output of the 4mp Canon 1D vs the 6mp Canon 10D.
question. is your 1d full frame? that would easily explain why it's got better iamges than the 100d.
i'm one of those int he canon camp and i do have to concur with you on those findings. my canon has an APS sized sensor and can take very noise free iamges upto 400 ISO, at 800, it's still useable.. and i've done 1600 ISO shots, but i only use it if i have no other choice.
one thing people don't understand is the extra MPs only matter if you want to blow up your images. most people rarely print bigger than 4x6" and at the largest 8x10" 3MP resolution is more than good enough for an 8x10" print. after that, you want the best out of those MPs... NOT more MPs.
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
His name was Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, and they're awesome. You have to remind yourself of the time period when you see them, or you'll instinctively think they're more modern:
http://www.ummagurau.com/art/russia/
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.