"Dream Team" to Create Gigapixel Photo System

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."

Comments

Large Format film cameras

[mrm677]

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.

Re:Large Format film cameras

[grahamsz]

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.

Re:Large Format film cameras

[Cecil]

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.

Re:Large Format film cameras

[vought]

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'

Re:Large Format film cameras

[phoenix321]

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.

Why artists?

[Realistic_Dragon]

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'.

It's been done, albeit with some manual steps

[seanscottrogers]

Check out the grand canyon in gigapixel glory

Something like these?

[TroZ]

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

Astronomy

[Big Yak]

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?

Another Gigapixel camera

[saccade.com]

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

Re:Another Gigapixel camera

[chmilar]

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".

Sublime screenshot of Mt. Sopris

[GillBates0]

as taken from Gpx imaging system:

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Re:Red Team Racing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

2.5 gigapixel photo

[mscdex]

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

Pixel count is not the only important thing

[Rolman]

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.

Composition vs. Recording

[podperson]

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?)

Re:2 reasons:

[temojen]

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.