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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."
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.
Genuine Panorama photo equipment was similar in quality.
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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.
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.
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.
There is something similar to this. You can buy digital film backs for medium format cameras that essentially is the film. Although nothing compared to this camera the resolution is much better then 35mm.
I mean its not as if you're going to get that sized film in a roll, is it?
Actually, I believe 9" film is still pretty standard for aerial photography. At least in the old days, they had to do so much overlap to compensate for the speed of the plane (vs headwinds) and other factors, they'd only end up with about a 5" square of new data in the middle of a frame, and they'd have to overlap quite a bit to stitch together an accurate map.
Interestingly, this is in part why RC paper was developed. Fiber photo paper stretched and shrank too much, and when you're doing things like plotting bomb trajectories, the accuracy of your maps is pretty important.
Or not.
This sig intentionally left justified.
"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."
Ok, cheapest I can find the film is a little less than $600 per roll. Unless he's shooting color, which is more like $730 for a 125' roll, which would give him about 83 exposures per roll.
This sig intentionally left justified.
So many misconceptions, so little time.
;) I don't see any thing special about the "aluminum cradle" either, this looks like a classic studio view camera.
:)
OK, here goes:
Vacuum film planes are ancient tech for prepress cameras. At 20x24 and up, it's not just cool, it's an absolute requirement to use film (instead of plates).
Mirror alignment check to get the film plane and lens parallel? Useless in landscape work. Worse than useless. You don't *want* them parallel. You want the film plane vertical, and you want to tilt the lens forward (top away from the film) to move the plane of focus and *improve* sharpness. Otherwise the only way to get the depth of field you need is by stopping way, way down. And you're right, there are diffraction limits, (you obviously do telescope optics) but they don't start to bite you until at least f/45, more likely f/64.
"Aerial Film has a MUCH higher resolution..." Not really. The color aerial films only have 80-100 lp/mm resolution...pretty much the same as professional chrome film. They have wacky spectral sensitivities, because they're designed for data collection, not photorealistic images, and that's what forces this guy to scan the film and work in Photoshop. There are some very high-resolution b/w aerial films, but they really aren't that much better than something like Tech Pan. The real reason he's using aerial film is because he can get it in that size.
[Note to another poster: You do get it in rolls. In fact, that's the only way you can: 9.5 inches by 200-2000 feet. This guy is cutting sheets off one of those rolls...yet another reason he needs a vacuum film plane.]
Getting film this big is actually a real problem because nobody uses it. I checked out an 11x14 view camera from the cage over Christmas one year, and had to shoot Cibachrome directly because I couldn't get film. EI 6 and 30CC Cyan over the lens, but it worked....and let me tell you, contact prints look soft next to a direct Cibachrome.
Sandbagging view cameras is nothing new...and for all your discussion of the arc subtended by the image of a blade of grass...remember that the grass is likely to move.
The camera isn't a new thing at all. It's a very old thing, in territory explored and abandoned decades ago, with a few bits of new tech to work around not being able to get the right old tech.
Now, with all that said. I do think it's very cool that there's someone out shooting 9x18" film. Big view cameras produce really amazing images, and I applaud this guys work. (I understand the problem too...Mt. Sopris is gorgeous, and all of my photos of it are really dull.)
The real problem here is that the article was written by someone with no knowledge of the subject.
-Z
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
Penthouse/Playboy used to all use cameras similar to this - and some still do. Of course, they use regular 4x5 inch, rather than 9x18 inch.
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.
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.
There's a fundamental limit to how much detail can be achieved with visible-light photography. That limit is determined by the wavelength of light and the diameter of the lens. If you want to detect something 0.1" (2.5mm) at a distance of 1 mile (1.6 km) you need a lens 8" (0.2m) in diameter, and it can't be made any smaller.
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