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"Dream Team" to Create Gigapixel Photo System

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the who-dreams-of-these-guys dept.

neutron_p writes "An eclectic group of artists and scientists that organizers have dubbed the "dream team" of imaging and visualization are gathered at New York University this week to begin to create a photographic system capable of capturing and displaying a gigapixel of visual information in a single image. The first Big Picture Summit, Dec. 8 and 9, is organized by artist-photographer Clifford Ross. Ross says his goal is to bring closer to reality his desire to create a "you are there" photographic experience for those who have not personally witnessed the sublime beauty of natural scenes such as Mt. Sopris in Colorado."

32 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Large Format film cameras by mrm677 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why? 8x10 cameras have existed for 100 years. Using modern film and a drum scanner will create a digital image with more than 1Gb of pixel data.

    Even my 4x5 camera yields over 100 megapixels when scanning film with a $300 Epson flatbed.

    1. Re:Large Format film cameras by grahamsz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      People do seem to loose sight of the "best technology for the job".

      We just dont have anything that can capture 3 gigabytes of data in hundredth of a second... doing the equivilent with film is so easy.

      However working with 100 mpixel scans in photoshop is way too painful for me... i think i need to get a 4x5 enlarger.

    2. Re:Large Format film cameras by ajs · · Score: 2, Interesting
      "Why? 8x10 cameras have existed for 100 years. Using modern film and a drum scanner will create a digital image with more than 1Gb of pixel data.
      There are dozens of reasons to want very high resolution digital imaging. It cuts down on cost, waste, time, storage, and gives you many lighting options that you don't have with film (though film has its own advantages).

      The primary reason, though, would simply be that photographers are using digital cameras in many places where they work quite well, and they would like them to eventually be the primary workhorse for most photographic needs.
    3. Re:Large Format film cameras by Cecil · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why? 8x10 cameras have existed for 100 years. Using modern film and a drum scanner will create a digital image with more than 1Gb of pixel data.

      That's like saying why bother creating better compression formats when you can already compress a 4 minute sound file to (hypothetical) under a meg at 128kbps quality by encoding it to mp3 128kbps first, then to wma 128kbps. You're doing one lossy conversion, light to film, then a very different type of lossy conversion, scanning film to digital. Sure, it works pretty well in practice, but it's far from optimal.

      And many photographers obsess over making things optimal. It's why they buy $3,000+ lenses. And not just one, either.

      Anyway, the answer for "why" seems pretty obvious to me, at least.

      --
      Random and weird software I've written.
    4. Re:Large Format film cameras by vought · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've got mod points, but I'm going to contribute to this thread instead of modding. There's a lot of assumption about image quality based on numbers alone, and fortunately I worked and taught in a terrific digital studio for the past two years, so I want to set striaght a couple of things.

      4X5 inch film comprises an imageable area of about 19 square inches with a lens that covers this film adquately.

      19 square inches of high-resolution color film - Fuji Provia or Velvia (limiting myself to color for the sake of this discussion) will capture about 2400 dpi worth of useful image data at 8 bpp. The film can easily be scanned to higher resolutions and higher bit depths, but the main reason to do this on a high-end drum scanner is to avoid having to use software to interpolate the image for extremely large prints that exceed the resolution of the original scan.

      19 square inches * 2400dpi * 8bpp = just under 300MB.

      That's about 100 megapixels, give or take a few percentage points. Cost of film and developing per shot is about $3.50 for color, about $.80 for black and white.

      Scanning a 4X5 inch sheet of film costs about $80.00 at my favorite lab. (I use westcoastimaging.com, even though I'm down the street from Calypso Imaging in Santa Clara. WCI does an incredible job, and nearly everyone on staff is actually a photographer, or married to one.)

      Add $20.00 for FedEx back and forth from the lab, and you've got a 100 megapixel image with some slight imperfections (dust spots, chromatic aberration from some older lenses) for about $105.00 per exposure. At this point, the fun begins; the photographer can use Photoshop or the GIMP to make tonal and contrast changes, attempt to match the chrome, or get really fanciful.

      You could make a 16-bit scan of a photograph that contains super-subtle tonal gradation to ensure against banding in the final print, but since most digital photographic printers like the LightJet and Chromira only print 8-bit files, it's usually a moot point.

      Normally, lower-end scanners have to scan in 16-bit to eliminate noise and increase quality to a point where they can stand close to an 8-bit drum scan from a Tango.

      Without explaining the vagaries of scanning backs, it is possible to directly capture a 100MP image from a conventional 4X5 inch camera - but only if the subject isn't moving. Even the 40-year old shutter in my Schneider 90mm lens can work at 1/500 sec, given sufficient light for the film I have loaded. No "gagapixel" camera can do this yet - not even remotely.

      This whole "gigapixel" push is a scam. After making some 30X40 test prints from the Canon EOS1-D mkII the other day, I can say without question that digital cameras are pushing the boundries of medium format film while remaining under the 30 megapixel benchmark.

      The proof is in the print. In a world where most digital images are posted and viewed on web pages, no one will easily tell the difference between a 30k JPEG that started life as a high-resolution scan and one that started life in a .06MP Apple QuickTake from 1996. A print on paper at a equivalent resolution is the best wayo to test real image quality.

      In this case, megapixel comparisons are moot. Because the characteristics of film and digital are different, you can't accurately compare a scan from film and a digital file of the same size on screen alone.

      The most accurate way to determine the quality of an image is to look at a print. When they reach 30-40 megapixels, with forgettable battery life and no crashes, I may be tempted to give up my view camera for a DSLR, but some features still won't be there (full tilt/swing/shift movements, for one).

      For me, 20 pounds of view camera equipment (using exactly one battery, for my spot meter) is still (and may reamin for several years) the easiest way to capture high-resolution photographs in the field. That's what I like to do with my camera - if my goal was to get quick turnaround studio shots, then I'

    5. Re:Large Format film cameras by prichardson · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sure, it works pretty well in practice, but it's far from optimal.

      It's a real shame that it only works in practice. Because working in practice doesn't matter at all it has to work in theory. (Incidentally, this actually does work in theory, too.)

      Also, your analogy is seriously flawed. It's much more like taking a record (a record with few flaws that runs at a very low speed) and encoding that to an audio format somewhere in the neighborhood of twice the quality of a CD.

      The record player you do this with is like the camera. The equipment that originally recorded the record on is like your camera. The microphone is like the lens.

      This is also in a world where recording straight to digital doesn't sample fast enough.


      As an aside, the reason that digital pictures are harder is that sound happens over a very very long period of time compared to photography. You've probably noticed that most digital cameras absolutely suck at taking action shots in all but the brightest light. This is because the stuff that detects light in the camera doesn't work as fast as the chemicals on the film and doesn't scale as well. The reason that scanning works is that a scanner has an eternity to deal with the image compared to the instant that a camera has.

      --
      Help I'm a rock.
    6. Re:Large Format film cameras by Aidtopia · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm a little confused by some of the aritmetic. It looks like you multipled 19 square inches by a linear 2400 dpi.

      Also, according to the New York Times piece on this guy, this first prototype is a very large format negative film camera, and the image is scanned from the negative on a drum scanner.

      Aside from that, I think people spend too much time worrying about resolution and not enough about bit depth. I forget the exact numbers, but B&W negative film has a contrast range of 10 or 11 orders of magnitude. A B&W print is less. Color slides less, and color prints even less. But even a color print exceeds 24bpp (8 bits x RGB). Personally, I'd much rather look at projected slides than print.

      I heard a talk by a visual effects guy from ILM who explained that when they have to composite live action from film with CGI (computer-generated imagery), the first thing they have to do is compress the contrast and color range to match the range of the CGI. If there are a lot of effects in the movie, they'll end up compressing the contrast for the entire film.

      Another friend of mine who recently left ILM wouldn't tell me the actual resolution they use for visual effects (trade secret), but he implied it's much lower than you'd expect.

    7. Re:Large Format film cameras by phoenix321 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Photographers using traditional film have argued exactly the same for almost five years now and digital photography took off anyway.

      Digital technology becomes cheaper every month, no matter what piece of equipment we're talking about - except digicams just before xmas of course - so at one point we might have gigapixel cameras in the consumer price range, who knows.

      I must apologize for washing your detailed and insightful post away, but I think you have a narrow viewpoint from an elitist photographer's perspective. An incredibly old-school one at that, sorry to be so blunt. Analog cameras have intrinsic drawbacks that cannot be overcome and which are the reason for the digicam craze. I agree to you that digital photography is not the most efficient and not the cheapest way to do hoch resolution imaging at the moment. But Moore's Law will ensure it is in the future.

      Advantages of a high-resolution digital imaging system, from an outsider's viewpoint not married to celluloid and chemicals:

      - digital images can be previewed extremely fast. If a shot was wrong, retry without waste.
      - digital images can be sent via networks around the globe extremely fast. Newscasts, distributed expert teams, peer review, you name it.
      - digital images can be ported to any viewing equipment, instantly. Cinema-like projection equipment, large scale video walls, large printers, details on small handouts and laptop screens
      - archival without color degradation
      - catalogues are generated in an instant
      - easy whitebalance, even after the shooting
      - automatic recording of timestamps and used equipment, shutter times etc.

      Sorry for bringing up the "dinosaur"-argument, but sooner or later analog photography will die and there's nothing you can do about it. For consumer cameras, analog's nearly dead and photo studios are following now, leading digital photos slowly but steadily up the quality/picture size ladder. You are not alone, as there are many audiophile vinyl and radio tube enthusiasts out there, that simply refuse to acknowlegde digital technology and its advantages.

      To mimic your "sum up":

      -Large-format cameras may be easier and cheaper, but prone to human error, slower and horribly unflexible in image presentation.
      -A print may be the best way to judge image quality, but in case of a 10x10m image, it can take you days if not weeks to get it on paper.

      A projected or backlighted image certainly is a thousand times more enticing and "real" to the viewer's eyes. Paper images are lacking vivid colors and real appearance in my opinion and there's no studio light full-spectrum or bright enough to concinve me otherwise. A paper photograph may induce different emotions or a more distand point of view, that's why black&white imaging is so intense - but paper is no accurate representation of reality and it's going the way of portrait oil painting soon, I think. More artsy, less real. Real viewing is luminous, paper is not.

  2. Why artists? by Realistic_Dragon · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sounds like a technical question to me and the last thing you want when solving technical problems is an artist saying 'well yes, that's all very nice, but we think it should be pink'.

    --
    Beep beep.
    1. Re:Why artists? by BWJones · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is very much like a conversation I just had in another discussion group. The issue is that you have certain optical properties of your eye. Namely starting with the density of photoreceptors which are about 10^5 per square mm. You then have to deal with an imaging surface (the retina) at 2.5 cm from the lens revealing an object of 1mm at 25 cm which gets projected to a size of about 0.1mm onto the back of the retina. If one assumes approximately 320 photoreceptors/mm (averaged over the eye), given a perfect lens the ideal resolution would be about 30 pixels/mm at 25cm away from your eye! which gives you an approximate optimal resolution distinguishability of 10 microns (important for tying flies). Given that most folks do not have perfect lenses, we are really looking at about a 4 micron resolution that can be distinguished monochromatically. So, if one backs away from the object in question resolution becomes much less important for overall perception and the huge Apple Cinema display three feet in front of me right now does a pretty good job at rendering a close approximation of reality at 100dpi. In fact, an 8MP image from my Canon camera on the Cinema Display is almost indistinguishable from a picture of the valley below taken from my office window.

      --
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    2. Re:Why artists? by gstoddart · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Sounds like a technical question to me and the last thing you want when solving technical problems is an artist saying 'well yes, that's all very nice, but we think it should be pink'.


      No no no. You're confusing marketing with artists.

      Artists recognize there needs to be a practical way to make it pink, and can actually listen when you say "God, imagine trying to use a 10-foot wide brush".

      The artists want it pink for a reason and are willing to discuss how to make it go.

      All marketing knows is that a customer once said pink would be optimal; and they're purely basing it off that fact.

      And, the good thing about the artist, once they realize it isn't pink, they don't keep distributing glossies to the customer saying it's pink.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  3. It's been done, albeit with some manual steps by seanscottrogers · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Check out the grand canyon in gigapixel glory

    1. Re:It's been done, albeit with some manual steps by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 2, Funny

      Actually, he's technically right. Not many people know that the photo of Bryce Canyon in Utah was taken by a photographer standing at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Now, you can really get a sense for just how much resolution that camera is capable of. Plus, it compensates for the curvature of the Earth.

      --
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  4. Enough resolution, not enough depth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The human eye can only resolve the equivalent of a couple megapixels, so the lack of "you are there" is not really a fault of image resolution. It's the lack of real depth that is missing from fotos. Stereo photography is a step forward, but it doesn't allow for natural focus changes and good (high res) stereo vision systems are far too expensive.

    1. Re:Enough resolution, not enough depth by eln · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yah, but the higher the resolution of the image, the bigger you can blow it up without losing (human perceptible) image quality. This is the real advantage of super hi-res imagery.

  5. Something like these? by TroZ · · Score: 5, Informative

    How About a Gigapixel Digital Camera? http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/1 0/1356212&tid=160
    Breaking the Gigapixel Barrier http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/02/202720 7&tid=152
    Gigapxl Project http://www.gigapxl.org/project.htm

  6. Astronomy by Big+Yak · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Other than recreational uses, what else could this be used for? Telescope cameras pop to mind for space imagery capture. I think current systems use very high-resolution cameras, though anything that drives down prices would drive up quality.

    Has someone applied Moore's law to digital camera pixel amount?

    --
    -Hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned for /.
  7. 3D by alan_dershowitz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have personally found even lower-resolution 3D pictures to look much nicer than high-res 2D pictures. Combine something like this with stereoscopic glasses and it would be like "being there". I wonder if Mr. Ross has considered this.

  8. Another Gigapixel camera by saccade.com · · Score: 3, Informative

    Check out Gigapxl.org. The guy creating the cameras for this project is a serious optical genious.

    1. Re:Another Gigapixel camera by chmilar · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Yes. This project is superior to the so-called "Dream Team".

      The Gigapxl team have taken a far more scientific and rigorous approach than Ross.

      For example, they have:

      • designed their own custom lens to meet their resolution requirements.
      • measured the exact performance of their film.
      • accounted for atmospheric limitations to light propagation.
      • ensured the exact alignment of the lens and film.
      • used laser rangefinders to set accurate focus.

      Both Gigapxl and Ross are using converted 9x18" aerial photography cameras, with vacuum backs, but Gigapxl has taken steps to ensure the maximum performance of their equipment. Ross has not.

      And, as far as size goes, there are photographers using cameras up to 20x24.

      The "dream team" is really just the "hype team".

      --
      Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
  9. zerg by Lord+Omlette · · Score: 2, Informative

    Maybe a few more details over @ the boingboing coverage of story...

    --
    [o]_O
  10. Sublime screenshot of Mt. Sopris by GillBates0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    as taken from Gpx imaging system:

    /\
    /\/ \/\

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
    1. Re:Sublime screenshot of Mt. Sopris by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      holy crap. It is like I am really there.

  11. Re:Red Team Racing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    thus allowing scientists to be able to photograph very small complex things.

    Like W's sense of compassion, the Democrat's long-term vision, or my genitalia.

  12. 2.5 gigapixel photo by mscdex · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I still think the 2.5 gigapixel photo is the best. The detail is incredible, the photo is interactive, allowing zoom capability. You can zoom all the way in and read license plates and see parking passes. http://www.tpd.tno.nl/smartsite966.html

  13. Pixel count is not the only important thing by Rolman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are several techniques that could be used to achieve such pixel count with current technology, so it doesn't really sound that interesting. It might be good to create a large, hi-res poster with a beautiful landscape. It's also nice that they want the massive datasets to be processed and stored in about 1/15th of a second, making it a lot more useable for artistic purposes.

    But film still surpasses those qualities and not only because of resolution and speed, but color. What I'd be interested in is to have digital photography that goes beyond the current 24-bit depth (if only for internal computations and not actual output) and implements better CCD technology to compensate for its inherent problems with lighting.

    I know there are advances in those areas, but unfortunately they've been very slow since the market is going for pixel count (MHz, anyone?). Until that trend changes, film will continue to be the better choice, regardless of what any dream team says.

    --
    - Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
  14. 2 reasons: by temojen · · Score: 2, Insightful
    • Photographic artists tend to be highly technical.
    • If you're going to have to hand develop an 8x10 photographic plate, then scan it on a unique, hand built drum scanner and post-process it on a supercomputer, the first question should be is this scene worth 4gigapixels?, and the second question should be is the lighting right?
    1. Re:2 reasons: by temojen · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Wait... you know of a "particularly strong" workstation that can interactively manipulate a 190Gb image? (4G * 48b)

      Storing one copy is one thing... storing multiple working copies and interactively working on them is another thing entirely.

  15. how much your eye can see? by u19925 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    given eye's optics, you can resolve about 1.5 mega pixels. This is assuming that the picture is kept at a distance, so that it occupies about the same area as 50 mm lens would provide on 35 mm camera (or 3x2 feet picture kept at 5 ft away). This is theoretical limit based on perfect print. Since most photos have some artifacts, you reach saturation at a slightly higher pixel count.

    If your monitor is more than 1600x1200 and if you want to do pixel by pixel comparison of two photos on a single monitor (each photo size 800x600), then it is not possible to do so without moving your head.

    In order to see 1 giga pixel, you will have to be incredibly close to the photo compared to its size and also will have to move up/down/side to see the details at different places.

    Higher magapixel beyond 4-6 MP is only good for cropping, zooming, scientific data etc but is not of much use as a single print, specially if it is to be viewed as a whole.

  16. Composition vs. Recording by podperson · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One of the interesting possibilities for cameras with that much resolution is that photography can become a question of choosing a view of a larger recorded image rather than simply recording that cropped view.

    This way you can crop your photos OUTWARDS and not just INWARDS after the fact.

    This of course has all kinds of privacy implications too (why shouldn't the photograph be an all round view that includes the photographer?)

  17. Another idea that will go nowhere by spidergoat2 · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...until the porn industry co-opts it.

  18. Yeah Right by Greyfox · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm not going to click a link on slashdot that invites me to see the "Grand Canyon." Especially not in gigapixel resoluton.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?