111-Megapixel CCD Chip Ships

georgewilliamherbert writes "EETimes is reporting that Dalsa has shipped a record-breaking 111-megapixel CCD image sensor to customer Semiconductor Technology Associates. The chip was paid for by a U.S. Navy SBIR project. At four inches across, a bit big for camera phones, but the 10560x10560 format will probably get professional digital camera users drooling."

Comments

Film

[Cowclops]

Well sure sounds like that'll BLOW AWAY 35mm film and definitely be about comprable to 4x5 film.

Re:Film

[gid13]

Call me a noob, but does anyone have any idea how much resolution the human eye can detect (per some unit of area, of course)?

Please note that I am not calling these devices worthless. Even if the human eye can't detect that much resolution on a poster there could still be applications for enlargements etc. I would think.

Re:Film

[the eric conspiracy]

The problems that prevent digital sensors from blowing away film are that pixel densities that approach film resolution are too noisy, and digital sensors don't have the ability to handle as wide a range of light intensities as film does.

Re:Film

[binkzz]

Some estimates put it at 300-500 megapixels, but it's really relative; the brain doesn't process all the eye sees.

Re:Film

[tool462]

According to the quick google search I just did, somewhere in the neighborhood of 576 megapixels.

http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution. html

I don't know how reliable these data are, though. There seems to be considerable hand waving between what the eye records and what the brain "sees" in that link.

Re:Film

[Lord Crc]

Call me a noob, but does anyone have any idea how much resolution the human eye can detect (per some unit of area, of course)?

I found this page interesting. Here's a quote:

Consider a 20 x 13.3-inch print viewed at 20 inches. The Print subtends an angle of 53 x 35.3 degrees, thus requiring 53*60/.3 = 10600 x 35*60/.3 = 7000 pixels, for a total of ~74 megapixels to show detail at the limits of human visual acuity.

Re:Film

[Goblez]

It's not just what the eye can see, it's what the eye can see after we zoooom way in. ;)

Re:Film

[Cowclops]

Well, resolution of the human eye would be detected in angles (degrees/minutes/seconds), not area, but nonetheless I think I can give the approximate answer you're looking for based on some general rules for selecting screen size for high definition. For a 720p screen, you generally want the screen size to be about half as wide as the distance you're sitting from it, such that a 1280x720 image is considered more or less fully resolved about 10' away from a 60" (width, not diagonal as TVs are usually quoted) screen, or 5' away from a 30" screen, or any combination you wanna calculate.

I guess to turn that into angles, the width of a pixel in a 1280 line wide image on a 60" wide screen is about .047". If you're sitting 120 inches away from a .047" pixel, the angular width of that pixel is arctan(.047/120) or about 1.3 arc minutes (1.3 sixtieths of a degree).

To establish an upper limit for overall resolution, figure that viewers tend to find distance to width ratios of less than 1.3 or so for movies uncomfortable. So, to establish an upper limit on useful resolution for movie watching (not that anyone has yet implied that movies were involved) you can pretty much multiply 720 by 1.5 and, astoundingly, come to the conclusion that fully sharp 1080p is all you really need for the optimum movie experience. Going to resolutions beyond that would be a waste for video.

Nonetheless, most of that is just a hypothetical excercise as the REAL point of sensors that high in resolution (as others have pointed out) are things like satellite imaging and other scientific uses.

Re:Film

[ryusen]

well the noise problem is also based on the size of the sensor, so cameras with larger sensors can usually produce very clean hi res images. i don' think they are still as high as film, but for most uses, i don't think it will make noticable difference. I do agree on the dynamic range problem of digital sensors. the trick for now, is to think of it like shooting slide film (which is close to a digital sensor in capturing about 5 stops of light). I am really hoping they get this problem solved before i buy my next body.

Re:Film

[pla]

Well sure sounds like that'll BLOW AWAY 35mm film and definitely be about comprable to 4x5 film.

ISO100 film has a grain size of approximately 5 microns, which corresponds to a resolution of 36MP. Standard 4k scanning (12.5MP) captures all the detail in anthing short of the pro-est of the pro, and 8k scanning (54MP) all but guarantees that even future advances in scanner technology won't have the ability to extract any further detail from a 35mm negative.

You would need godlike optics, bright light, and a perfectly still subject and camera to come anywhere near that 36MP with ISO100 35mm film, but it represents a sort of upper limit at that speed. 4x5in film therefore has an effective resolution (at something comparable to ISO100) of 500MP.


So, this can effectively replace 35mm film in terms of resolution. It falls a bit short of replacing truly professional-quality film, however. But then, how often do you need to print out your personal pics at literally bilboard size?

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

How many bits per pixel?

Oh yeah, right, it's analog. Stupid ancient technology!

Re:Film

[gid13]

Thanks for trying, but you're not really saying anything. A 500 megapixel image printed on a 10 kilometer by 10 kilometer screen and viewed at a distance of 1 meter will be easily distinguishable by the human eye. As another poster pointed out, it's actually not area that matters but angles, or if you use area you should consider the viewing distance also.

Re:Film

[Vandilizer]

Call me a noob, but does anyone have any idea how much resolution the human eye can detect (per some unit of area, of course)?

That would depend completely on the person, magazines are printed on average from 72 to 150 dpi (dots per square inch for those who are not familiar with that) high quality photo are generally printed between 300 and 600 dpi (note a quick search showed this as a resolution for a really high quality printer 5760 x 1440 dpi (note that the number of dotes across the page is almost always larger then the number down, (same with you TV) this is just due the problems of mechanically moving the paper down. This is used for better blending even if you photo dose not have that resolution)

As all printer print in individual dotes of CMYK, the problem that though you cannot see the dots at a low resolution but the quality of the blending or gradients that you are able to achieve are not nearly as good (take a magnifier glass to a color photo on a newspaper). This is why in magazines images look grainier when they are being blended (technical term is dithering). Photos do not have this problem since each dote there is an exact representation of the color.

So in its' simplest forum you have the person, how far the person is from the image, the image dpi, and the number of colors used in the printing of the image (if you want to get picky lighting and the room also play a role and other things).

Resolution has no baring on its' own the reason most artist and other professions want it is that you can blow up the image with out pixelilization occurring.

Well no answer just some more random information.

Re:Film

[cmowire]

You forget one thing.

These are static images. A static image can be printed huge and the viewer can concentrate on small portions of the image by getting up close to it.

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong, big time. I've seen this camera in action. it kicks ass.

The biggest problem they're going to have in digital cinema is the fact that the beautiful babe actress
actually has a more than noticable moustache. She's going to need a lot of time to be ready for her closeup, Mr DeMille.

http://www.dalsa.com/dc/index.asp

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, slide film has higher dynamic range than print film (in addition to having superior grain and vastly superior tonal range), however slide film is much more sensitive to exposure (you can be off by a full stop or two with print film and most people won't even know). A result of this is that many more modern cameras which are designed for print film don't meter for crap when using slide film, while my 1982 Contax RTS II meters beautifully with Kodak E100 or Provia 100F. In fact, I've given up bracketing for all but critical shots because 95% or more of the time the default metering gives a beautiful exposure.

Re:Film

[moosesocks]

no. the size of the sensor has nothing to do with noise. the grandparent poster was correct -- it's the DENSITY of the sensor that affects the amount noise you get.

DSLRs have the advantage, not because their sensors are necessarily larger, but because the pixels aren't packed so tightly together. You could hypothetically use the same processes they use to make those tiny 8MP compact-camera CCDs to make an APS-C sized CCD for a DSLR. You'd have tons of (hypothetical) resolution, but the noise would make it useless, and it'd be painfully expensive.

Film still wins in this arena. We're only approaching the point where huge large-format sensors like this one can challenge high-quality 35mm film. We need to get to the point where we can match 35mm resolution in a 35mm (or more likely, APS-C) sensor.

We're pretty close to conquering the noise issue, and even compact cameras are beginning to perform well at ISO 800 and 1600, whilst full-frame 35mm DSLRs can produce virtually noiseless prints at ISO 1600 and 3200. Improving dynamic range and pixel-density will be the next big technological hurdle to leap over.

Personally, the idea of a high dynamic range CCD excites me. Imagine the possibilities.....

Re:Film

[mattkime]

>>and digital sensors don't have the ability to handle as wide a range of light intensities as film does.

Yes, but that is easily overcome with double exposure. Do the rest in software.

Re:Film

[ScottLindner]

I have used a film scanner to scan all film I have ever shot in my life. I now use a Digital SLR for all of my photography. I can tell you a few things that I have observed. First, my film scanner has a scan resolution of 2700DPI. For a 35mm film frame, that is roughly 51MB for an uncompressed 16bit color channel frame. I believe in terms of megapixels it's just over 10Megapixels. One thing I noticed is even my 100 speed film has very observable film grain at this dot pitch. My Digital SLR has some distortion when I look at the raw high res image but it's not nearly the same. So my conclusion is that even older DSLRs CCDs have better grain resolution than traditional film. As a note, I used relatively cheap color film. More expensive, black and white, or slide film may be so much better than SLRs of today. I once thought of shooting all slide film for better color depth and resolution, but felt it was too much of a PITA to scan it all by hand.

Next note. The are odd color aberations with SLRs that I still see today that do not exist even in the crappiest of color film that I scanned. There's a look that all digitals have that a trained eye can see. I haven't received any shots taken from truly high end professional DSLRs to see if they have solved this problem but even D30s have it.

Final comment is regarding color depth, undersaturation, and over saturation. Since they are all related/same. Film is still by far superior in this regard. DSLRs still undersaturate long before standard color film. Oversaturation is still a problem. Look at the full res pixels of anything shiny. It stands out pretty bad. Skin tones have always been a huge problem. I have no clue why since skin tones are typically in the mid range. Color depth and saturation/undersaturation still has a lot of room for improvement with DSLRs.

So I guess all I really needed to say is that I've observed that grain seems to be mostly solved with DLSRs.. but none of the other issues have yet.

Oh yah.. film speed is another big one. When I crank up my DSLR to 1600ISO it really sucks. Much worse than 1600ISO film. Maybe this is where the film grain comment comes from?

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

>> >> and digital sensors don't have the ability to handle as wide a range of light intensities as film does.

>> Yes, but that is easily overcome with double exposure. Do the rest in software.

Yes, because rather than take the picture once and develop it, I'd much rather spend my time in front of a computer monitor and muck about in photoshop. Sorry, but if you have to manipulate the image to any large degree after you've taken it, you've f-ed up somewhere.

Re:Film

[sploxx]

no. the size of the sensor has nothing to do with noise. the grandparent poster was correct -- it's the DENSITY of the sensor that affects the amount noise you get.

DSLRs have the advantage, not because their sensors are necessarily larger, but because the pixels aren't packed so tightly together.

Well, 'size of the sensor' is misleading. Size of a single sensor element (pixel) would be better.

But still, he is right. At least for the fundamental limit of CCDs, the photon shot noise. This quantity is inversely proportional to the diameter of a pixel.

Re:Film

[bloosqr]

Out of curiosity what DSLR do you have? I have a film slr and a digital point and shoot and am thinking of buying one of the cheap rebel 350 xts as they are now cheap enough to intrigue me (and really as cheap as a high end digi point and shoot) I was going to wait until the full frame dropped but I have a feeling it will be 3 years before they drop $1000.

-best,
-avi

Re:Film

[ryusen]

given the same number of pixels, larger sensor = lower density. if you used the same process to make a sensor liek you described, you just get more pixels, rather than better pixels. i guess i should not have assumed i mean for the same number of pixels a bigger sensor will produce a cleaner image, but i thought it was aobvious. also, if you really want to get technical, it's not even the density, but the size of the individual pixels that makes the difference.

I do think it's neat to have this kind of technology, but i would be much more excited about a CCD or CMOS sensor that can capture 11 stops of light or some other type of technology that would get around the problem of high contrast scenes, than more megapixels. i just feel the mega pixel race has gone the way of the MHz race, in CPUs. sure it's bigger, badder, better, but after a certain point it won't make a noticeable difference on the end result, for most people.

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

Current digital sensors in high end DSLRs have better usable dynamic range than slide or print film. The difference is that digital sensors are linear capture devices while film is a logrithmatic capture medium. What this means is that when you exceed the upper bounds of a digital sensor, you are finished. There is no way to regain any of that data once the sensor has been overloaded. With film, you can saturate the crystals, but it is much harder to do as film rolls off before it reaches its saturation point. This produces more pleasing highlights, but not more usable dynamic range. And as has been said, Adobe Photoshop CS2's HDR 32bit/channel image merge and a tripod can give you more dynamic range and lower shadow noise than you can even come close to producing with film.

In terms of pixel density with low noise, the Canon 1DsMkII is already pushing the limit of most wide angle lenses edge resolution abilities. While Canon's super teles (which are some of the finest lenses ever produced) have more resolution than can be capture by even the 1Ds, lenses are quickly becoming a bigger problem than sensors at the high end.

Also, I take it you never shot high ISO film. Even my 5 year+ old 1D performs better at ISO1600 than any ISO1600 film does, and the MarkII offers about 1-2 stops better high ISO performance.

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

the brain doesn't process all the eye sees

Hey, speak for yourself! :-p

Re:Film

[ryusen]

Interesting are you taking about the D30 at 1600ISO? IF so, i'd really be currious to see a comparison with the current generation of Cameras, because as i udnerstand it, the 20D's Generation of sensors and newer have greatly improved noise/signal ratios. On saturation, isn't that at peast partially an issue with the software/firmware?

Re:Film

[ScottLindner]

I have the Digital Rebel original! Yah.. I know.. it's already outdated. :-(

A friend just bought the D30. I need to take some comparison shots to see how the performance has changed. Although... I'm fairly certain I do NOT want to see the results. ;)

Re:Film

[ryusen]

I used to have the original DR and i think it was a great camera, but i would never have set it for 800 or 1600 ISO... the noise was too much for my tastes. I understand the XT is better about noise.

Re:Film

[ScottLindner]

I have the Digital Rebel original. You are probably right it is related to firmware. I have the most recent version. But at the end of the day when I compare my film scans to my digitals... I get my observations above.

So your point is that it's not necessarily the CCD to blame, but possibly software. Point well noted.

As another point of merit. I have found that Canon is by far the leader in this area. My wife's now nearing four year old Canon P&S takes better pictures than a lot of brand new P&S cameras with significanly higher resolutions. When I say better, on all of the same merits I discussed above comparing digital to film. Nikon is good.. but when I compared the Digital Rebel to the D70 before buying I noticed the Nikon had more aberations. I also noted more saturation artificats in the Digital Rebel so it was a hard call which I actually preferred. I choose the Canon becuase I already owned some good Canon glass.

Re:Film

[Carnildo]

Oh yah.. film speed is another big one. When I crank up my DSLR to 1600ISO it really sucks. Much worse than 1600ISO film. Maybe this is where the film grain comment comes from?

This is because of the difference in how high ISO speeds work in digital vs film. High-ISO film is more sensitive to light because the photosensitive grains are larger -- the digital equivalent would be bigger pixel sensors. Digital cameras implement high-ISO mode by increasing the amplification on the pixel sensors, which makes them more sensitive to light, but also more sensitive to noise. If you were to average adjacent pixels in your digital image, you'd have the effect of high-ISO film: less noise, but lower effective resolution.

Re:Film

[colmore]

So, this can effectively replace 35mm film in terms of resolution. It falls a bit short of replacing truly professional-quality film, however. But then, how often do you need to print out your personal pics at literally bilboard size?

Maybe my grinning face is the ONE YOU NEED TO CALL IF YOU'VE BEEN INJURED!

Re:Film

[4x5]

Obviously you haven't seen the difference between 35mm and 4x5, ccd has a loooooong way to go, I can make undeniably stunning 40"x50" prints (in my lab). my formats 4x5 & 8x10 will be around for many years, and without much trouble I can make the film if I want, just like they did 100 years ago. Don't mean to sound sarcastic because ccd's are great for many things, just not art.

-jt

Re:Film

[Surt]

The eye has around a hundred million nerve inputs, so the per frame resolution can't be higher than that. However, the real resolution of that is actually considerably lower (the signals are essentially downsampled on their way into the brain).

A high speed head mounted display (sufficiently close to the eyes) with only 2-3 megapixels would probably be sufficient to completely satisfy your eyes.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/eye2.htm

Re:Film

[bloosqr]

Well I have the canon g3 which wasn't really usable past iso 200 so I am sure its better than that :) Its remarkable that the rebel xt is about what I paid for the canon g3 actually back in the day! Of course I really want the canon 5d, oh to dream :)

Re:Film

[ryusen]

i think i am more prone to blame the software side for saturation, since i shoot RAW almost exclusively and thus and under or oversaturation is really the result of my descision in the RAW developing.

from my research and asking people who've shot both, Canon is definately the leader in terms of R&D. i think it's because they are the only company that really makes all of the key components from the glass to the sensors. Nikon seems to be fairly good with certain images. from what i understand the Nikon images are sharper, but show more aberations. i think it's because canon has a more agresive anti-alias filter over the sensor. the one area i'm told Nikon really excels is their flash metering. i know with my 20D + EX550, i get all kinds of funky miss readings sometimes. of course, i would need to be able to compare to a 30d & ex580 to really be sure of the current Canon tech.

Re:Film

[ryusen]

yeah, at that small a sensor size, it's really hard. i had a G1 before the 300D... withthe G1, i would only shoot at ISO 50, unless i absolutly had no other choice.. with the 300D is might use 200 or 400 if needed. with the 20d, i use 400 and 800 when needed and 1600 when i'm desperate.

Re:Film

[bloosqr]

That is interesting that you find the original rebel better than film then. I have the (original) elan 7/film and an old canon g3 which I gave to my gf actually (under the excuse of upgrading). I'm not a big fan of the "multiplier effect" but the xt is basically the same price as the old canon g3 was and the cheap lens that comes w/ it seems like it is wide enough for use..

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for trying, but you're not really saying anything. A 500 megapixel image printed...

Thanks for trying, but you're not really understanding anything. His post refers to the resolution of the eye itself, not some arbitrary printed image size. More of an answer to "How many rods and cones" does the average human eye have. Which may not answer the original question or even be remotely accurate, certainly is saying something.

Now, back of the line!

Re:Film

[kfg]

His post refers to the resolution of the eye itself . . .Which may not answer the original question. . .

"Per unit area." I believe, although he didn't express it quite right, that what he's interested in is how many dots per inch at a given viewing distance on the print before the human eye cannot tell the difference.

He wants to know how much camera is actually overkill when all he wants is a picture of his girlfriend for his desk.

The answer, of course, is "it depends." I haven't seen his girlfriend so I don't know what the appropriate resolution would be.

KFG

Re:Film

[smackt4rd]

I've noticed the same thing. Scanned slide/print photos have a horrible amount of grain in them. I'd have to scan at max resolution and then downsample them to get it to look decent. On the other hand, the shots from my old 3 megapixel camera were always sharp at the max resolution.

Re:Film

[ScottLindner]

I find it better than film in terms of film grain only. In all other aspects I find film far superior.

Re:Film

[ScottLindner]

As odd as this may sound.. but I don't care enough to shoot RAW. I know it's better, but JPEG is good enough for me. I know... I'm not a purist.

For the record, I would never stear anyone away from a Nikon digital SLR. They are very good. It just is my opinion that Canon is dominant in nearly all aspects of the photo market. Every review and personal comparison I've ever done, it seems Canon is either nearly tied for top, or way ahead. Of course, this is not a good situation for any of us. I hope Nikon and a few others like Minolta catch up and quickly.

Re:Film

[ScottLindner]

I suspected that's how they implemented it. So if they threw a high resolution CCD at it, they could solve the film grain issue at higher speed. Thanks for the explanation.

For me.. when I compare 1600 speed on my digital to 1600 speed film I buy... the film is much better in terms of grain. You can just barely see it printed 3x5 with the film. With the digital, it almost ruins the picture even at 3x5 scales. It pretty much only looks good on the 2" screen on the back of the SLR itself. I spun off a bunch of great pictures of my brother playing with his new pooch, and I was playing with my new f/1.4 lens at high speed and large aperature. Just to make it completely motionless. The grain was so bad at 1600 that the pictures are complete garbage. My take... only shoot that speed on my camera unless it is absolutely required. Which is going to always be low light situations. Grr... with a film body it's easy.. just pick up expensive film when you need to shoot low light. With digital.. you're out one year and another $650.

Re:Film

[ScottLindner]

I apologize if I wasn't clear in what aspects I compare digitals and film.

For the most part I shoot for fun and don't care too much about the nits. My Digital Rebel is good enough for me. Although any worse and I wouldn't dare touch it. Well.. it's not good enough for me in terms of film grain at high ISO, and the frame rate is pathetic.

Re:Film

[severoon]

It's not a noob question, but it does try to liken things that are not alike. Unfortunately, the human eye and cameras are different beasts that tend to frustrate nearly every attempt at comparison. This is in large part due to the fact that when most people say "the human eye" they actually mean the "eye-brain system," which is far more complicated than just the eye, which is itself already complex enough to do plenty of the frustratin'.

In any case, the issue with throwing the brain into the mix is that it does a lot of "post-processing" on the images that stream in from the eye and give us a mental picture much different from what the eye itself is actually able to pick up. Also, the eye has different kinds of vision--in the center of the field of view, in a very narrow range in fact, we see with acuity. Outside that very narrow range, our brain fills in a lot of the details that we think we see from moment to moment, but is actually not being "seen" in the same sense as what's in the center of view. (Of course, this comment will inevitably beget the philosophical discussion: what does it mean to "see," exactly?) If you doubt that your eyes only see with acuity in a fairly tight circle around the direct center of your field of vision, try this experiment: pick up a book, open it to a random page, and fixate your eyes on a word somewhere in the center. Now, see how many words you can read around that word without moving your eyes to look directly at those words. The words you can make out fall in your acute vision field. (You'll find that if you move the book farther away, you can read more words because they fall within the same angle--this works up until it gets so far away the overall level of acuity you enjoy isn't high enough to make out any of the words at all.) The rest of your field of view is in your non-central field (I'm callng it). Your peripheral vision is comprised of the part of your field of view for which your brain does not bother filling in any detail--you're only vaguely aware of it in the visual sense provided it's not moving.

What our non-central vision lacks in acuity it makes up for in motion detection. That's why hunters often say when you first spot prey in the distance that's fairly well camoflauged with its surroundings as it moves about, don't look directly at it, but look slightly to the side. That way, when it starts moving again you'll see it and you can put it in center vision again, but once it stops, look off to the side again. Stargazers often use this trick as well--if you look directly at a faint star, after a couple of seconds you'll question whether it's actually where it was just a moment before. But if you look slightly off to the side, your eyeball moves around and twitches enough that it creates apparent "motion" of the faint star you're trying to see and you can pick it up again. (Incidentally--this is the reason why our eyes in are constant motion...if you've ever tried to make your eyes exactly still you know how difficult it is to keep from twitching them constantly. It's because our brain requires that motion to keep the motion detecting parts of your eyeballs feeding the detail your visual cortex craves. You'll also find that if you are able to keep your eyes at all from twitching for an extended period, 10 or 15 seconds, you'll find that the level of detail in your non-central vision starts to fall off, sometimes even fading to black...this isn't very noticable until you start twitching again and suddenly see color and detail spring back.)

Anyway, the point is, no matter what one says about the eye in relation to a camera, someone will be bound to argue (and, in some sense, almost certainly be right). It's kind of a useless endeavor to try to get a megapixel rating for the eye, or figure out what it's dynamic range is, etc. A more fair comparison would be hooking a camera up to a computer, then periodically having the camera move slightly and snap a shot, then the computer takes it and stitches it into a composite of the entire scene comprised of s

Re:Film

[Firehed]

It also depends what film speed you're comparing this to. I've taken shots with ISO 400 film and had some very noticible grain on even 4x5 prints with no zoom. Those same prints look astoundingly better using ISO 100 film under the same or similar conditions (same photo-taking environment, f-stop set for balanced exposure on both, same print size, enlarger, chemicals and paper).

Still, I find it a bit strange how computer displays, generally around 100DPI for most desktop LCDs, tend to look very crisp, whereas even 300DPI prints don't look that great. At least in my eyes - I generally don't find that the sharper displays (more common in laptops) look that much if at all better than a standard equivalent (ex. 20" Dell WS vs 15" laptop WS, both 1680x1050).

So when all is said and done, it really just matters what you're doing. For web work, a 2MP camera will easily cut it (assuming you're not zooming, just cropping), but prints - especially larger ones - are going to need the resolution. I've got a 3GP (yes, gigapixel) image of the earth which could make me quite a nice poster, but once it's resized to a usable resolution for computers, you've gone and defeated the purpose of having something so high-res.

And HDR CCDs are coming, though "when" remains the question. The same company that made an HDR TV screen is working on cameras for properly recording stuff with that level of contrast (at the moment, the TV will just effectively upscale the content from roughly 1000:1 to 100000:1 contrast, which is a vast improvement but still not as good as the real thing - BUT, *black* blacks on an LCD)

Re:Film

[ryusen]

Nothing wrong with shooting JPG. I have my reasons for shooting RAW and my personal system probably would not work for most other people, since it eveolved soley based on my preferences. It's not really because i'm a purist. It's partially because the way i like to work and post-process.

Of course. Nikon does make great cameras and Lenses, but i do feel Canon is superior, except for the flash metering. Minolta's cameras are now the property of the Evil empire of consumer electronics, so i'm not sure which direction they will go.

Re:Film

[mOdQuArK!]

The eye has around a hundred million nerve inputs, so the per frame resolution can't be higher than that.

Not necessarily a good assumption: since retinal neurons don't fire synchronized at a "frame rate", and the brain processes their signals in parallel often using algorithms depending on adjacent spatial & temporal signals, it's really difficult to compare the "effective frame/resolution" of human vision.

Re:Film

[dfghjk]

While the Canon lenses you referred to may be some of the finest ever produced for 35mm format, they aren't the last word in what's possible when larger sensors are employed. Canon's wides are inferior to Nikon's as well so pushing the limit there isn't really saying anything. I owned a 1DS2 until recently BTW.

Otherwise, you're completely correct about the dynamic range of modern digital SLR's. I can't stand hearing the same uninformed comments made about the superiority of film over digital. 35mm film was surpassed quite a while ago.

Re:Film

[An Onerous Coward]

One thing to remember is that there may be times when you want to capture more than a human eye can take in all at once.

Another thing to remember is that the eye throws away the vast majority of what it sees before it ever hits your brain.

I was at the San Francisco Exploratorium last week, and saw a nifty demonstration of this. They have a projector displaying a scene of a street front. Every few seconds, it changes something in the image. The changes are actually quite dramatic (removing or adding a parking meter, replacing a lamp post with a colorful sign, etc.) If the program blacked out the screen for a split second before each change, you'd see the change every time. If it didn't, you'd be lucky to catch the change one time in five.

So if you take the amount of information the eye is actually sending to your brain, and rendered that many pixels of a scene, it would look extremely jagged. The camera would have to capture way more information than your eye is taking in, in order to do the entire scene, because your eye darts around a lot.

Re:Film

[gardyloo]

The answer, of course, is "it depends." I haven't seen his girlfriend so I don't know what the appropriate resolution would be.

    I'll bite. This is slashdot. I'd say two bits, and that might be giving him too much credit.

Re:Film

[scdeimos]

Did you even bother to read the article? It was produced for STA (Semiconductor Technology Associates), who developed the chip for the Astrometry Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory.

No doubt they're going to use it in some kind of telescopy application where every bit of digital resolution counts.

Re:Film

[eh2o]

The cited "estimate" does not consider the significant loss of visual acuity at increasing angle of eccentricity. It takes the acuity of a foveally viewed target and extrapolates it to the entire field of view, so its probably off by at least an order of magnitude.

Re:Film

[Darth Liberus]

All theoretical arguments aside, I've never had film come close to matching the sharpness of images I get from my 6MP DSLR, and I'm using the same lenses I used on my old 35mm SLR. Perhaps you're thinking medium format (120) film? That keeps up with digital in terms of sharpness, and beats it in dynamic range, but has the drawback of being... film.

Re:Film

[McTaggart]

Even as it becomes rarer 35mm and 120/220 film will still be incredibly cheaper than this thing.

But it looks like we're coming to the point where the quality of our digital images will come down to the resolving power of the lenses.

Re:Film

[falconwolf]

Well sure sounds like that'll BLOW AWAY 35mm film and definitely be about comprable to 4x5 film.

Wow! 111 megapixel? The biggest 35mm equivilent sensor I know of is what Canon uses in the fullframe EOS Ds Mark I which is 16.7 mp. I know Mamiya makes a medium format, er 645 equivalent, camera but it only has 22 mp. It's the Mamiya ZD. The same with their ZD digital back. That sensor would feel more at home in a long format camera body though I would like to see it in a 645 digital back. And the article says it's 4X4 inchs, a lot bigger than 4X5 cm.

Falcon

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

The perception of anything is dependent on your view scope... Take a circle, if you get closer to a circle you may notice bumps, valleys.... colors and characteristics that you didn't see before... so not only does the circle become more that a circle, but it ceases to be a circle.

The advantage of such a device that makes sense is the precision to observe these detailed characteristics without moving closer... at some point, though, we may be faced with the issue of possible loss of resolution at distances based on photon dispersal... at some point, detail at great distances must be lost as the relative slope of the light's refraction from the target objective. Of course, I could be wrong in my interpretation on the dispersal of a light source, but you have to imagine that, at some distance your resolution would degrade, regardless of the device's precision

Re:Film

[ScottLindner]

Minolta was bought by Sony? What a travesty.

If you do a lot of post processing you'll always want to work in RAW until you're done doing your work. That makes perfect sense to me. I've been working with digital images for about 8 years. For the first three years i was a die hard image tweaker (to throw out a bogus title). After the years I learned to see all of the tricks in digital photography and I started to hate them because I can see them so easily and quickly. So now I shoot the image right the first time and don't touch it at all. Meaning I shoot 10x what I intend to keep. :-)

That's probably why JPEG doesn't bother me.

Re:Film

[ryusen]

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0606/06060501sonydslr a100.asp Yeah, they've even released a "new" DSLR under the Sony name.

Yeah, some images i enjoy doing a lot of post. Others, i just apply a curve and saturation adjustment. Another thing i like about RAW is that since it's 12 bits per pixel, i sometimes to digital bracketing, to overcome the problems with high contrast images. Sometimes, especially when i do stuff liek surfing shots, you simply can't do normal braketing.

Re:Film

[Aqua OS X]

Yup, viewing distance is important.

If you're doing something for a small print piece you want a high DPI (ie 300). If it's a poster you can use a lower DPI. If it's a Billboard you can use a significantly lower DPI.

I'm a graphic designer and I recently committed the industry's cardinal sin the other day... I had a comp printed at Kinkos. I was printing a fairly large bus shelter poster that was 150dpi. The newb behind the counter had the audacity to bitch about DPI, even though (I would imagine) it was fairly obvious that I did this for a living.

If you're developing something large in Photoshop you do -not- want to play around in 300 DPI. People read those things from a few feet away and, I don't care if you have a new dual-core dual g5, you do -not- want to wait for a 30x40in bitmap to rotate on a multilayered 300 DPI document.

That said, high res photography is important. You may only want to highlight a small piece from a large image, and you can't do that unless you have good source material.

Re:Film

[sejanus]

I dunno what dslr you use, but your results are weird. dslr's at 1600 iso are ludicrously better than film at 1600.

if you are getting too much noise, you are underexposing.

I'm a wedding photgrapher and my 2 x canon 5d's absolutely make a mockery of film at high iso.

Re:Film

[Surt]

It does set the limit on the maximum instantaneous visual field. If some of the cells aren't in sync and aren't firing, then they aren't part of the immediate field of vision, and the resolution of the immediate field is therefore necessarily lower. The number of inputs definitely determines the maximum instantaneous visual resolution.

Over time of course, the brain could do things like averaging, but I don't think it does ... I'd think evolutionarily that would be a waste of resources better used to process deltas in the input.

Re:Film

[vmardian]

According to http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution. html, you need 200 pixels per degree to max out your vision.

Typical applications:

THX recommended FoV is 36 degrees, which means that your display would need a horizontal resolution of 7200 pixels. This display is half way there: http://www.gizmag.com/watermark.php?p=5257_2402061 2840.jpg

I just measured my 15" widescreen laptop as having a 45 degree FoV (at 18" away) which means that it would need a resolution of 9000 horizontal pixels.

Re:Film

[Cowclops]

Oh yes, I was aware of that after I did the math, though it is interesting that 1080p is really "plenty" for video. I realize that while I calculated the detail we can discern to be about 1.3 arcminutes, I think the actual number is more like .3 (as in about a third of an arcminute, not a little more than one)

Re:Film

[darthdavid]

Yes I can believe it wasn't designed by someone who knew anything at all about optics. We have a blind spot wich the brain fills in. This is because part of optic nerve is in front of the retina. This would be like putting the wiring for a ccd between it and the lens in a camera. As such, any 'intelligent' designer is a total junkslut who had to ride the short bus to diety school or we evloved, where some ancestor of ours had the miswired eye and kept passing it on because it was "good enough" which is the driving pricipal behind evolution. Hell, you can even see it in squids/octopuses, they need to see in dim light and so the mis-wired eye wasn't "good enough" so they evolved an eye that was properly wired and could see better in the conditions they faced. If there was a designer this makes then they are obviously a posterchild for post-natal abortion because it'd be about the stupidest thing I've ever heard of to design a proper eye for cephalopods and then, remember by christian mythology (you're not fooling anyone with the abstract "designer" you know) animals were made first, go and design a flawed eye for people.

Re:Film

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Isn't it pretty obvious that he meant the "pixels" to cover the whole viewing area? That was my first impression, and that's what the page in question seems to be talking about... No need to talk about distance.

Re:Film

[yo_tuco]

"All theoretical arguments aside, I've never had film come close to matching the sharpness of images I get from my 6MP DSLR... "

Interesting. I have just the opposite experience. But I'm old fashion, I guess. I still use this this old technology camera featured on the page with Pyrogallol developer for BW film, a one-degree Pentax spot meter and often custom develop each sheet for the scene it exposed for (the "zone system"). The results are stunning.

Re:Film

[lhk]

I find these numbers very hard to believe. 20 x 13.3 is roughly the size of a 24" display; at 1920x1200, that is just under 6000 *individual* rgb pixels horizontally. So, if the numbers are correct, they are saying that when viewing such a screen at 20", the human eye can detect *each* of the rgb pixels??

Re:Film

[Daedone]

uh guys...?

i hate to burst your bubble....

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/generaltec hnology/7beaa4dd497f6010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd/2 .html

and yes, I KNOW its not digital, but hey, it uses parts from a A7 spyplane, so that's gotta count for something right?

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

The resolution does become important as there are algorithms to increase dynamic range as a tradeoff against the full resolution of the device.

Just a matter of patents and companies willing to license the novel approach with standard CCD device technology.

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

You got trolled, newb...

Re:Film

[n6mod]

We're only approaching the point where huge large-format sensors like this one can challenge high-quality 35mm film. We need to get to the point where we can match 35mm resolution in a 35mm (or more likely, APS-C) sensor.

I'd love to see you support the assertion that a 111 megapixel is only "challenging" high quality 35mm film.

If you look at the simple resolution numbers, a 10 megapixel DSLR equals anything this side of Tech Pan. And that's stacking the deck in favor of film, since Tech Pan is a) black and white, b) extremely slow, and c) no longer available.

You're quite right that the noise issue is a big win for the DSLR. I'd submit that while the absolute resolution numbers are quite close between current DSLRs and 35mm film, the DSLR wins in subjective image quality because of the much lower noise level. I've been shooting with an 8MP Canon for about a year now, and my experiences suggests that a) 35mm is dead, and b) 645 should be worried.

Now, this new 4" sensor is an exciting development, because it points the way towards digital large format cameras. A Linhof field camera with one of these hanging off the back is very interesting indeed. Lots of the DOF control issues with SLRs (film or digital) go away at 4x5, not to mention the potential for stunning image quality.

I'm with you on the dynamic range, as well. Once you get your hands around the process, doing HDR imaging with bracket sets from DSLRs can produce some amazing results; being able to do that from a single exposure would be fantastic.

Re:Film

[charlie_vernacular]

I'd be quite happy if someone could come up with a quarter-size version of this built into a back that fits on my 1958 Rolleicord TLR. I have a feeling it'll be a very (inifinitely?) long wait! I suspect it would compete happily with 6x6 for my needs.

Re:Film

[kylie69]

This chip was payd by the Navy, so it will be used for military purposes, and i can imagine a whole bunch of situations where such a device would be usefull.

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

I love to hear people dismiss any possibility for an "intelligent designer", and then hear them talk about how squids needed to see in the low light so they just went ahead and evolved themselves a better set of peepers. As if your magical, mystical force for miraculous things is okay, but someone else's isn't. Like listening to a rain god worshipper argue with a crop god worshipper.

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd think evolutionarily that would be a waste of resources

How do you know the Evolution God hates waste? Did you read it in the book of the Holy Prophet Darwin? Simple minds like to anthropomorphize.

Re:Film

[dk-software-engineer]

they are saying that when viewing such a screen at 20", the human eye can detect *each* of the rgb pixels??

Yes, of course we can. Make one pixel stand out (white on black, or black on white) and it is very clearly visible.

It must also be one of the reasons why so many people don't like to read on a screen: The very low resolution. The letters just has so much more detail on print.

I also often notice the pattern in singlecolored areas on a screen. I'm not claiming I can see red, green and blue dots, but I can see that it's not just a flat color, without moving too close to the monitor.

Re:Film

[frostilicus2]

I'm no expert in the field, but I'm pretty sure its in the region of 120 megapixels, but this site http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution. html begs to differ and states that it is in the region of 500 megapixels. This is based on a treatment of diffraction limited resolution based on theta = lamda/D (see here). But 500mp sounds is a HUGE amount and would require massive processing by the brain. This is a theoretical maximum of angular resolution based on perfect eyesight and a fully dilated pupil without abberation or imperfections. In the real world, we are unlikely to approach this figure by a long way. Even if the eye could resolve such small angles, we reach a limit based on the number of receptors (the rods and cones) which are somewhat less than 500 million - and according to this site http://kidshealth.org/kid/body/eye_noSW.html the number is around 120 - 130 million receptors so a resolution of around 120MP seems like a good ballpark estimate. You should bear in mind though, that we actually "see" very little of what we "detect".

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me some great Zeiss optics, gimme some kodachrome 25 in 4x5 or 8x10 and your giga-pixels will *still* suck ditch water. Digital is still and always will be THERE or NOT THERE, nothing in-between. Films ability to capture variance of color, the shadow detail is soemthing digital will just never replace it. Perhaps we will be "satisfied" with it, because of other factors, but replace film, nope,

Film, even cheap film, has far more latitude then the best digital. Look at the best digital can serve up, and then look close at the shadow detail, and its just not there.

F64-Club, although long ago disolved, the images simply put digital to shame that those men took. The ranges of shadow detail and gray with even pan-x, plus-x much less tri-x combined with archive grade paper are just mind boggling.

Most "photographers" these days are much like VB "programmers" they dont know from anything because they never learned the basics, the core foundation.

Once you have shot with a large format camera, everyhting else is a toy, even the best 35mm, and once you seen the results of hauling that big-ass 8 x 10 up a valley or a mountain side, and have seen the results, it suddenly weighs less then a cannon suer shot.

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he means that the eye itself holds between 300-500 megapixels, meaning at the back of the retina there are 500 million pixel-like "sensors"

Re:Film

[Jeppe Salvesen]

My Olympus E-300 is terrible at ISO 1600.

Basically, noise at high ISOs are determined by the density of the CCD. Canon 5D has a full-format CCD (meaning it's the size of that good ole fashioned 35mm film), while my E-300 has a CCD about half that size. High ISO behaviour is also to some extent the quality of the CCD.

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

I just very recently switched to shooting RAW, especially in the dark. I like to shoot hand held at night out in the city, or without flash inside. I have a 300d + 1:1.8 50mm lens (shoot a lot at 1600 iso), with RAW i get pictures that are a lot nicer than jpeg. Something about the compression algorithm as implemented on the 300d makes the jpeg pictures look horrid. It took me more than a year to figure this one out :) Now if only it had a better viewfinder :( The auto focus isn't always doing what it should either :( For the viewfinder I will have to wait for the moment when I have enough money to buy a full frame DSLR (a long wait that will be). Autofocus should be better on newer models anyway.

PS during the day RAW versus jpeg doesn't matter as much (except that you have a little more headroom in editing the pictures)

Re:Film

[sejanus]

It doesn't need to be FF (though that doesn't hurt).

The Canon 20d and 30d are also excellent at 1600 iso and are 1.6x crop sensors.

Fuji S3 is also very good and is 1.5x

Re:Film

[SenseiLeNoir]

Actually even a professional 8 Megapixel camera (Canon DSLRs) can get "better fidelity" IN PRACTICE than certain 35mm films, due to film issues such as grain at higher ISOs and better color dynamics. Notice I used the term IN PRACTICE. (read up on recent tests, where they have compared the latest CMOS based Sensors to various normal 35mm Film). There will be certain brands/types of film where 35mm will easily exceed a 16 Megapixel DSLR, but at the expense of very low ISO (ISO50).

I woudl like to see this technology with the Canon CMOS sensor, instead of CCD,as Canon's CMOS technology has certain advantages over CCD (very low noise, night photography)

Re:Film

[locofungus]

For small angles:

theta = lambda/D

where D is the aperture size.

So for 600nm (red) light, and a 6mm pupil with a viewing distance of 1m there is a theoretical resolving of dots separated by about 0.1mm.

In practice, the eye won't give this limit but I wouldn't be surprised if the human eye only misses this by a factor of about 2. (I would also expect that birds of prey probably come pretty close to the theoretical limit)

Tim.

Re:Film

[imsabbel]

Dont everestimate medium format.

Its is absolutely, terribly lens-limited, even in the most expensive cases.

Re:Film

[Tab is on Slashdot]

Stargazers often use this trick as well--if you look directly at a faint star, after a couple of seconds you'll question whether it's actually where it was just a moment before. But if you look slightly off to the side, your eyeball moves around and twitches enough that it creates apparent "motion" of the faint star you're trying to see and you can pick it up again.

Is that true? I've always been under the impression that the reason that stars are easier to see in peripheral vision is because rod cells, which are predominant in the periphera, are much more sensitive to light than the cone cells that crowd the visual center.

Re:Film

[Fred_A]

That said, high res photography is important. You may only want to highlight a small piece from a large image, and you can't do that unless you have good source material.

This is indeed the only real point of high resolution cameras for domestic use.
Being able to correct a poor shot by cropping the image only works if there are enough pixels to work with.

I rarely have my photos printed so even my "low end" 4MP camera does just fine on the A4 sized prints I order.

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's stacking the deck in favor of film, since Tech Pan is a) black and white

You are of course aware that CCDs are monochromatic aswell? You have to use a Bayer mask or several CCDs with each their own color filter to gather hue/saturation information.

Re:Film

[blindd0t]

there could still be applications for enlargements etc

Applications would include large print like billboards one would see off of 42nd street, not far from lexington in NYC, NY...

Re:Film

[dargaud]

I have used a film scanner to scan all film I have ever shot in my life.

I do too, so I'll comment your comments.

my film scanner has a scan resolution of 2700DPI

That's not enough. I had 3 scanners of the 2700dpi generation (Minolta, Canon and Nikon) and they all pretty much sucked. Are you sure the grain you see is actually film grain and not scanner noise ? The Canoscan 2700 for instance had absolutely horrible noise.

even my 100 speed film has very observable film grain at this dot pitch. [...] As a note, I used relatively cheap color film.

Well, you already know the answer... I use almost exclusevely Fujichrome Provia 100F and I can tell you that at 4000dpi the grain is very hard to see. A single sweep with Noise Ninja and it's gone. For 100asa use slide and scan it, above use negative, and for Black and White I actually use a digital compact and then perform some custom channel separation.

Re:Film

[gatzke]

I have seen people make arguments about focal length and such to get at a human eye resolution.

One I hears last was around 4000x2000 at 8 MP. Those 30 inch displays are close to that, at 2500x1600.

Re:Film

[toonworld]

....Click!!

Oh wait, hang on while I change my 1Gig card because it's already full after 1 shot.... ok... click!!

wash and repeat

Re:Film

[Bandman]

Definately! Those medium-format jerks won't be making fun of me with my digital camera in 5 years! Ha! /just got a NikonD50, and has only the slightest clue what he's talking about

Re:Film

[toonworld]

umm... after having my coffee, make that 10 pictures.

oops

Re:Film

[Bandman]

well, yes, logically your camera would kick his camera's butt.

If you go from a throw-away film to even a medium-end Nikon or Canon, you're going to be amazed.

But yea, I'm nowhere near the photographer I'd need to be to work on big iron like that.

Re:Film

[Surt]

It's quite straightforward actually, waste leads to starvation and death before reproduction. And the Evolution God hates death before reproduction.

Re:Film

[TFloore]

Final comment is regarding color depth, undersaturation, and over saturation. Since they are all related/same. Film is still by far superior in this regard. DSLRs still undersaturate long before standard color film. Oversaturation is still a problem. Look at the full res pixels of anything shiny. It stands out pretty bad. Skin tones have always been a huge problem. I have no clue why since skin tones are typically in the mid range. Color depth and saturation/undersaturation still has a lot of room for improvement with DSLRs.

Not a guarantee this is the problem, but one thing that does tend to mess up a lot of digital images is white balance. You don't really think about this with film, because you buy a film that is designed for a certain white balance. Film X for sunlight, film Y for flourescents, film Z for incandescents. Same thing when you buy a film for a certain color temperature of light or flash. (Literally, white balance and light color temperature are the same thing. Light color temperature is usually measured in degrees Kelvin, somewhere between about 4000 and 6000.)

You don't do that with digital cameras, you just have the one sensor. You have to tell the camera what the white balance is. Most modern DSLRs (and a lot of the better digital point-n-shoot cameras) have a white balance setting with profiles for various lighting conditions. (A lot of them now have "custom" settings also, where you can take a picture of a white card and use that to set the white balance in the camera right then.) This will strongly affect how colors look, and is most noticable with skin tones, simply because your eye knows what is right for your friend's face, but won't notice as much that the shirt is not the right shade. You notice when a skin tone has too much red or blue or whatever.

Play with the white balance on your DSLR, and you can probably improve the skin tone output in your pictures.

Re:Film

[Joe Decker]

Play with the white balance on your DSLR, and you can probably improve the skin tone output in your pictures.

Or shoot RAW images with your camera and adjust the white balance setting in post-processing.

Re:Film

[Joe Decker]

Film, even cheap film, has far more latitude then the best digital. Look at the best digital can serve up, and then look close at the shadow detail, and its just not there.

Not quite true, but close enough. The high-end digital I've seen properly exposed and processed, approaches slide film in latitude, but you almost have to treat the digtial sensor with a pseduo-Zone-system approach to make sure you use as much as the sensor's dynamic range as possible. If you're used to using print emulsions, of course, you've got a lot more lattitude.

Re:Film

[Joe Decker]

Actually, slide film has higher dynamic range than print film (in addition to having superior grain and vastly superior tonal range),

I believe you are mistaken, but I'm happy to be corrected if you have a reference. It is true that slide film has a higher range of contrasts it can hold in on film (Dmax/Dmin), but actually is recording a smaller dyanmic range of the light hitting the film in the first place, due to higher contrast.

Re:Film

[Joe Decker]

It is sobering to remember that the first hard disk (10MB) I ever purchased often wouldn't have been able to hold a single RAW image from my three-year old Canon 1Ds (8-12MB, depending on image content and ISO).

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that true? I've always been under the impression that the reason that stars are easier to see in peripheral vision is because rod cells, which are predominant in the periphera, are much more sensitive to light than the cone cells that crowd the visual center.

I think I learnt in 9th grade about this nasty thingy called the
Blind Spot, similar to the G-Spot :)

ps. I really ought to get myself an account some day

Re:Film

[ScottLindner]

Surfing shots? No kidding. I spent an entire summer shooting my wife surfing while I was out of commission due to a surgery.

I completely understand your reason for shooting RAW. I used to feel the same way until I understood that no printer, video card, or display that I'll ever own has the color depth to display more than 8 bit color channels. If you're manipulating the image.. absolutely shoot in RAW. I couldn't agree more with this decision. It almost feels like your reason for shooting RAW is the digital equivalent for film photographers that shoot exclusively slide film. That analogy just hit me. Would you feel it's accurate for your situation?

Re:Film

[ScottLindner]

I completley agree and didn't mean to imply that good film would show grain at 2700DPI. More that cheap film showed a lot of grain at 2700DPI. Just to put things into perspective. That's all I intended. Thanks for adding your own perspective. I've known that good film has film grain that a 4000DPI scanner may or may not pick up. I'm glad you noted that. It's a good point to make.

I'm so glad I'm done scanning all of my film. Digital from here on out. What a project that was. Over 1200 Archival Gold CDs sitting in file cabinets....

Re:Film

[Phat_Tony]

Everything said in the parent post is dead-on, but I think it sort of dances around the periphery of a more direct answer to this question: it doesn't matter what the momentary resolution of the human eye is, because our eyes don't take "snapshots" of the pictures we see, it's more like they take movies of them.

We stand back and see the whole picture, then we move closer and look around at the detail in a bunch of different areas. With large format photography, you have a big print, and it isn't intended that you only glance at it for a moment from a distance. If that were the intended way to view it, then the question regarding the resolution of the human eye would be valid, and the picture could probably be about one megapixel, (especially if the resolution was concentrated in the center), and if they just flashed it at you, that would be enough. But if you're going to walk up to it and peer around, it's like you're watching a Ken Burns zoom & pan movie of parts of the image, possibly for several minutes and scanning over many parts in high detail, and that single image has to hold all the detail of the movie, and it has to have that detail everywhere, because they don't know where or how much you're going to zoom in.

Again, I entirely agree with the parent post, and it pretty much says the same thing, I just thought this was a different way to put it that might make sense to some people.

Re:Film

[arminw]

.....Yes I can believe it wasn't designed by someone who knew anything at all about optics. We have a blind spot wich the brain fills in. This is because part of optic nerve is in front of the retina......

Repeating someone's ignorant statements isn't exactly the most intelligent thing to do.

Someone who does know about eye design is the ophthalmologist Dr George Marshall, who said:
'The idea that the eye is wired backward comes from a lack of knowledge of eye function and anatomy.'
He explained that the nerves could not go behind the eye, because that space is reserved for the choroid, which provides the rich blood supply needed for the very metabolically active retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). This is necessary to regenerate the photoreceptors, and to absorb excess heat. So it is necessary for the nerves to go in front instead. This doesn't spoil vision, because the nerves are virtually transparent because of their small size and also having about the same refractive index as the surrounding vitreous humour. In fact, what limits the eye's resolution is the diffraction of light waves at the pupil (proportional to the wavelength and inversely proportional to the pupil's size), so alleged improvements of the retina would make no difference.

Any explanation of how the form and function of a structure, such as the eye, came to be, without the application of an intelligence, takes far more FAITH than I can muster. I can see that your faith in blind chance, or whatever other mechanism, is greater than mine in God. I congratulate you in your great faith. I pray that someday you will see fit to redirect this faith to the one true God who loves you.

Re:Film

[epine]

He explained that the nerves could not go behind the eye, because that space is reserved for the choroid, which provides the rich blood supply needed for the very metabolically active retinal pigment epithelium (RPE).

So what about the sea species (squid IIRC) where the optic nerve is on the back side? I suppose in that case it couldn't go on the front, because in those species the front is reserved for the choroid.

Usually in software design, you find things "reserved" for the handling the case where you eventually discover how terribly badly you screwed up the first time around.

Re:Film

[ryusen]

yeah here: http://www.pbase.com/ryusenkai/surfing As for your analogy. i have never shot slide film, but from what i've read, i guess it makes sense. i'm glad we can agree on this. i kind of get tired of people who shoot one way and call the people who shoot the other way stupid.

Re:Film

[ScottLindner]

I hate that too. Or call you stupid before understanding that you both agree but said the same thing but from different angles.

There's no one answer for everyone. With photography there are a lot of purists. I think a good old school SLR photography talk can sometimes top the Linux zealots duking out which package manager is better.

Re:Film

[ScottLindner]

Holy smokes.. do you or anyone you know surf that break?! My wife are longboarders and terrible ones at that. We still prefer to surf the foam because we haven't figured out the drop yet.

Re:Film

[ryusen]

Nah, i don't personally know anyone that surfs pipe. That place is just plain dangerous. the reef is super shallow. if you look there's even a day i was out and soemone died...

Re:Film

[ryusen]

Yeah, it gets ugly sometimes. I do admit there are times i enjoy a good flame war... and there are just some times where i can't resist correcting blatant inaccuracies.

Re:Film

[darthdavid]

I didn't explain the mechanism of evolution because I didn't feel like expending extra effort, but I don't have anything else to do for a while so I might as well now. Evolution is not "mystical". It works on simple principals. Traits are stored in genes. They are stored in cells. When cells divide they duplicate the genes. This includes the cell division for making sperm and eggs. Sometimes the copying doesn't work perfectly and an error is created. The error is either beneficial, harmful or doesn't affect the creatures functioning at all. When the error is beneficial the animal stands a better chance of living and passing it down to it's children. Eventually enough beneficial copying errors pile up so that the offspring produced are a different animal entirely. Harsh environments force better characteristics for portions of creatures that their harshness affects because those creatures who aren't up to snuff die alot faster and only those who are lucky enough to have inherited beneficial traits survive well. Squid and octopi need really good eyes for their dark environment. The creatures that had miswired eyes all got outcompeted by the ones with mutations promoting better eyesight (survival of the fittest you know) and so they starved to death because they were down there bumping into walls while all the ones with good eyesight could see their way to octo-mcdonalds or whatever just fine. We kept that because our flawed vision is "good enough" for the higher light environment we evolved in. The squid didn't just "evolve themselves" anything. The ones that had good eyes got all the food and so lived long enough to get all the nookie too and the ones that had bad eyes starved to death. Now it wasn't as sudden as that of course. Evolution is slow, so really it was the ones with slightly better eyes ate slightly better and so were better able to reproduce and made slightly more babies, and benefical mutations kept piling up untill some ancient cephalopod had a really good set of "peepers". Now go light your bible on fire and shove it up your ass you stupid sack of crap.

Re:Film

[arminw]

....So what about the sea species (squid IIRC) where the optic nerve is on the back side?.......

Octopi and related sea creatures don't see as well as humans, and the octopus eye structure is totally different and much simpler. It's more like 'a compound eye with a single lens'. They are cold blooded creatures for one thing and optical requirements for underwater vision also are radically different than for the air.

Software design is markedly different than for physical objects, since software is not physical. There are no know methods or mathematical models that we know of that can give us reasonable assurance that the software is bug free. Extensive and expensive testing is the ONLY way to determine the quality of non-trivial software.

Many of the 'designs' of nature are still unduplicated despite much research and very much a mystery. Exploring these mysteries is what makes science what it is and very rewarding. Trying to determine the origin of these mysteries is outside of the realm of real science, but belongs in the realm of faith.

Re:Film

[Ragingguppy]

Oh cool now we can send billboard sized picture of cats.

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

If the eyesight of little squiddies was so bad that they couldn't find enough food to live long enough to procreate, they would've died off before any errors resulting in better eyesight could occur in sufficient quantity to take hold in the population. But you keep believing want you want to, keep taking it on faith, and my point stands.

Now go light your bible on fire and shove it up your ass you stupid sack of crap.

Apparently in all your calm reasoning ability you completely missed the point, summed up in my last sentence. Seeing you, a mindless Darwin-thumper, argue with the apparition of a mindless Jesus-thumper that you evidently think you see, is like watching two primitives with bones in their noses argue over whether the dirt god is stronger than the rock god, or something else totally absurd.

The only difference between you and the fundies is that your kind are a lot meaner. Too bad your made-up god didn't instruct you guys to be nice too.

Re:Film

[madprof]

The squid who couldn't see in low light died out. And the ones who could prospered. This bit of common sense is obvious to many people, but not to everyone. Including luddite creationist zealots.

Re:Film

[Savantissimo]

"I would be much more excited about a CCD or CMOS sensor that can capture 11 stops of light or some other type of technology that would get around the problem of high contrast scenes, than more megapixels."

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0512/05121201new_chip s.asp

The next advance in cameras is becoming a reality at the University of Rochester. ...

The new designs use as few as three transistors per pixel, reserving nearly half of the pixel area for light collection. First tests on the chip show that at video rates of 30 frames per second it uses just 0.88 nanowatts per pixel--50 times less than the industry's previous best. It also trounces conventional chips in dynamic range, which is the difference between the dimmest and brightest light it can record. Existing CMOS sensors can record light 1,000 times brighter than their dimmest detectable light, a dynamic range of 1:1,000, while the Rochester technology already demonstrates a dynamic range of 1:100,000. ....

What makes Bocko and Ignjatovic's method work so elegantly is its feedback design. Traditional CMOS image detectors apply a voltage to charge up a photodiode, and incoming light triggers a release of some of that charge. An amplifying transistor then checks the remaining voltage on the diode, and the diode is recharged again. Bocko and Ignjatovic's design also begins with a charged photodiode that discharges when light reaches it, but the discharge is then measured against a one/zero threshold and the resulting bit is delivered off the chip. If the result of a measurement is a one, then a packet of charge is fed back to the diode, effectively recharging it. The design also uses significantly less power than existing sensor designs, which is especially important in smaller devices like cell phones and digital cameras where battery size is restricted.

The second advance has taken many researchers by surprise. Called "Focal Plane Image Compression," Bocko and Ignjatovic have figured out a way to arrange photodiodes on an imaging chip so that compressing the resulting image demands as little as 1 percent of the computing power usually needed. .... [Pixels arranged non-uniformly at cosine peaks allows discrete cosine transform compression without any multiplication, cutting power required by 80% and reducing circuitry.]

Re:Film

[Savantissimo]

I was with you until the end. In '88 shooting Fuji 1600 slide film pushed to 3200 (can you even get that anymore, though?) in sunlight, I got absolutely frozen hummingbirds with no detectable grain in 3x5 prints. Every finest vein in every feather was razor-sharp - You would need a loupe to tell it from ISO 200.

Re:Film

[Explo]

Digital is still and always will be THERE or NOT THERE, nothing in-between. Films ability to capture variance of color, the shadow detail is soemthing digital will just never replace it.

Any particular fundamental physical reasons that prevent it from happening..? What I'm trying to say that strong claims stand better with some reasons included, or at least some hints for searching them.

Re:Film

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife and I had a Canon brick, and it was very disappointing. The interface was shit (how many actions does your wife have to take to set it on timer?), the viewfinder was so off you had to use the LCD which reduced its effectiveness, and frankly, the pictures weren't that good.

My brother in law visited with his Nikon d70 and the difference was night and day. We have a d70 and LOVE it. The lens that comes with it is way way better than the kit lens on anything in its range, above or below. That alone is almost enough to make it the choice from $700 - $1500.

I tried some of the Canon's recently, none of them fit my hand very well, and the cheaper ones were downright bad (for me). It's hard to take a good picture when the platform isn't steady and the button is not in quite the right place.

Re:Film

[Aqua OS X]

If only someone would high capacity flash memory or, perhaps, tiny hard disks.

Could you imagine the possibilities? You could store lots of large photos. You might even be able to use the little hard disks to create little portable pods which carried digital music. Perhaps they could get music from the internet and we could call them "internet Pods."

Well, one can dream. Until that happens there is absolutely no way to store high resolution photos on a camera.

Re:Film

[darthdavid]

You're right they would've died out if they couldn't see well enough to eat. But when their squid buddies can see better than they can they will die out to the ones with good eyesight.

Great...

[MudButt]

I can't wait to get 10560x10560 resolution family photos named IMG_1000.jpg as attachments in my inbox...

Re:Great...

[MoxFulder]

the 10560x10560 format will probably get professional digital camera users drooling. ... I imagine the memory card vendors, hard drive vendors, backpack vendors, and chiropractors will be drooling at this as well :-)

Re:Great...

[Mostly a lurker]

I can't wait to get 10560x10560 resolution family photos named IMG_1000.jpg as attachments in my inbox...

Me too (at least as soon as I can get an LCD monitor that can display it at native resolution).

(Getting away from family viewing, can you imagine what those closeup porn photos would look like on a 150" LCD monitor at this resolution?)

Photographers drooling?

[ErikTheRed]

Not as much as the Internet masses wanting 100Mpixel pr0n....

Link to "printable" stories

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish submitters would start linking to the "printable" versions of the stories: http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml ?articleID=189500300&printable=true

Not for pros

[rockhome]

I'd doubt many professional photographers are drooling over this. The market, at least in terms of commercial photograpgy, is about at its limit of need, in terms of the 32+ megapixel cameras. Manufacturers are now pushing the envelope for satelite and other advanced imaging. In most commercial applications, the current state of the art in terms of cameras combined with transfer and storage requirements is more than sufficient.

Re:Not for pros

[Nico3d3]

It may be at its limit for the number of megapixels but, there's still a lot of things to improve like the maximum color range a digital camera can record. With 16 bits color channel, we would be able to record a lot more informations so we wouldn't be limited as much when we try to capture a high dynamic range picture. There's tools like in Photoshop CS2 to give you the abilities to have high dynamic range but it would be a lot better to have it directly in the camera.

Re:Not for pros

[spaceyhackerlady]

It may be at its limit for the number of megapixels but, there's still a lot of things to improve like the maximum color range a digital camera can record. With 16 bits color channel, we would be able to record a lot more informations so we wouldn't be limited as much when we try to capture a high dynamic range picture. There's tools like in Photoshop CS2 to give you the abilities to have high dynamic range but it would be a lot better to have it directly in the camera.

The CCD cameras used by astronomers routinely produce 16 bits per pixel. Most of these are monochrome devices: to shoot a colour picture you must shoot pictures through red, green and blue filters, then combine them.

The key advantages for astronomy are zero reciprocity failure (film loses sensitivity in long exposures; CCDs don't), high quantum efficiency (almost all the photons intercepted by the sensor are noticed) and excellent linearity (you can digitally subtract extraneous light, like city lights).

However, even in astronomy, there is a hard core who still do film. There are many reasons: some people just like the look, others enjoy the craft of wet darkroom work, and so on.

My favourite camera is a 4x5 press camera, a Crown Graphic. It takes perfect 1950s newspaper photographer pictures. And I develop and print them myself.

...laura

Re:Not for pros

[holdenholden]

I may be misunderstanding your point, but we currently DO have the ability to capture 12 bits per chanel. Of course, if you are shooting JPEGs then you already limit the bits to 8 per chanel. If shoot RAW the camera stores 12 bits/chanel and if you convert to TIFF it embeds them in 16 bits/chanel for a true 36 bit image (inside 48-bit space).

Going up to 16 would be a nice thing, but as far as I am concerned, 12 is more than enough. Sure, there are situations when I can see posterization or other nasty artifacts that would be ameliorated if I had more information to work with, but these are few and with careful shooting technique could be avoided. On the other hand, what I would like to see is an improvement in the dynamic range (currently 8-9 stops, almost on par with slide film) and in the noise/sensitivity department (currently 3200 ISO on the 20D gives very little noise if exposed properly).

However, personally as a photographer I am quite happy with 8MP and don't really care for more than, say, 20 MP. After that we start hitting the resolution limit of the lenses and going further will be too expensive for little or no benefit.

Re:Not for pros

[ScottLindner]

That's not entirely true. I have an uncle that shoots large format and pays $50 a scan for images about this size. The CCD size in this article is about the same size as his large frame film. So it's really not out of the question. Although highly unlikely and rare need for sure. So in general I completely agree with you, but there are a sick few that would actually use it and be able to justify it for the work they do.

I don't expect to see anything remotely close to this in a large format camera any time soon. Although we might see it in frame cameras. Hmm... I totally see it showing up there. Although the CCD and resolution would need to get a lot large to support the needs for frame cameras. But it would probably be too expensive. Hmm.. nevermind.. already found one that exists: http://www.vexcel.com/products/photogram/ultracam/ index.html Guess the demand is there already.

Re:Not for pros

[kesuki]

you'd be surprized who could take advantage of this single chip design.

previous 120 megapixel CCD cameras were based on multiple sensor array systems, and while i don't know where they were used most, I can think of a number of uses EG: no flash indirect light photogaphic archiving of ancient documents, maps and tapistries. as well as advertising photography for use in billboards and other large posters.

True, you don't need 120 megapixels to take a high school prom photo, but there are probabbly enough profesional uses for this camera to find a place in the market. what the size of that market is is going to take some research, which no doubt they already did.

This comment was insightful, or informative, the parent was overrated so long as his post exceeds 3 points.

Re:Not for pros

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes perfect 1950s newspaper photographer pictures.

Sweet! A camera that doubles as a time machine! Does it also steal souls?

Re:Not for pros

[jimbolaya]

Not to mention that not many modern professional photographers "drool over" large format cameras. Medium format still has a following, even in digital camera backs, but I challenge you to find a pro photographer who shoots large format. (4 x 5 inches was the most popular large format size. 4 x 4 would still be consider large format).

Re:Not for pros

[Anonymous Coward]

> There are many reasons: some people just like the look,
> others enjoy the craft of wet darkroom work, and so on.

Insert obligatory pr0n joke here.

CK.

Re:Not for pros

[wagemonkey]

You can get 39Mp backs of Hasselblads that can also be mounted on view cameras this is one version. You can also get scanning backs - not a single chip solution but useful for some applications. These are slow but have resolution up to 12,000 X 15,900 (1.1 GB files, 191Mp) if you need it - and can afford it at $18k.
Betterlight also are apparently working on a new back with a resolution of 14836x20072 - which is just under 298Mp and a file size of 1.7GB in 48-bit RGB.

The amazing thing with these is that all you need to but one is the money - I mean they aren't only available to NASA and the like.

Re:Not for pros

[ajs]

I thought that digital backs were considered OK for low-end, poster-quality work, but weren't up to the big challenges yet?

Re:Not for pros

[ScottLindner]

That's pretty cool. Thanks for those bits.

Of course... if we can afford it.. you know that the agencies are going to pay for something better for reasons that are beyond our current understanding.

That's a big sensor.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a pic of the sensor itself: http://www.dalsa.com/shared/content/images/STA1600 _1_1200w.jpg. (Too bad there aren't any pics from the sensor...)

Re:That's a big sensor.

[holdenholden]

Oh, come on. Look at the reflection (upper left corner).

They used a freaking point-and-shoot to take a picture of the beast. The least they could have done is bring out a 1Ds MkII if not a Hassie or a Mamya.

Re:That's a big sensor.

[Anonymous Coward]

> They used a freaking point-and-shoot to take a picture of the beast.

So what? Big deal. I bet you were really hoping to see a reflection of a hairy naked photographer.

Re:That's a big sensor.

[Bob_Geldof]

I'm sure you'll be able to see pictures from this bad boy in 50 years when the true, clandestine nature of the project is revealed. I bet from that distance it could resolve individual hairs on my ass.

That's a big sensor

[timeOday]

At what point is it more sensible to use a tiling of smaller sensors instead?

Re:That's a big sensor

[ryusen]

it depends. do you need a smaller camera that usues less power? The basic physics is the more pixels you cram into the same space, the greater your noise to signal ratio. That's why a 6MP DSLR will produce cleaner images than an 8MP points and Shoot.

Re:That's a big sensor

[timeOday]

What I meant is, it's probably much cheaper to make 16 small sensors with the same total area and number of megapixels as one huge sensor. If you could get the seams down to just a few pixels wide, it might be a good tradeoff.

Re:That's a big sensor

[ryusen]

Ahhh, sorry for my misunderstanding

Obligatory tongue twister

[Anonymous Coward]

if a cheap ship ships cheap chips, how much cheap chips shall the cheap ship ship?

Re:Obligatory tongue twister

[Anonymous Coward]

A cheap ship would ship all the cheap chips it could ship if a cheap ship could ship cheap chips.

Where's my cray?

[Midnight Thunder]

That's huge, but now I need a computer that can actually handle opening the file. It takes long enough opening a 8MP RAW file on my computer as is.

Re:Where's my cray?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are alot of commecial software packages designed for opening large photos... mostly these are used for raster data for Geospatial applications though. RemoteView does an excellent job though.

pr0n!

[Penguinisto]

No, just kidding... but that would make for one real cool digital "Medium Format" cameras :)

/P

There's more than just pixel count . . .

[Orange Crush]

For actual consumer devices, higher pixel count doesn't always mean better pictures. Color quality, optics, processing, etc. can make a huge difference. We're limited largely by what our eyes can perceive and our display devices actually represent. I guess such huge resolutions might be helpful for "zooming" without needing the lens assemblies . . . but there's still atmospheric distortion to contend with . . . It's a shame TFA doesn't mention what this CCD is actually supposed to be used for.

Re:There's more than just pixel count . . .

[Kamineko]

Or they could stop bloody wrecking all our pictures by automatically encoding with the JPG format!

Where's the linux based cameras with the flashable firmware, eh? >:(

Re:There's more than just pixel count . . .

[Bryansix]

One would hope that if you were going to use a camera with a 111 megapixel sensor that it would be equipped with the best image processor and literally jaw dropping optics. You would need a lens that could actually resolve images to that resolution but considering the sensor size that might not be very hard. On the other hand such a lens might be so heavy you would have to mount it on a Hummer just to be able to use it.

Re:There's more than just pixel count . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Well since it's for the Astronomy Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory, I'd guess it's either going in a satellite or a ground based observatory.

Re:There's more than just pixel count . . .

[emjoi_gently]

Yeah, I've wondered about this.

A 10MP picture taken with a cheap lens and poor focus is still a blurry picture, just made up of more dots.

I wonder if it's worthwhile putting more MP in a camera that's intended to be cheap. All it does is eat up your memory.

Re:There's more than just pixel count . . .

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I would think that could be intended for telescopes and satellites. Assuming 10cm resolution, you can shoot a square kilometer in one shot in good detail, though atmospherics will be a big issue.

And how many bad pixels?

[dlleigh]

How many bad pixels before the unit is considered faulty and can be returned?

Capture rate.

[Kaenneth]

Is this only for still images, or can it be used for moving images? (over time, like a movie, not emotionally, like a childs tear)

Obviously you'd need a heck of a data transfer rate for motion, but how fast could this pump data out, clear, and capture the next image?

Re:Capture rate.

[LuckyStarr]

At 24 bit color-depth, a movie at 25 frames/second using this device, would require approximately 70 Gigabits/second. The question is how you move (cough, cough) a CPU to move the bits fast enough.

Yeah, I know. Not funny.

Re:Capture rate.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a scientific CCD, it's not got a colour filter. It's not got a color bit-depth. In fact it's an analogue device, it doesn't have a bit depth.

If it has enough analogue readout ports then you can take movies with it, given enough ADCs and storage. Why you'd want to take high speed movies on a device intended for long exposure imaging in astronomical situations is beyond me.

Why I'm bothering to post actual relevant stuff in the midst of a ./ crudfest is also beyond me.

Pixies, the lot of you...

Re:Capture rate.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dalsa makes a 4kx2k (8Megapixel) Digital Cinema camera called the Origin. I just saw a demo today. It captures up to 36 FPS, but the limiting factor is currently the speed of the hard drive array. They say the image sensor can do up to 60 FPS. It is a VERY impressive system. I honestly can't imagine why anyone would want to shoot film anymore these days.

my calculations...

[laxcat]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but that's just shy of a 3 by 3 foot image at 300 dpi !

Re:my calculations...

[Anonymous Coward]

The calculations I did are as follows:

35" x35" at 300 dpi. This would create a JPG file 23mb in size, a tiff at 230mb and a raw between 600 and 900mb.

wow.

Re:my calculations...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the article - the sensor is 4 inches across (around 3800 dpi by my maths).

Re:my calculations...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just calculating that by using 3 of these for a very nice 3 CCD movie camera, you would have very nice 3 color resolution, and have 17.6 dots per inch (309.76 dots per square inch) on a 50 foot by 50 foot movie screen. That makes a nice visual resolution. The color space would have to be properly handled (unlike so many camers, but then again we are talking about a sensor here, not a camera, yet).

It's spinal tap all over again....

[dmjones500]

You can imagine the developers on the phone to their competition...

What?? That camera's rubbish.... ours goes up to one-hundred and eleven!!

Resolution ain't everything

[brownsteve]

the 10560x10560 format will probably get professional digital camera users drooling.

Megapixels are nice, but I would trade high-res for a high-quality lens any day of the week. For example, NASA's Spirit rover took those stunning photos (that we all drooled over) with only a one-megapixel image sensor.

Re:Resolution ain't everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Content also beats resolution, so people who don't want to see pictures of your cat at 3MP aren't going to be more impressed at 111MP.

Re:Resolution ain't everything

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, if only consumer digital cameras had a rating on the quality of the lens If we created a numbering system for the quality of the lens, then it would sell and manufacturers me put more effort into that as well

Re:Resolution ain't everything

[rrkap]

Megapixels are nice, but I would trade high-res for a high-quality lens any day of the week. For example, NASA's Spirit rover took those stunning photos (that we all drooled over) with only a one-megapixel image sensor.

Those were good looking pictures, but I think the reason we were drooling had more to do with the location of the camera... In fact, when I last bought a camera, I was much more interested in getting one that was small, light and sturdy enough for me to take anywhere (including under water...) than in getting the absolute best optics or CCD (although the camera has pretty good optics and a 6 MP ccd)

Consumer version already available, kinda

[RobertB-DC]

Well sure sounds like that'll BLOW AWAY 35mm film and definitely be about comprable to 4x5 film.

I was actually looking for a funny link, but this guy makes a great point -- a good scanner and a roll of that 4x5 film -- yes, four inches by five inches, absolutely huge compared to a 35mm roll -- will get you 100 megapixels of resolution for a couple thousand bucks.

It reminds me of a story I saw (on PBS or Discovery Channel) about modern medicine in developing countries. People will pay extra for a "digital X-Ray", even though the cheap equipment produces a digital image that has far less resolution than a plain old film X-Ray. But it's "digital", so it must be better.

And don't even get me started about overpriced digital stereo cable!

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[dabraun]

Digital X-Rays involve several orders of magnitude less radiation exposure than film X-Rays. That, and the instant development allowing you to know right away if you need to take another shot, are what make digital X-Rays worthwhile. The resolution is more than adequate for either digital or film X-Rays.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[cdrudge]

[bquote]It reminds me of a story I saw (on PBS or Discovery Channel) about modern medicine in developing countries. People will pay extra for a "digital X-Ray", even though the cheap equipment produces a digital image that has far less resolution than a plain old film X-Ray. But it's "digital", so it must be better.[/bquote]The advantage of "digital x-ray" is that you don't have all those wonderful film processing chemicals around, the results are near instant, and it requires less radiation compared to traditional film x-rays, and convienence. The hospital near my house is 100% digital. As soon as the image is taken it is uploaded to a server where both the radiologist and doctor can look at it, whether they are at the hospital, at the doctor's office next door, the hospital across town, or half way around the world if need be.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[kimvette]

Oh really? Okay, next time you get an X-ray, if you're concerned about your radiation exposure, compensate by:

a. Not worshipping the sun for a few days (okay, so you're a geek and don't remember what the sun looks like, so see b. below)
and
b. (if you're a geek outside of work) stop sitting 6" away from your monitor or television for a few days

That should offset any radiation dose of a typical routine dental X-ray. Now, if you had an X-ray done for more serious issues (injuries, etc.) then I would think that the miniscule dose is far less of a concern than the reason you're getting the X-ray done in the first place.

Yeah, I realize the dose of an X-ray is slightly higher, but come on, unless you're working around X-ray equipment all day long or work in a nuclear plant and are close to your exposure limit already, it's not something the normal person should really be concerned about.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[jpatters]

4x5 film doesn't come in rolls, it comes in sheets that you load into a holder, one to a side. You have to load the film in complete darkness, and hope that the holders won't leak. When taking the picture, you focus with a groundglass that is situated where the film will be, then close the lens, insert the holder into the camera, and pull out the dark-slide, and then take your exposure, and you should be taking lots of notes. Because there is so much manual labor that you have to do for each exposure, there is a whole different mindset to Large Format Photography, you will go out and expect to take a half dozen exposures, while the digital camera encourages the practice of just shooting anything and everything, and then sifting through the thousand or so exposures for the good ones.

The owner of a camera shop near where I live once had the opportunity to use a Large Format Polaroid camera, which exposes Polaroid fim that is 20 by 24 inches. He described it this way: "Take your megapixels and shove them up your ass!"

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[wolenczak]

The concern on X-Ray radiation is not the radiation the patient gets, but the one the radiologist is exposed to on a daily basis

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[StikyPad]

Actually they look like decent cables for the money.. gold plated connectors with heavy shielding, although 3' is a bit short. They probably used "digital" to attract the attention of people connecting S/PDIF components, but it doesn't look like they're trying to price gouge based on imaginary features. At least not more than the usual Sears markup. Now these guys, on the other hand...

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[damian cosmas]

Digital X-Rays involve several orders of magnitude less radiation exposure than film X-Rays.

Film X-Rays do that too, since the inside of the film cartridge is coated with a phosphorescent compound that emits visible light upon xray irradiation. Ever wonder why your xrays are all blue? It ain't 'cause of the xrays or your bones.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[RobertB-DC]

Now these guys, on the other hand...

Oh. My. [expletive & blasphemy removed].

You just raised the bar on "ridiculous". And you made my day. Thanks!

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

That really isn't much of an overpriced 'Digital' stereo cable. I've seen less quality for more at Walmart

You should have furnished this link for HDMI cables

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[Detritus]

The cumulative dose to the patient is a real concern. I've had a doctor decide not to order x-rays because he thought I had already had too many x-rays taken by previous doctors.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[grasshoppa]

Funny thing about digital xrays: The resolution is just fine, it's all about the flexability of the sensor.

Hint: Most are not flexible.

You forgot one of the biggest draws to digital xrays: You don't need to keep chemicals around to develop the film.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[itamblyn]

When you're buying quality digital cable, you're paying for impedance matching (among other things). That being said, I wouldn't exactly recommend Sears as a source of said cable.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

"The concern on X-Ray radiation is not the radiation the patient gets, but the one the radiologist is exposed to on a daily basis"

Uhh, only if you're a radiologist...

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[stevesliva]

But it's "digital", so it must be better.

Reminds me of the "free digital rectal exam" offered on prostate screening day at the local hospital. On the evening news, the local female news anchor cheerfully recommended that all men go in for their free exam. I could've choked.

I still wonder if any poor guys went in and found that digital prostate exams are decidedly old tech.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[mnmn]

I understand how easy digital cameras make photography, but the subject of quality remains. I've seen black-and-white large format pictures whose resolution blew me away. They were pictures of yosemite in winter, and the details of the branches is amazing.

In 10 years cheaper digital cameras will exceed the quality of large format photography. Unfortunately Internet connection speeds have stayed the same in Canada for the past 5 years, and doesnt look like it will increase in the next 5. We'll have to downsample pictures more.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[dfghjk]

of course, you have to deal with the expensive 4x5 film, the relatively difficult large format equipment and the scanner which will be far more expensive than a couple thousand bucks.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh really? Okay, next time you get an X-ray, if you're concerned about your radiation exposure, compensate by:

a. Not worshipping the sun for a few days (okay, so you're a geek and don't remember what the sun looks like, so see b. below)
and
b. (if you're a geek outside of work) stop sitting 6" away from your monitor or television for a few days

Mod parent "-1, Ignoramus" for not knowing the difference between UV radiation, RF radiation, and X-rays.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[mkuki]

I totally agree with this.I have both an Nikon d70 and a Shen-Hao HZX (4x5 inch camera) and you wouldn't be able to pry the 4x5 from my hands.I rarely use it compared to the D70, but when I do, the images are astounding (you can blow up one image to about 4x5 feet at 300dpi).

I think that digital and film both have their place and it is pointless to try and replace one with the other.

One other thing, the whole loading the darkslides manually can be done using a loading tent or even by using a Fuji Quickloader and forgoing the whole headache (though if you want a film that does not come in the Fuji Quickloader packs you are back to using film holders.

Oh yeah, another thing, there are a million ways to screw up with large format until you get it down.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[jpatters]

In 10 years cheaper digital cameras will exceed the quality of large format photography.

I would dispute that assumption. Due to the limitations of lenses that exist in the physical world, you cannot simply make the pixels on a CCD arbitrarily small so that you can have more of them. Even if you could conquer the noise problems that go along with the small pixels in the consumer grade 6MP and 8MP sensors, which are much smaller than the sensors that you find in the more expensive DSLRs, you would run into the limit of the lens before you had enough pixels to rival 4x5 LF film, let alone 8x10. The only way to make a digital sensor match the resolution of 4x5 LF film is to make the sensor nearly as big as the 4x5 sheet of film, which is what they have done here. The problem is, it is wicked expensive. I mean, they made one of these things, it probably cost millions of dollars all told, and even if they were to mass produce them, it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per part. (Just a guess)

People are used to tech products like this getting vastly better and vastly cheaper over time, and the reason this happens is, to over simplify, that we develop the ability to manufacture them with smaller and fewer chips. The fact is, CCDs have already reached the point that the resolution is more bound by the lens then by the number of pixels on the sensor. They really aren't going to get much higher resolution, at least, not meaningfully. One thing I do think will continue to improve is sensitivity, I would definitely like to have a digital camera capable of decent noise performance at ISO 12800, that would be fantastic. (And that would be something that would revolutionize available-light photography.)

Large Format film will be resolution king for the foreseeable future. You simply cannot project an image with as much resolution as you can get from a scan of an 8x10 inch sheet of film onto something that is 18x24 millimeters, within the physical constraints of this universe. With 18x24 millimeters being the practical limit for how big you can make a sensor that will go in an affordable, consumer grade digital camera, I simply don't see your prediction coming true.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

digital x-rays also let one change the contrast and brightness of the image to allow for over or under penatrated images. It's incredibly difficult to get all of the soft tissue and bone visible at a single level of penetration/contrast. But a digital image allows one to see all of these by playing with the contrast (which one can't do with a light box). Also digital images let one verse black and white (it makes it easier to see pneumonia and also air in places it shouldn't be). Also, the cost of the x-ray is negligible compared to the cost of the radiologist reading it. Telemedicine works out to be much cheaper outside major urban centers. Digital images can be sent anywhere.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[Bob_Geldof]

That's not entireley true. A collegue of mine just got his Ph.D. in applied mathematics for studying the long term effects of a short burst of radiation on a fetus. His research dealt with modeling the risk of getting colon cancer after getting an x-ray taken while the mother is pregnant. I think the result of his research was that if you have an x-ray taken in the ninth month of gestation, that x-ray is more likely to cause colon cancer in later life, whereas if it were in the first month, if the fetus gets to be 50 years old then the risk of colon cancer is what it is for a regular person. More likely to die early on though. His website doesn't have any of his papers on it, so I won't share.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[balloonhead]

The quality of a digital X-ray is as good as the old ones. You won't fail to make any diagnoses because of the changes. The advantages, however, are:

1. Cost - much lower
2. Radiation - much lower
3. Image manipulation - increases diagnostic yield in a variety of ways
4. Transmission - to other specialists, near instantaneously (depending on connection speed - usual rate-limiting factor is getting someone in front of the receiving screen to interpret the images)
5. Can't lose them (not quite true, but easier to back up)
6. Near instant results (check that the film doesn't need repeating after developing)
7. Can be viewed by multiple people at the same time (invaluable - no more x-ray on ward, can't be reported by radiologist)

So really, there's no question. Digital all the way. I am a doctor (emergency, so I look at probably around 100 x-ray images or more per day), having worked with both old and news flavours of x-rays - and there are no actual advantages with the higher resolution of the older type.

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

Ken Rockwell has some good points, but he is an amateur. If you go out on weekends and pop off a few sheets of film (4x5 comes in individual sheets, not rolls) with your used camera, and scan it with a cheap 1800dpi flatbed scanner, you can make some great images without spending nearly as much money as you would with an equivalent digital setup. Why spend $2000 on a digital SLR when you can get much higher quality for the same price with a cheap 4x5 setup? Because you're averaging only 10 shots per week and your time is free. In comparison, a professional large format photographer probably has a $5-10k camera, another $5-10k in lenses, $1500+ for a tripod, plus accessories.

There are certainly guys out there who still make money shooting 4x5s, but they're becoming increasingly rare. Sure, each individual exposure might only cost $5 (half for the film, half for processing). But pretty much any professional is going to have their films drum scanned, at $75+ per scan. Or they could spend $15,000 on a desktop scanner, or maybe find a good deal on a used drum scanner (where the glass drums cost more than most flatbed scanners). Instead of being able to instantly show an art director or play with the shot in Photoshop, a film user must wait for the film to be sent to a lab for processing (hoping there were no light leaks or excess heat experienced anywhere along the way), wait for it to be sent back, choose the best shots, send them in for scanning, and wait to get the CD back before being able to open the image in Photoshop. At that point, the image still has to get clip marks and dust spots removed before even starting to do real processing. It's quite possible that the art director could look at the images now and decide that they need to be reshot. By now the $5 per frame is getting into the hundreds of dollars.

Once you start adding in scanning and processing time, you only have to shoot about 100 frames to make that $30,000 Phase One P45 39-megapixel back start looking good. Even at only 10 shots per week it only takes 10 weeks to shoot 100 frames.

But won't that 39 MP image look pitiful in comparison to the beauty of a 4x5 chrome? Only if you're comparing it on a lightbox. If you look at http://luminous-landscape.com/essays/back-testing. shtml, you'll see that they tested some of the best high-end pro digital gear against the standard high-end film gear (medium format 6x4.5cm and 4x5in). What's the verdict?

I see the resolution differences between the 4X5" drum scan and the P45 as quite minor, but with a slight edge still going to the drum scanned film, But when you consider the time and cost of shooting film, processing it, and then scanning, the advantages of a 39MP back like the P45 are compelling.

In other words, that theoretical 100 MP of 4x5 film is more like 50 MP of actual image detail. You can download some actual size crops and see for yourself, or even get a DVD with the raw images to do your own processing if you don't believe them.

Keep in mind that as the image format gets bigger, the focal lengths gets longer, and the depth of field gets narrower. In order to increase the depth of field, you must close the aperture more, which decreases the diffraction limit, which lowers the resolution of the lens. What this means is that even though a 4x5 is almost 5 times the area of a 6x4.5, your 4x5 landscape will not contain 5 times the detail of your equivalent 6x4.5 landscape.

dom

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[MarkSpan]

I would consider Ken Rockwell to be a funny link...

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[SargeantLobes]

The concern on X-Ray radiation is not the radiation the patient gets, but the one the radiologist is exposed to on a daily basis

Very little radiation can still be damaging (like one fiber of asbestos can get you cancer (of the plura, not the lung). It's a cost benefit thing.

You can't set a leg without taking an x-ray. The radiation exposure is small cost compared to walking around with a broken leg for the rest of your life. Minimizing exposure to radiation is still a good thing, and worthwhile. Especially since some patients have very complicated fractures that heal very difficultly, so they have to take many many many x-rays.

Shades of grey, I guess...

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[Bandman]

When I'm at my dentist, it's like

"Matt, we want to get an xray of your jaw. Put this in your mouth"

*click*

2 seconds later

"Yep, you've got a cavity right there"

It's terrific

Re:Consumer version already available, kinda

[networkBoy]

Mostly true.
you can, in fact get 4" roll film, but it's a special order, only available with tech pan and tri-X
-nB

Oh, and it's not cheap, and developing it is a bitch. One fuckup and you lost tens of hours of work and a grand of film.
-nB

So detailed...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you can see the Neisseria gonorrhoeae crawling around.

Wow your family is smart...

[nacs]

... My family sends IMG_1000.BMP to my inbox. I think they like the lossless (non-)compression.

Re:Wow your family is smart...

[AsmCoder8088]

Hmm, I should tell my family to quit using TIFF.

Re:Wow your family is smart...

[AdamTheBastard]

At least your family can get the photos off the camera. Mine try to email me the whole camera so I can pull the images off for them.

Re:Wow your family is smart...

[zrenneh]

non-comprehension?

Find a seat and get comfortable folks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the battle begin!

Is there any blue ray for digicam?

[pangoo]

I thought my 1GB SD card is enough to hold 200-300 photos but now I need a blue ray mini card and drive for my digicam. On the other hand one of my friend said they are making something as there PhD research which will enable us to store pictures using a single pixel. I couldn't understand much. Doesn't anybody else have some idea?

Re:Is there any blue ray for digicam?

[pangoo]

I mean, Does anyone else have any idea?

Re:Is there any blue ray for digicam?

[Anonymous Coward]

no.

Re:Is there any blue ray for digicam?

[kimvette]

You can already store image data represented by one pixel. The resolution is exactly 1x1. ;)

Re:Is there any blue ray for digicam?

[pontifier]

I think that would, by defenition, be holography.

CCD sensors this size have been around for a while

[LordByronStyrofoam]

They're used in the larger optical telescopes. Very expensive, and often only greyscale, they offer huge dynamic range.

This could create a new market for photoshopers...

[ryusen]

Considering the detail that current high end cameras can capture, can you imagine the amount of airbrushing that might need to go into portraits with such a camera?

what's really exciting about this

[spirit_fingers]

The best part about this announcement isn't the 100 megapixel size. Photographers can already buy large format digital backs for view cameras with 300 megapixel resolution (albeit for a hefty price). But they use multiple CCDs and require external power supplies and HDDs. This new chip opens up intruiging possibilities for a self-contained high resolution camera that requires much less power to operate. Still, a CCD of that resolution will generate raw image files of about 350 megabytes each, so portability will necessarily be compromised to a degree by storage requirements.

Re:what's really exciting about this

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Data storage would be a complete non-issue. Just apply the same cutting edge technology used to give this Nano incredible storage capacity.

How long to write this to SSD Card?

[unborracho]

How long would it take to write one of those images to a SSD card??

Bad Link.

[iamlucky13]

The link to the SBIR page appears to be defunct due to bookmarking data called from a session. I wasn't about to ask the submitter to give me his cookie and I tried finding info about the Dalsa project on the SBIR site, but wasn't having any luck, so here's a press release from the company that built it.

It sounds like the interest for the navy is along the lines of astro-navigation, but I'm not really sure. It's definitely not something general photographers need or even want. It's kind of pointless if your lenses aren't comparably impressive, or if you're not printing it out at a couple feet in size and to be displayed in a way that someone would get close enough to appreciate the quality. Plus once you take all that data, then you have to store it. I'm not sure how RAW images are stored, but if my math serves, a 24 bit BMP at that size would take about 300 MB per image.

Re:Bad Link.

[georgewilliamherbert]

Huh. I checked a couple of times to make sure it was persistent, across a couple of computers, but I guess it was anyways and expired. My apologies to the readers. Control Number for the contract is: N043-226-0074 You can SBIR search for that control number at: DOD SBIR/STTR AWARDS - Custom Search

Re:Bad Link.

[arpad1]

Sorry bucko, that doesn't work either.

But if you do a search from the home page, enter "Semiconductor Technology" as the search term, you get one search result and that's the one you want.

Re:Bad Link.

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't work either.

Re:Bad Link.

[iamlucky13]

Not your fault so much as the person who designed the site. Part of accessibility, in my opinion, is making persistent data bookmarkable. Funny that the link worked on other computers for a time, though.

Dalsa is who you want

[Anonymous Coward]

to get your high performance imaging chips from. Someone working at Dalsa told me about a chip they were working on. I said that it didn't sound like much. Not many pixels at all. Not much depth. It turns out that speed was the issue. It was intended to inspect products whizzing down a production line and was capable of about a zillion frames per second. The resulting bits per second would very definitely produce frequencies in the microwave range.

FYI

[merdaccia]

At 24bpp, a raw image from the CCD without file format overhead would be about 320MB.

In other news, Flickr hires Bram Cohen.

Wow... She has a great set of...

[Martin Blank]

...DNA.

Will we be able to check her blood cell count with this?

Surveillance uses

[dpbsmith]

With a camera not much larger than an old Speed Graphic, you could take one picture of a crowd and get ID-quality pictures of everyone in the crowd.

Re:Surveillance uses

[ChrisA90278]

No, not with an Speed Graphic size camera. The problem is the optics. The resolving power of a lens is proportional to its diameter over the wavelenght of light. You would need a lens wioth a diameter measured in meters on the front of that Speed Craphics camera. This is in fact where these huge CCS are typically used. On telescopes with optics that are a few meters in diameter. Optics can't really be made faster than about f/2 so the focal lenght would be measured in meters too. So you would be be photographing a crowd unless you could move the camera a few miles away. Then you's have the problem of atmosperic blurring

Re:Surveillance uses

[robogun]

I shot a large wedding group with a 4x5 view camera and a 1940s-era 90mm lens on Tri-X film, and you could very easily ID all 250 people in the shot after we blew it up to poster size.

Re:Surveillance uses

[BlueLightning]

You can already do this kind of high-res surveillance using a line-scanning camera (which would be a mounted CCTV type camera). It works very well.

Re:Surveillance uses

[pontifier]

Maybe they meant retinal scan quality of the crowd....

Re:Surveillance uses

[robogun]

Well first you'd have to get the crowd to look at the camera. Kinda defeats the purpose.

Re:Surveillance uses

[hubie]

Resolution goes as the wavelength times the f-number; you get better resolving power with smaller f-numbers. You don't need meters-sized optics because your resolution requirements are driven by the f-number. For the same f-number, the resolving power of a Hubble-sized optic and one on your cell phone camera is the same (same blur spot on the focal plane). The Hubble-sized optic has the advantage of being able to see much fainter objects because it is a much bigger light bucket.

For this sensor, it has something like 10.5k pixels per side. Spread that across 4 inches and you end up with a pixel size of about 9.5 microns. The size of the blur spot is notionally 2.44*wavelength*F/N, so if you want to put two pixels across the blur spot, you'd need an f-number (F/N) shorter than about f/15. Anything greatly shorter than that is overkill, i.e., you don't need anything like f/2 or even f/4. Finding quality lenses for a Speed Graphic that meets this is easy.

wait for the 112MPx

[lateralus_1024]

this 111MPx looks like crap next to upcoming 112. Trust me.

New and Improved!!

[MBC1977]

Friends,

Are you trying to get good look at that hottie upstairs in her bedroom?!
Wanna see every blemish on Paris Hilton?!
Get the new **Insert Favorite Camera Company** 111-Megapixel Ultra CCD!!!

Be the envy of Peeping Toms, Paparazzi, EVERYWHERE!!!


Disclaimer: Band-aids, and lawsuit protection not included.

MBC1977
(US Marine, College Student, and Good Guy!)

Transfer rate?

[Dadoo]

How long would it take to write one of those images to a SSD card??

Forget that. I'd be more concerned about the transfer rate.

If you assume 24 bpp, or 3 bytes per pixel, that'll be 333Mb per raw image. With a 333MBps transfer rate, it will take a full second to retrieve an image from the device. That's way too long. If you consider minimal photography requirements - say, 1/30th of a second - you'll need a transfer rate of 9990MBps. That's pretty high, even for current electronics.

Re:Transfer rate?

[diskis]

My 4Mpix camera can snap a picture at 1/2000th of a second. By your calculations we get: 12MB * 2000 = 24000MBps.
Either that technology exists. Or you are calculating the wrong stuff.

Re:Transfer rate?

[pontifier]

Can it sustain 2000 frames per second for any length of time?
you're talking about shutter speed.

Re:Transfer rate?

[diskis]

Thank you for repeating my point. Obviously I wasn't clear enough for people to understand what I was saying.

Re:Transfer rate?

[pontifier]

If you are using a crappy sensor it reads the light 1 row at a time, transfering the rows information before it gets the next row. You can see this on a camera phone as you wave it around and verticle or horizontal lines become curved or slanted.

If you are using a good sensor the information is captured all at once, and then read out over time so that the entire image was captured simultaneously. A sensor like this is like a memory device that is filled by magic, and wiped all at once. You can read from it as slowly as you'd like. the 1/2000th of a second is the time between the device being charged, and the state of each pixel being frozen. This tells you nothing about the bulk transfer rate unless you can actually capture 2000 pictures in 1 second, and I highly doubt that.

Re:Transfer rate?

[pontifier]

Yeah I guess you weren't because I was still arguing with you.

How many sensors would a CCD chip ship?

[Anonymous Coward]

111-Megapixel CCD Chip Ships

How many sensors would a CCD chip ship? A CCD chip would ship as many sensors as a CCD chip could ship if a CCD chip could ship sensors.

Blade Runner is here

[Anonymous Coward]

From a 10560x10560 photo you can get a 32Mb High Quality crop. So you could get the nearly infinite digital zoom without loss of detail that you could see in movies like Blade Runner.

More mega-pixels is better, whatever.

CCD, as opposed to CMOS

[pikine]

If used with a really expensive, high-speed analog-digital converter (ADC) capable of digitizing ~2700 million pixels per second, then it could reach a good 24 fps speed, but that's about 40 times what is needed by a HDTV camera CCD (1920x1080 interlaced at 60 fps). Normally this conversion speed is only available with a specialized high frame rate set.

Image sensors work by converting light to electric charges. More light in an area makes the pixel hold more charges.

Images captured by CCD are converted to digital by having the ADC scan electric charges across pixels of a line, and line by line across the sensor, so a big CCD would take longer to scan because scanning has to be done sequentially.

If they made it CMOS, then each pixel can convert its electric charge to a digital value at the same time, so digitization is done parallelly. At least in terms of the rate an image sensor can pump data out, CCD has a bottleneck that, theoretically, CMOS doesn't have.

Off the chart costs.

[Snuffub]

That thing must cost an arm and a leg. The failure rate of chips goes up exponentially with size and at 4 inches across yields must be next to nothing.

Limit?

[doublebackslash]

Okay, why do they say things like "100 megapixel *limit*" (emphasis mine). The sound barrier was a limit, it was a point on the spedometer that seemed impossible to go past. Things changed at that point and a whole different school of thought was nessary to overcome the limit.
a 100 Megapixel sensor, while an unholy and awsome creature, is nothing more than the latest and greatest CCD sensor. they broke hte 100 Megapixel mark.
Having said that, bravo for them.

At least...

[jd]

...it's not UUencoded or BOOd first... (Does anyone know if a BOO decoder still exists outside of the museum of neandethal technology?)

Cost?

[Easy2RememberNick]

I wonder how much that bad boy will cost after they send in the mail-in rebate.

Yeah, yeah...

[jd]

Tell that to the Gigapixl project. :) Seriously, professionals will have geeks amongst them, and geeks love anything that's new, sparkly and does cool stuff. Furthermore, "serious" professionals are subject to market forces, and the market is more likely to buy bigger, better, flashier photograps - even if they can't tell the difference - simply because the adverts look more impressive. Impressions, even when illusions, sell. And photographers know that.

Finally, there are markets for extreme detail - surverying for construction, surveying for archaeology, etc. The latter is perhaps the most interesting, as these photographs are aimed at finding uber-faint, large-scale (but very thin) features from overhead photographs. Standard photographs will work and do work, but they invariably miss a lot. These new cameras might reduce how much they miss (by a little) and might increase other information they have to work with (by a little).

To generalize and say that professionals won't be interested, therefore, is unlikely to hold up to scrutiny. What will be interesting is what WILL professionals do, when this is more widely available?

OT: The eyes often see what the brain wants to see

[NotQuiteReal]

Google "optical illusions" and find a scholarly site and have fun.

Some sites have great explainations and demos.

This has nothing to do with image sensors, but does have some bearing on "what can eyes really see".

Existing high-end digital for comparison.

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently, to get similar resolutions, you need to use a scanning back for a 4x5" camera (calm down, it's not that big of a piece of film, there are still cameras being made that take 20x24" sheets of film), and about the only ones I know about are the BetterLight scanning backs, http://www.betterlight.com/, up to 10200x13800 pixels (140 megapixel) for an 852MB file at 24-bit scanning. The operative word is scanning, these are like a very high-end small flatbed scanner in the back of your camera. Exposures take a long time, up to several minutes. Not so practical for field work, as they need to be tethered to a computer. They're also not a full 4x5" frame, but then, neither are Polaroids.

This new CCD at 4x4" (probably actually 100x100mm) is quite impressive. The largest medium-format scan back that I know of right now is the Phase One, http://www.phaseone.com/ P45 with a 39 Megapixel, 7216 x 5412 pixel, 49.1x36.8mm sensor. They call it "full frame" even though it's designed to be used with 6x4.5cm (actual film area 56x41.5mm) cameras. Not quite full frame, but damn close. It doesn't work like a scanner, but just like your crappy little digital p&s, but much MUCH better.

Even film bigots like myself acknowledge the 16.7MP Canon to be equal or better to 35mm film, and the P45 and similar to be equal or better than medium format film. This new sensor should be the equal or better than 4x5" film, maybe even up there with 5x7" (13x18cm) film, and possibly approaching 8x10" film. Of course, if it were available to the common peasant, it would probably cost in the range of a Bentley or so, so I'll stick with my film cameras for now.

Astronomy?

[Michael Woodhams]

The fine article appears slashdotted, so I don't know if they cover this. The application which leaps to my mind for this detector is astronomy. Astronomers will pay big money for a better detector - I've seen a US$200k chip (2k x 2k pixels in about 1990, for use in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey camera.) Even at these prices, it is cheaper to get the same quality upgrade by improving your detector than by building a bigger telescope.

Astronomers run their CCDs at liquid nitrogen temperatures (to reduce thermal noise), and for UV astronomy they use "thinned" chips (etch/grind away the back of the chip so you can illuminate it from that side - otherwise too many photons are lost before reaching the light sensitive volume.) I'm not sure what other features astronomical CCDs require which might not be present in this chip. Pixel size shouldn't matter too much (except in its effect on noise) as you can design your camera to scale the image to suit the detector.

Re:Astronomy?

[JohnnyCannuk]

My brother-in-law is a PHD in Electical Engineering that works at Dalsa (actually he probably designed the chip in question). He says that the mostly design for satellite imagine, astronomyt and hollywood. Dalso won a techie oscar a few years back.

Nicely done. Another great Waterloo Ontario Canada company.

Re:Astronomy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pixel size matters quite a bit in astrophotography, but one size isn't intrinsically better than another as far as I know. Large pixels or small pixels will dictate what equipment would work best with it.

Other issues that may affect its suitability for astrophotography:

Quantum effeciency. This is the holy grail. High quantum effeciency means you need less photons, which means a smaller telescope or shorter exposures or *seeing deeper*. Back-lit chips are a method of increasing quantum effeciency. As far as I know, they use back-lit CCDs for visual astrophotography too. This is also why digital owns for astrophotography. Film is NOT effecient and it suffers from reciprocity failure.

Noise. As noted, temperature has a HUGE effect on noise in CCD images. I'm guessing if they went through the trouble of making a 111 megapixel chip, they'll have a reasonable way to cool it. Noise is a much bigger issue in astrophotography because you're often trying to image things that the camera can barely capture, so they may be only marginally above the noise threshhold.

Blooming. When a pixel gets filled, it may leak into other pixels, causing a vertical or horizontal streak. The ENORMOUS difference in brightness among stars/nebulae/galaxies makes this a serious issue. Serious astronomy CCDs will have some sort of anti-blooming device (usually referenced as ABG, anti-blooming gate), which somehow allows the excess to drain off rather than charging neighboring pixels.

I'm sure this is obvious, but it would be totally unsuited to plain old backyard astronomers like me. 16 square inches is simply too big for anything outside an observatory.

And of course, we'd want to put it in space so we don't have to deal with pesky air. :)

http://www.mapug-astronomy.net/AstroDesigns/MAPUG/ CCD1.htm talks about pixel size and blooming and whatnot in much more detail.

Re:Astronomy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The EE Times article clearly states that the chip was designed by Semiconductor Technology Associates and manufactured by Dalsa. It was designed for the "Astrometry Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory" and so would most likely be used for astrometry.

Once again...

[Frightening]

One small step for optics, one giant step for pornography.

Re:Film Vs Digital

[hybridarts]

This is an intresting development and one that will have future implication on imaging in general. A 4x5 neg or tran as a great scan is around 45-50MP so this CCD would exceed film res and possibly optical res as we define it today but the more intresting question is how this new res effects output technologies(print). I posted a podcast on this very subject some days ago....if you are interested just goto itunes/ podcasts and seach for hybrid arts and listen to "future technologies". Cheers!

Film Vs Digital

[hybridarts]

This is an intresting development and one that will have future implication on imaging in general. A 4x5 neg or tran as a great scan is around 45-50MP so this CCD would exceed film res and possibly optical res as we define it today but the more intresting question is how this new res effects output technologies(print). I posted a podcast on this very subject some days ago....if you are interested just goto itunes/ podcasts and seach for hybrid arts and listen to "future technologies". Cheers!

Re:Film Vs Digital

[crhylove]

Well, once we have nanotech molecular screens, our resolution will be pretty much inimaginable by todays standards. Of course, I doubt we use CCDs by then.

rhY

Just for fun...

[PhaxMohdem]

I went into photoshop and made an image at that resoultion 10560x10560 and saved it as a JPG (Maximum Quality) and a bitmap... JPG = 23.8MB BMP = 326.7MB

Re:Just for fun...

[crhylove]

What quality were you using on the jpg? Standard Gimp 85, or 100? There's a big difference there.

Re:Just for fun...

[PhaxMohdem]

Don't know about Gimp settings at all, but in photoshop I saved the file as a level 12 JPG... the highest setting available.

Eye resolution: about 1 arcminute

[Anonymous Coward]

Start from the fact that the moon has an apparent diameter of 30 arcminutes. If you can see details 1/30 the size of the full moon, you can resolve 1 arcminute details. (0.0003 radians)
      So specify the size of the picture L, and the distance at which it is placed D and you can figure out how many pixels the naked eye can distinguish.

      # of pixels ~ (L/(0.0003*D))^2

Think about bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like something that is going into a satellite. Imagine the bandwidth necesary to download the images from this over the air !

Also, I wonder what the frame rate is like. Sucking data out of the sensor must also take some time - is it fast enough for video ?

Re:CCD sensors this size have been around for a wh

[MtViewGuy]

I can also guess this size sensor has another use: military reconnaissance satellites. Such a sensor would be perfect for the potential resolution of the latest KH-12 derivative satellites.

And the winner is Canadia

[heroine]

Why didn't Canadia's government just tax u.s. for the sensor and buy it themselves, instead of having o.u.r. Navy pay them for it? Everyone complains about millions of dollars being spent on engineering in India, but no-one cares about the billions of dollars charged by o.u.r. military to just turn around and buy all that stuff from Canadia.

SBIG

[mattr]

They say a very rough estimate is $0.01 per pixel. At that rate, 111 mpx would be 1 million bucks and that's just the sensor!

reference

10,000 dpi is the magic number

[davidwr]

Assuming your current lens and film can reslove 100 line-pairs per mm (lp/mm), this translates to 200 dots per milimeter, or 5000 dots per inch. Double that to 10,000 dots per inch to get rid of digitization artifacts. If your lens and film together can resolve more or less than 100 lp/mm, then adjust accordingly.

On such a camera, a 24mm x 36mm CCD with 9600 x 14,400 resolution would be in the same class as a good 35mm film. Likewise, a 4"x5" CCD with 40,000 x 50,000 resolution would give large-format a run for its money. At this resolution, CCDs, or rather a given CCD, just becomes another "emulsion" to choose from. Different emulsions have different qualities and high-end photographers may choose one over another because of these differences. For example, Velvia slide film is one of the "creamiest" available but, like most slide films, not as tolerant of incorrect exposure as most color films. I would expect by the time digital photography rivals film, photographers will notice differences in different sensor technologies and different photographers will favor different technologies depending on their needs and tastes. "The right tool for the right job" if you will.

Moore's law says we should hit 10,000 dpi in about 4 iterations, or about 6-8 years. Save your pennies folks, 2014 is not that far away.

What shall we look at today?

[j741]

Combine such a high-resolution image sensor with some very high-quality optics. Add a sattellite platform and some high-speed data communications and voila - Big Brother is watching ;->

50 lines per degree

[Kadin2048]

It's interesting that this came up, since last week I was reading an article on the resolving power of the human eye as it pertains to photography and how to choose output resolutions. Short answer: 50 lines per degree of view. From there you can do some right-triangle trig to figure out how many line pairs should be perceivable for some output format based on how close you're going to be to it. For an 8x10 image, the author says 2300 pixels in the long dimension or 230 PPI would cut it (I didn't double-check his math). I tend to wonder if you don't have to introduce a factor of two in there somewhere, since to reproduce a "line" of resolution seems like it ought to require two pixels.

Of course, that's an oversimplification; hence the long answer. The human eye doesn't have a fixed number of "megapixels" that you could easily convert to a measurement of a photo or really even of another camera. First, you have the problem that the eye's "resolution" isn't evenly spread across the field of view: it's concentrated near the center, and thinner out in the periphery. This is why if you concentrate and try to pay attention to something that's not in the center of your field of view (that you're not looking directly at) it won't be as clear as when you look directly at it. (The exception is in very low light: your indirect vision is better at night vision.) However your brain reassembles the image and makes you think that you're seeing one great-big full-res panorama, when in reality at any one time you're only seeing a small part in "full rez" with the rest of your field of vision at something less, but with the full version available on-demand (by looking at it).

If you could actually do a 'screen grab' of the image your eyes were actually feeding into your brain, at any particular time, I think it would be a lot lower-quality than many people suspect. Almost without question, it would be lower quality than many photographs of the same scene. The depth of field is short, the resolution is concentrated in the center, as is the color, and there's a hole in the dead center of the image because of your optic nerve's placement on your retina. Your sense of sight works as well as it does, in large part, because of all the caching and postprocessing that's done transparently by your brain to the incoming information stream.

Really, when we compare a photo to our "sight," what we're really comparing is the photo to our brain's recollection of how it saw a particular scene, which might be very different from what our eyes actually took in, and further still from the 'objective truth' (if you believe in such a thing, that is) of what actually was there at that moment. The easiest example is color saturation: we tend to see and remember things as being far more colorful than they actually are: an "accurate" photo will therefore look dull compared to memory, so we compensate by oversaturating our photos to make them look more 'realistic.'

It's only possible to make comparisons between our eyes and mechanical cameras, and between our overall sense of sight and recording systems, for very limited cases. Even to answer a relatively simple question like "what's the eye's maximum megapixels?" completely would probably stretch the boundaries of currently understood optometry, neuroscience, and psychology.

OT: RIP, Minolta

[Kadin2048]

Minolta was bought by Sony? What a travesty.

As a Minolta user, it really is.

I waited to get a DSLR for years because I have so much invested in Minolta AF lenses for my film system, and they barely get a decent lineup of DSLRs out the door, and then go belly-up and sell out to Sony of all people. (Couldn't they have just sold out to Sigma and done us all a favor?) Heck of a way to reward your customers. True, they were nice cameras: image stabilization in the body and all that, but they were so long in coming that it was almost a joke.

Anyway, my plan is to pick up a Maxxum 7D sometime in the next few months, and then hold on to it until somebody pries it from my cold, dead hands. It's the camera that could have saved that company if they had only made it about 5 years sooner.

Digital zoom at last

[Xenna]

If these things actually come down to consumer levels in size and cost we can at last have a usable digital zoom. Perhaps we can do away with optical zoom altogether and have really good compact digicams.

X.

Re:Astronomy? (tin foil hat says....)

[1iar_parad0x]

I immediately thought about intellegence. I'm sure somebody like to know what Osama bin Laden is eating for breakfast.

I really don't know a lot about photography (or optics), but I would imagine that the only reason you can't 'see at a long distance' is due to a fuzziness of resolution. At what 'resolution' could you read my license plate from space? What role does the atmosphere play in distorting (bending) the image as it travels through the air?

just a great idea, BUT......

[White_Knight_32_KS]

Blocking cameras is a great idea but... The idea makes sense to protect revenues and secrets. But considering the locales involved, like movie theatres. Now drug lords would figure that police cannot video tape them there, makes for a great place to trade eh? Now, how about "Mid-Movie Muggings"? I don't think I'll be taking my dates there anymore! Frankly a lot of our personal security & evidenciary proof depends on cameras (still or video). Would this bring us back to conventional film cameras and relying on eye witness credibility (ex. drunks in a theatre)? If these systems could ever be manufactured small enough, like a wearable device (very likely in future), such a device would be a requirement for any thug. Health wise, would these devices harm an individual with wearable monitor style sunglasses? Not that I'd wear them in a movie, to get the news or anything. But it appears, such a person doing so might get blinded by this white light beam from a laser. To blind anyone would be a nasty legal liability.

Re:just a great idea, BUT......

[White_Knight_32_KS]

my oops, wrong article! see: camera blocking http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/19/18 53245

What uses could it have?

[kbox]

People would still use it to take pics of themselves at strange angles to put on myspace.

MRI vs Xray

[maddogsparky]

I used to work at a medical device company testing their products for MRI safety. As such, I got to run an MRI for 9 months and see lots of unbelievable pictures. As a doctor, do you prefer viewing Xrays (digital or otherwise) or MRI?

Re:MRI vs Xray

[imsabbel]

We develope next generation MRIs at the university here.

We have a 17 Tesla MRI-Microscope for small samples. Getting um resolution in 3d is really great

Re:MRI vs Xray

[balloonhead]

MRI shows much more than most x-rays (due to them showing up other tissues as well as bone well) - although MRIs are in fact all that good at showing bones (ultimately it depends what you're using it to look for).

MRIs are (currently) expensive and hard to interpret to most doctors as they just don't see enough. It's not so much a prefer thing as a 'different tools for different tasks' thing. That being said, all things being equal (time to get scans, cost) I'd prefer MRI as it would make diagnosing a lot easier for a variety of things - though I still think what I do is a bit of an art so that might lead me down the 'test rather than use clinical acumen route' that a lot of the US has taken (mostly due to ridiculous litigation).

MRI also takes a lot longer to read (simply there are more things to look at, and more pictures) - improving software and ability to do all sorts of 3D reconstructions of each individual tissue helps this - but as MRIs become more common, we'll all get better at reading them (although currently (almost) all are read by radiologists).

For what I do currently though (ER), plain old x-rays are better for most things.

Resolution is a critical factor

[Jeppe Salvesen]

For true visual excellence in digital photography in large format on the wall, you'll need the following:

1. A good subject
2. Correctly applied photographics (light metering, depth of field etc)
3. Sufficient resolution image with sufficient quality-per-pixel
4. Quality optics
5. Well-performed post-processing

The thing about those Mars images is that they cannot be enlarged very much. Their resolution is inadequate, so they're only usable online or in magazine/newspaper articles.

Re:Resolution is a critical factor

[Anonymous Coward]

And that "one megapixel" figure is disengenious. They take three exposures (one each with a Red, Blue, and Green filter) for each image. Which brings us to three megapixels, measured the way commercial digicams measure pixels.

They also pan and stitch several images together. So the pictures do have more than one megapixel.

Megapixels

[Criffer]

Oh how I hate the drooling marketroidia who gave us the term "megapixel". A nice way of making big numbers sound bigger, and forcing us to actually care about things like resolution to do integer factorisation in our heads - something is mathematically hard.

And even though the article is tagged with "overkill", even a resolution of 10560 pixels each way will only give you a print at 8.8" square at 1200dpi (photo quality), which is slightly smaller than A4.

Re:Megapixels

[Anonymous Coward]

PPI != DPI

You're printer quotes 1200 (or 2400)dpi as Photo quality, however the number of dots does not equal the number of pixels
Each pixel could take up many "dots".
e.g. ypu want to print a 10" x 8" image, you print-shop asks for a 300ppi image minimum, which would mean it would have to be a 3000x2400 pixel image
more here
http://www.rideau-info.com/photos/mythdpi.html

It varies across the retina

[N Monkey]

Call me a noob, but does anyone have any idea how much resolution the human eye can detect (per some unit of area, of course)?

I can't give exact figures but Glassner's "Principles of Digitial Image Synthesis" has an excellent chapter on the eye/brain behaviour. It includes a diagram that shows that the resolution is at a maximum around the "central" viewing axis and then decreases as you get to the periphery. We can also see higher resolution in vertical and horizontal directions than in diagonals, and it also varies with differing light intensities. Of course, there is also the blind spot in the eye where we don't see anything but the brain automatically fills that in for us.

Moron.

[imsabbel]

LCDs dont emit any harmful radiation, and CTRs had a front made of 1cm+ thickness of lead-glass for a reason.
30KV x-rays have an mean free path lenghts there in the very low milimeter range.

The sun also doesnt dose you in xrays, because of, you know, the athmosphere around us.

1 or 2 medical x-rays with an old maschine will give you more radiation exposure than your get from the chernobyl and the nuclear tests renmants combined.
A single CT scan will be more radiation than you get in a while year from all other sources together.

"Page 1 of 5" - I'm leaving.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear hear! - "Page 1 of 5" is an advertising-driven abomination on the face of the internet even more annoying than popups.

Content providers know this: Readers will leave a website that tries to force them to click click click.

And don't give me the "saving bandwidth" argument - even small JPEGS cost way more than a thousand words.

Ansel Adams would love this

[scharkalvin]

Ansel Adams mostly used view cameras (you know the ones that have you looking in the back of the camera with a black sheet over your head). Now we have a sensor as large as a sheet negative. Soon it will be possible to make a digital view camera.

Only takes 39Mpix to match 4x5.

[caveat]

Or at least so I hear...somebody over at Luminous Landscapes ran a comparison of a PhaseOne P45 39-megapixel back against drum-scanned 4x5 Velvia 50. These are guys whose standard print size is 30"x40", so fine detail is pretty crucial to them, as is color accuracy. Bottom line? The film had a slight edge, but not enough to offset the huge increase in convenience and versatility of digital. Granted, the P45 alone lists for $32,990 at Calumet, plus another $6-10,000 or more for the camera and lenses, but apparently over the 3-year warranty period it works out to ~80% the cost of a view camera, lens, film, lab fees, and drum scanner maintenance.

I know what I want for Christmas this year :)

If you want to avoid blowing out the highlights..

[caveat]

Shoot two stops slow with digital...your pictures initially look unpleasantly dark, but the sensors in digis are optimized for shadow detail - you can lighten them tremendously in Photoshop without making them look "artificial", and you get a lot more highlight detail. Example here. It's not as pretty as messing around with manual multiple-image HDR merging (Photoshop's automation SUCKS at this), but it's a lot simpler.

Google Map resolution is going up!

[MrJerryNormandinSir]

I bet the CCD sensor is for a satellite.

This hits home

[shis-ka-bob]

My grandmother was told to get X-rays of her children since it was then the 'modern' tool to monitor development. So even though there was absolutely no way she would choose to abort, she exposed my aunt and my father to a series of X-rays. My aunt is sterile and my father had only one functioning kidney. It is hard to prove that these are the results of the x-rays, but it is quite suspicious.

Just the right size for my cell phone

[ThatsNotFunny]

from 1988...

cardiac MRI

[maddogsparky]

If you get a chance, check out some of the cardiac MRI applications. I could not believe the stuff they could do like ejection fraction calculations, blood vessel, infarction mapping, movies of a beating heart showing how the blood flows through it and more. My MRI experience is with Philips, but I understand that GE and Siemens also have cardiac functions available.

FYI, major pacemaker/defibulator companies are also starting to come out with MRI safe devices and even testing some already implanted models so the people that really need an MRI can have one (I've done some of the tests)-this should help you sometimes especially in the ER. Not to mention that there isn't any radiation and most scans don't require a contrast agent (a significant number of people have severe reactions to Xray contrast agents).

It's great to see an MD on /. I'd trust a doctor more who keeps up on technology just because they seem more likely to know what new techniques and treatments are coming out that are heavy on the tech side.

Lense

[subnomine]

They are going to put it in a cardboard box and poke a hole in the opposite side.

Not Unique

[Anonymous Coward]

Leica and a few others have been manufacturing this type of sensor for a while now.

http://www.leica-geosystems.com/corporate/en/ndef/ lgs_57627.htm

Sensors of this size are typically used in airborne photography, because they would be too expensive to launch into space (too much weight/power needed). The link above is to the ADS40, the previous iteration had a 112 megapixel ccd... this version (from the site) can capture about 100Gb per hour of flight.

Memory needs time to catch up

[cjb-nc]

10560 x 10560 pixels at 8bits/color x 3 colors = about 319 MB per image
A high speed consumer SD card can transfer at "up to 20MB/s".
So it's going to take at least 16 seconds to write the image to storage.
And even then, you'll only fit 3 of those raw images on a 1GB card.

Sounds like a good reproduction of the 4x5 camera experiences described on this forum.

Kitt Peak to get billion-pixel, $6.6M camera

[MadMagician]

You must have missed this story (05.27.2005):

...
"The new camera will cost about $6 million to build...

When it is finished, the new camera will weigh about 2,000 pounds and take images using a billion pixels. For comparison, a nice, store-bought digital camera uses one one-hundredth of that amount. Workers will haul the camera to the telescope using an elevator in WIYN's dome.

Project scientists expect the camera to be operational as early as 2009."

Re:Wow... She has a great set of...

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't they do that on one of the startrek episodes? (voyager?)

Imagine ...

[scotbot]

... the quality of the pr0n photographed with that bady boy in it!!

The Gigapixel camera

[Anonymous Coward]

There already is a man who makes 1000 megapixel prints, he uses a large format film originally developed for U2 spy planes (9 x 18inch and supposedly the largest so I dont know where the guy mentioned in another comment got 20inch polaroid film) and then scans it to produce files that are reaching the 1000 megapixel mark, he's page is here and there was a popular science article about him, heres a link to the article here.

arrays of CCDs

[peter303]

For example the Sloan telescope uses a 6 x 5 array of @4 megeapixels. The six rows each look at different chunk of the spectrum.
There are CCD array telescopes in the works approaching a half-gigapixel.

SBIR: Space-Based Infrared

[Sinical]

I can't see the referenced webpage, but the only SBIRS (I think there's usually an 'S' on the end to indicate Satellite) I know of is the planned system of missile plume detection satellites. These satellites are looking down for the (apparently) distinctive plumes of a missile launch in order to allow for the launch of an interceptor like EKV (Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle), KEI (Kinetic Energy Interceptor), SM3 (the Navy's Standard Missile 3 for use with Aegis), or even potential future programs like NFIRE (Near-field Infrared Experiment).

Last I heard SBIRS was ridiculously over-budget ($10 billion vs originally planned $4 or something), so this is probably the world's most expensive CCD by an order of magnitude or two.