Slashdot Mirror
When 8 Megapixels Just Isn't Enough
squidfrog writes "AP has an interesting article on a half photochemical, half digital process to produce 2.6-gigabyte photographs at 'more than a thousand times the size and resolution of those generated by a typical digital camera for consumers.' 'A vacuum pump ensures that the film is flat to within one-thousandth of an inch, and a dual-mirror device keeps the film parallel to the lens. Sand bags strapped to the camera and tripod prevent the machine from shifting, and a reinforced aluminum cradle maintains the parts of the camera in perfect alignment.' The images are apparently higher resolution than can be reproduced on available printing technology (5' by 10'), but the designer hopes to use an 18' by 36' digital display wall to reproduce the images at their best possible resolution in the future. The camera has apparently only been utilized for landscape photography thus far."
imagine penthouse printed out in this size format....
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
My karma really hurts.
The camera has apparently only been utilized for landscape photography thus far.
I wonder if we will see compact versions of this in the future... High quality film and digital signal processor that transfers the info to the film..
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
Looks like this might come in handy after all at 2.6GB per image.
...110lbs of camera, vacumpump, sandbags and a specially reinforced cradle? Me think we won't see this kind of sofistication (and stunning pictures) from a consumerlevel camera anytime soon. Or at all, as he rightly points out in the article.
Maybe as well - a 5'x10', sharply focused photo of my own fingertip wouldn't be all that interesting ;)
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Remember them, just another thing japanese business men will have on their keychain in a few years.
Half analogue, half digital? He's just scanning a large negative, hardly earth shattering.
Everything is sharp? well he's just stopped down the lens. thats why he needs sandbags to weigh the thing down, the exposure times will be quite long i would imagine.
The camera has some intersting features for film flatness but this is really the only innovation.
The neg size is quite puny really. At Antwerpen Photograpic Museum I saw a camera which was HUGE - as tall as me. Took something like 4 foot negative plates.
And I thought normal-sized family portraits were bad enough...
I think it would be kind of limiting to force your focal plane to always be parallel to your film plane. Sure, it works fine for most 35mm SLRs, but when you're working with a view camera like the one the inventor is pictured with, you often find it useful to tilt your plane of focus while keeping your film plane vertical or at some other angle.
Depth of Field is the area of acceptable sharpness, generally considered to be 1/3 in front of the plane of focus, and 2/3s behind it. It's limited based on a number of factors including lens length (and thus, aperture) and distance to subject. If you were shooting a landscape, and wanted to ensure your foreground was in focus, as well as the mountains off in the distance, you'd tilt the top of the focal plane forward a bit, for instance.
Not to belittle this guy's ideas, but going that far out of your way to keep your lens parallel to your film plane, with that type of camera, seems a bit silly.
This sig intentionally left justified.
Genuine Panorama photo equipment was similar in quality.
.
A long strip of negative was gradually pulled slowly across the focal plane as the camera was slowly rotated
The photographs from 80 years ago are staggering in detail.
BTW his , method was replicated using CRT and mirrors with a negative moving along in a long strip to create ultra hi rez newspaper printing plates in the early 1980s. This stuff is old hat.
The reason? The negatives themselves are very tall but astonishingly long.
A modern camera can never be desinged to do that. Its a lost artform.
luckily examples of the photos exist in libraries
if dig camera manufacturers did not LIE and count the colors seperately RGBG (two greens per blue and red) then the megapixels would not be 400% inflated.
a 16 megapixel camera is actually only 4 megapixel
a primitive 33mm negative is 8,000 "pels" wid in resolution.
digital cameras will take years to reach that.
even the best real 1920x1080 camera (the Thompson Viper) can take a phot at that res in one 60th of a second exposure at 12 bits of color depth.
Thats a joke compared to a 40 dollar SLR camera.
let alone a 1930s panorama camera
Wake me up in 20 years when i can finally be impressed.
There is noting digital about the camera. It says in the article that the film is scanned after beeing proccessed.
When i Moderate something -1 Flamebait, why do i not get another modpoint?
5--1 = 6
So, the point of paiting is making something that is as close as possible to a photography?
Maybe it's because I saw a Miro exposition just last Sunday, but the quote gave me a good laugh!
This is just large format photography, which has been around for a very long time. If you are used to the crappy photo quality from consumer cameras developed at most 1 hour photolabs, you will be blown away by large format (or even medium format, which has 60 mm film).
The camera in the article uses 9 inch x 18 inch negatives, which is pretty large, but 8 x 10 cameras are available off the shelf from many suppliers. Look at the large format section at photo.net.
More importantly, the article says he uses some weird film (without naming it, thanks, AP idiots) that requires a lot of processing in photoshop.
The article doesn't say how he handles light falloff - with many lenses, the center is brighter than the edges. With many large format lenses, you can use a calibrated neutral density filter to make the light levels uniform.
The topic is a little misleading I was expecting that the camera somehow used film to store a digital image (makes no sense I know that's why I was interested). But what is really going on is Ross created a really stable, perfectly focused camera and then scanned the negitive in to make color corrections. The camera is not digital at all.
luckily his website doesnt have a 2.6 gigabyte image file...slashdot crowd + 2.6gb file = *shudder*
if anyone has a sample of the mountain picture post a link.
Do you need a website upgrade?
There are professional medium-format cameras with digital sensor. They do more than 20Mpx at $10-15k. I'm waiting for the day when I can afford one of them...
If he had used photographic plates (i.e. glass covered with emulsion) then he could have saved putting a vacum pump on the thing to keep the film flat. I mean its not as if you're going to get that sized film in a roll, is it? :)
2.6GB files would be perfect to use as a wallpaper in Longhorn.
--JC
The images are apparently higher resolution than can be reproduced on available printing technology (5' by 10')
"You call 5x10 hi-res? Man, I call 1024x768 low-res!"
(Joke info: a play on whether the item in question connects to "[resolution] than can be reproduced" or "available printing technology". Bad, but to be moderated up only.)
I wonder at what point digital technology will allow the punter on the street to afford a higher resolution than that capable on traditional 'wet' film. As far as I know the technology still cannot get near the resolution of film, which is dictated by the size of the crystals.
Finally, a compact camera. Beats lugging around a 235 lb Polaroid for those snapshots you always want to take on vacation.
This sig intentionally left justified.
I think good old cameras with glass plates used in 19th century are as good.
at that rate you'd need better storage than those 512mb flash cards. even an 80gb slim hd would only store about 30 images.
bite my glorious golden ass.
the Goatse Guy and Tubgirl in this high resolution!
Actually, I couldn't. I just couldn't. I felt sick even thinking of imagining them. You?
Because the images produced are so high in quality that scanning it in is the only way you can realistically actually *DO* anything productive with these negatives once you've created them.
Here. /.'ed back in December....where u take a regular high-megapixel camera, and a specialized tripod and take many pictures and then use software to stitch 'em together.
It was
I want that image he took of Mt Colorado for my birthday. All the walls in my house are screaming for recognition, I'm sure with that photographer's photos hung up on the walls to hide the peeling wallpaper, they'll stop complaining.
Oh damn. My birthday is today.
For some reason the words "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" come to mind...
Max Lyons produced a 1 Gigapixel image a while ago (see the slashdot article) but how many gigapixel is that? I would say at least 3 (1 byte per channel per pixel). And no, you can't say that Lyons' one doesn't count beacuse it's a stiching, since this one has to go through Photoshop as well. On the other side, Lyons' one is MUCH cheaper to produce (but not much, it does require a wee bit of man-hours).
The article seems incomplete. What he's describing isn't that unusual except for the size of negative and that's not record setting. Stat cameras have operated with vaccuum assist like he describes form decades. I used to use one in the mid 70s and it was an old machine. I'm sure he had difficulty working with files of that size at first but technology has caught up with him and a workstation board running 8 gigs of ram would handle an image that size quite easily and other than a beefy video card not require any special or custom equipment. It's not a digital image so I'm not sure what he's doing that is so landmark. As the article points out others have worked with much larger negatives. I recall one who even turned a van into a camera for shooting large format landscapes. Most did B&W but it was primarily for artistic reasons. The images sound stunning but there's nothing new as far a technology. He basically updated an old aerial camera then scanned the neg like everyone else.
"They put a man on the moon? That's just building a large rocket, hardly earth shattering.
The craft was manned? Well they just put in some life support systems, that's why they couldn't fit much equipment on board, they wouldn't have been able to bring much back i would imagine.
The craft has some interesting features for taking off again after a landing but this is really the only innovation.
The lunar capsule is quite puny really. At Boeing I saw an airplane which was HUGE-- much taller than me. Something like 50 feet long."
I want all my "pictures" private folder to be this size!
http://www.automatiq.se
You're right. Nothing here is absolutly earth shattering. However, you're overlooking the extent to which the process has been taken. The film flatness is a HUGE issue at the enlargement rations at which he is working. Vacuum systems, while comercially available for medium format, are pretty much unheard of for large format cameras. The mirror alignment check is also a critical detail. Commonly used in telescopes, and within the last few years, enlargers, this is the first camera I have heard of that employs such a thing. Keeping the film plane absolutely perpendicular to the optical axis is, again, critical at these enlargement ratios because even an arcsecond of misalignment will produce visible defocus. The use of aerial film contributes greatly to the finished product. Aerial film has a MUCH higher resolution than standard films. The problem, as stated in the AP article, is using aerial film to reproduce a scene and produce a final print containing reasonable contrast and color values. This is where digital imaging comes in. The negative on the film cannot be used to make a "photo-realistic" print with conventional wet-process materials.
Oh, and it is highly unlikely that he "just stopped down the lens" At smaller aperatures, diffraction starts to become an issue and the resolving power is lowered dramatically. As for the sand bags, their purpose is likely twofold. Well, one purpose, two reasons. Obviously, they're there to reduce movement during the exposure. Part of this need is brought on from the length of the exposure time, but part of it also comes from the maximum allowable movement during the exposure. Take, for instance, the blades of grass. They're x millimeters wide d meters from the camera. From this, you can determine the degrees of arc that a blade of grass subtends. Moving to the back of the lens (inside the camera) you can work from the subtended angle and the distance to the film plane to determine the size of the blade of grass on the film. To avoid triganometry, consider that the entire vista before the camera is shrunk down to the size of the film, a small detail like a blade of grass is really, REALLY small on the film. If the film or lens moves by the size of the blade of grass on film, the blade of grass will be completly obliterated. If it moves even a small fraction of that size, it will be visibly unsharp. There's a reason holography is done on giant, sand filled isolation tables (no, I'm not implying that these photographs are resolved to somthing on the same order as the wavelengths of the light being recorded, I'm just saying thery're out there in the same freaky territory).
This camera isn't a new thing, it's an old thing taken to a place never before explored.
... It was the breakthrough machine and had a Megabyte, operated at one Megaherz and had a Megapixel display.
Well things have moved on and now I'm waiting for my Gigapixel display. It sounds like I'm going to need one anytime now...
(or not)
to reconcile photographers about the paper vs digital feud. It sums up exactly what are the advantages of both technologies : film for accuracy and digital treatment afterwards combined to make near perfect prints.
On a smaller scale, I have both an EOS 500N and an EOD 300D, and I use both, but for different reasons. Digital gives me instant verification of my settings and allow me to do lots of tests without burning my money on prints, and my old 500N is used to take the final picture that I will be able to print in large.
To go back to the current topic, it illustrates what direction the digital cameras should take to make film based ones really obsolete: it's all about resolution, although many will say this is false. I agree with the fact that better lenses are far more important than a high resolution, but when you already have a good lens, the only way is to go up in details.
Great, I can see it now...
100 lb sandbags, the next must-have accessories for your 3oz, matchbox sized camera.
Where film has it's advantage is resolution. It's cheaper to get more resolution, and has a higher limit than digital the moment (and probably will for a while).
They should use this in weather satelites, then you could say "I can see my house from here!"
The reason the film is held flat under pressure and the front standard is held perfectly parallel to the film is that when you are doing aerial spy photography in WW2, you want to use a large apeture and high shutter speed. This means that your DOF is quite narrow and if the film and/or front standard is out of alignment, some of the photo will be out of focus. Using mirrors would also dampen/eliminate some of the vibration of the planes at the time. Of course, when using the photo for non-aerial/spy photography, you sometimes don't want everything parallel, because you want to change the plane of focus (one of the reasons for lugging such a large camera around in the first place!). So I would have thought this would be a disadvantage rather than an advantage.
Plus the fact you would have to cut your own film for it..
Particularly important are the optical characteristics of his taking lens. It's almost impossible to build a spherical lens that produces a flat field of focus, and the longer the focal lenngth the less depth of field you'll have. So why - unless he's using the world's first perfectly flat field aspherical lens - is he banging on about film plane flatness? He could have used a glass plate negative if he was THAT bothered anyway?
This story's a load of absoloute bollocks.
He doesn't get it
"what's the point of painting this scene when I can take a photo with no loss of resolution"
Yes he might have high res photos, but he misses the entire concept of art.
Myself I have a SLR and a 2 megapixel digital camera. One is for photos, one for snapshots.
Read the article and you will know why.
Perhaps something similar to this could be done with a digital camera, but we would still be talking about an overly large camera in order to house a very large CCD or other capturing element/surface in order to obtain similar resolution.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Is more important the size of the megapixels instead of the quality of the optical lens? I think the actual cameras needs to improve the lens, because the digital zoom is awful, do you get a good photo if you use 4 or more megapixels with no optical zoom?? I prefer less size of pixels and a greater zoom (4x or more)
IMAX is such a brilliant form of cinema but it's really restricted due to film costs. The length of the film (Not in minutes but kilometers) is also a problem that drives up cost. (The Human Boday which just came out on IMAX recently is 12 km long)
If we could digitize the process it would allow for widespread IMAZ screen implimentation. However, due to the colossal massive-ness of the screen you need some hiiiiiiigh ass resolution. You would also need some 30 fps out of the camera, so maybe film will be essential to IMAX in the cmoing years, but we can get there!
I'm sure data storage isn't a problem, but resolution and projection are. I'm not calling for implimentation tomorrow, but the digitization of all formats benefits the art, so maybe a 10-year goal?
The major advantage is cutting out the cost for the film (which is high) and the cost of processing the film. (Also high)
Just think of IMAX pr0n!!! Minka can truly be the number one, asian, big-boob queen.
For example, there is Sinar's 22 Megapixels Sinarback 54
Anyway, the problem with digital photographs is not really the definition, but the very narrow luminance range the sensors are able to record. That's where the photo-chemical process makes a huge difference: it is able to keep much more detail in the very bright areas. That wouldn't matter for advertizing photography in a studio with controlled lighting, but in the real world, our eye sees a huge range, photographic film much less, and digital sensors far less.
...then I'll be prepared to say that someone has actually managed to improve on Cinerama.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It's like saying "what's the point of doing math when a computer can calulate for you?"
Uhm... what is the point? Do you really do math for fun? I code for fun. Spending my Friday nights solving integrals isn't exactly my idea of a good time.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Actually I heard of a nice service were you can sell those brand new 25 megapixels photos, http://www.rubysoft.com/
Read the article: ... when Ross' 9-inch-by-18-inch negatives are digitally scanned, the result is decidedly high-tech. Each image yields a 2.6-gigabyte file -- huge for a single image.
Its just a realy good big camera that takes a sharply focused picture.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Don't worry about the size. I'll scan them and correct the distortions.
--..
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
As I have mentioned before, for the ultimate in resolution, get a view camera. That's basically what this thing is, though it isn't a "conventional" view camera in the sense that is uses somewhat larger film.
View cameras have been around forever. They are basically a light proof box to hold film, with a lens and a focusing mechanism (about the simplest camera you can have). They are large, but use bigger pieces of film for each photo - It's a simple rule of physics - the less you enlarge, the less detail is lost in the final product.
It hasn't been uncommon for someone to use a 16"x20" view camera for landscapes and to make contact prints (no enlargement) for awesome detail.
So, basically, this "technology," for the most part, is is old news. Yes, there is some new stuff...
What do you lose in using a view camera? Low-quality, plasticy zoom lenses. Cheap, built-in camera meters. Continuous frame advance. Cheesy "auto" modes. The list goes on. So, why use it? Because you lose these things, it slows you down. You think more about composition. You don't snap off 30 photos in 5 minutes and then go home and "correct" them digitally in photoshop. Slower process=better photos (though, clearly, this doesn't apply to the average Joe Schmoe who just wants to take snapshots of his dog and kids).
Digital technology is great, don't get me wrong. But most digital cameras nowadays suffer feature bloat... I can use any of the digicam out there, but when someone is trying to learn the basics of photography, you can't beat a view camera's simplicity.
hmmm
He'd better be careful about the specifications on his display wall, or he'll end up in the same boat as Spinal Tap did.
"Dude, I got an unbelievable deal from this guy who's going to build us an 18' by 36' display wall! This is going to make a great backdrop at our concerts!"
is half photochem half digital these days. They've been using a computer for years to adjust the printing colors. It's pretty badass that this guy is using film so large though.
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
low-light photography, slow shutter-speed photography (i.e., those cool pictures of a city at night with all the streaky red lights from the vehicles)
The #1 digital advantage is of course instant gratification, but #2 is that you can crank up the amplification of the sensor to emulate faster film. Picture by picture.
With film, you have to change films to do that, or carry around extra bodies. Most people don't shoot enough pictures for that to really be an option, and if you do, you spend a lot of time changing films! (And it was a long time since I saw an ISO3200 colour film in the local convenience store...)
Also color fidelity
Being able to change colour spaces on the fly (or even afterwards) is a similar advantage that does away with a lot of filter changing.
and saturation
This I agree with. The dynamic range of digitals is still a lot worse than colour negative film (although comparable to slide film).
oragami
Lasers Controlled Games!
Dude - you should warn us that it's not safe for work!
- Thomas;
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
Just wait until I get my hand on Hubble...
As Axel20010 writes, anyone with a large-format camera and access to a good lab that has a nice laser-based scanner/photoimager can do this trick. Vacuum-based film holders have been on the market for years, too.
what this guy has is a good press agent, which means he'll get recognition and $$ for just making some really plain, dumb landscape of one of my state's more uninteresting 14,000-foot peaks.
Big Deal.
more than a thousand times the size and resolution of those generated by a typical digital camera for consumers...
Isn't this kind of insane reoslution encroaching on the limit of what our eyes can even see??? How many "pixels" can your eyes even interprey ( as in, how many rods and cones are there on the back of your retina ) ? I can't see there being more than a few billion... your brain just "fills in" the gaps.
Honestly, when you're talking about resolutions like this I think it's probably beyond anything your eye could even differentiate. It is like talking about sampling a sound at 256 KHz or something... it's just extreme overkill.
The article is making something mundane sound really impressive. A little research shows that there is an entire community of Ultra-Large Format Photographers who will laugh at this guy.
After all, ULF cameras can be easily purchased commercially, at sizes up to 20x24:
Ebony cameras (Look at bottom-left frame for 20x24 cameras).
Wisner cameras
Film (which comes in single-shot sheets) must be custom-ordered from Kodak, Fuji, Ilford, Bergger, etc.
As far as the focussing question: these cameras have movements such as tilt and swing to change the plane of focus so that nearby blades of grass and distant mountains are all in focus.
Again, nothing innovative, radical, or impressive is described in this article. If the reporter had bothered to do some research, he would have found some far more impressive photographers to highlight.
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
I am a 32 year old (kid). .. ....
... (i work out in the gym and on my dirtbike in the forest so DDR is not really an effort for me)
... maybe when it comes with an option to upload my own tunes I would jump-around more on it :)
...
.. and i recently discovered a fight device from thrustmaster, that you can kisk and punch and whatever (i did not really read the specs - lack of time sucks)
:) - it is even fun to watch ...
:)
And I have to admit, the first time I saw ddr and the dancepad I thought it was plain stupid
untiMy wife saw one at the local game store, and the owner convinced her to try it out
not that I jump around a lot on it, but sometimes it is really fun
I just have one problem: the selection of music just sucks for me
ps: i have a lightgun gema for the ps-2, that uses one controller+one lightgun (police 0/24 - japanese release only - sorry only in japan or with a modchip) i still have to try it out with one dancepad for movement+lightgun for shooting
the dancepad could be fun for fighting games
anyway the workout mode of DDR is killer, and if we cannot make it to the gym (which is hard since I rent an office IN a gym) she burns some CAL on that thing and I laugh my butt of
a chineise version of the gamepad sells for around $20-$25
cheers
My mum complains about the fact that her 3.2MP pictures are "far too big".
Higher resolutions mean larger lenses and sensors. Larger semiconductors cost LOTS more than smaller one, and larger lenses tend to follow that trend too.
I think resolution wise, the consumer market will mostly stop at what can be done with a 16 or 22mm CCD/CMOS. Pro's will want higher resolutions, but that equipment will still remain expensive for a while.
What will happen when digital cameras can capture more information than is present? Are we going to start seeing the gaps between atoms, in all their bigger-is-better glory?
And can you guys imagine this dude on the roof of his brother-in-law's car -- denting it -- to photograph the landscape?
Must-not-watch TV!
"Smile, and stand very very still."
Glass negatives _will_ stay flat and don't need air pumps.
If this is a single camera, optics will limit its resolution. Furthermore, you don't need to engage in heroics for the scanning--film resolution itself is sufficiently limited that a regular film scanner will be able to capture far more resolution than the film actually contains detail.
If you want really high resolution images, your best bet at this point is to use digital cameras and panoramic software. That approach will get you into the gigapixel range, and it will be cheaper and less hassle as well.
Okay, this is all very impressive and all.
But I still don't quite get why the guy didn't just take a whole bunch of normal pictures and warp/stich them together. This technology has been around for a while, and it can be automated so his throughput could be much higher than 5-8 per year. The article mentions "seaming multiple photos" together, but doesn't say why that wasn't an option. I wonder if it's a matter of the photographer's technical expertise.
For proof that stitching multiple photos works well, especially for outdoor nature scenes, check out this web site that describes the work of a guy who took many pictures of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. After stitching together 196 pictures, he ended up with one digital image that measures 40,784 x 26,800, with 1.09 billion pixels. In a raw format at 24 bit, that's way over the 2.6 gigabytes from the parent article.
Photography has killed painting for representation since it was invented roughly 150 years ago. Painting isn't "reduced to mere representation", it started out as mere representation and has been elevated in artistic status over the years.
Anyway, if what you want is a representation of something that exists in reality, you can either paint it or you can just point a camera at it and capture an image. Similarly, suppose you want to multiply 100 10-digit numbers together. You could do it by hand, since you know how to do multiplication. But you wouldn't. You'd use a calculator or a computer.
My other first post is car post.
'One thousandth of an inch'? What's that, a milli-inch?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I'm sure everyone's already fired up calc and done these simple multiplications.. but: 2.6e9 bytes (I'm assuming they're not using binary gigabytes) / 3 bytes per pixel true color (= ~860 megapixels) / 162 (9x18 inches, get ~5.4e6 bytes per in^2 - that's almost hard drive encoding resolution!), sqrt the answer, get ~2300 pixels per inch linear resolution (yeah, that's about 8 times what most magazines print at AFAIK), multiply that out by 9x18, and get: a resolution of approx. 42,000 (h) x 21,000(v). (sorry, only 2 sigdigs)!... my DSC-F717 weeps in shame. I mean, *damn*.. that's over 40x20 normal-ressed monitors.. you could cover the side of a building with an image out of this camera.