Seitz's 160 Megapixel Digital Camera

An anonymous reader writes "Digital cameras had been lagging behind Moores law for a while, but Seitz has taken a massive step forward with their announcement of a 160 Megapixel digital camera! At almost 20" long, with a price tag of around $36,000, and with on-board gigabit ethernet to copy off the image it's not exactly going to take on the consumer market, but how long before we see this resolution in a mobile phone?
Even with todays current range of digital cameras massive images are possible — such as the amazing 720 Megapixel image of Sydney Harbour"

Comments

FT submission

[giorgiofr]

From the submission: but how long before we see this resolution in a mobile phone?

Enough with stupid tag questions already! Would submitters and editors please stop with this insanity - we don't need to be *led* into a discussion, we're good enough already.

Re:FT submission

[Anonymous Coward]

Giorgiorfr proposes that submitters and editors cut out the idiotic leading questions in their article posts. But will Slashdotters live up to their promise of being able to start a discussion on their own?

Re:FT submission

[doti]

> no, maybe, yes, notfud, isatrap (tagging beta)

In a camera phone? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

megapixels without good non-fixed lens == pissing away bits.

Makes for great marketing though. Let them megahur^H^H^Hpixels fly! See, the megahurtz race didn't come back to bite the industry too hard, so no reason to learn.

Re:In a camera phone? Why?

[DrDitto]

Diffraction ultimately limits the useful megapixels in digital photography. You cannot replace film/sensor area, and the economics of building large sensors will make them extremely expensive in the forseeable future.

I use a 4x5" large-format film camera. With 20 in^2 of film area and a flatbed scanner capable of 2400dpi, I get 115 megapixels. A drum scan at 4000dpi gives me 320 megapixels if I wanted. And because the sensor is huge, diffraction doesn't hurt me unless I stop down my lens to f45 or f64.

Now many say you can get this quality through stitching dozens of digital captures together....if that is your sort of thing.

Re:In a camera phone? Why?

[OverlordQ]

Where'd the camera phone come from? Did you even RTFA? I dont know about you but this doesn't look like a camera phone to me

Re:In a camera phone? Why?

[DrDitto]

I still print my 4x5" B&W negatives optically using a 70-year old enlarger that I picked up at a garage sale for $50. Although I've seen very impressive B&W inkjet prints using special inks, I think my optical prints are sharper. That said, I do color prints digitally with my local lab's LightJet. I've done optical RA-4 prints before, but I think digital color printing offers too many advantages. Plus I like shooting transparency film and making positive-to-positive prints using Cibachrome is expensive and difficult.

Not even 1Gp.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem. Gigapxl Project.

Re:Not even 1Gp.

[LordKronos]

Ummm...call it what they like, but that's scanned film.

While not a gigapixel sensor, there is a guy that stitched together a gigapixel image from 196 digital photos, and he did this 3 years ago.

http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel.htm

Educated guess

[neuro.slug]

The sysadmins that host the 720 megapixel image of Sydney are probably not going to be sending you thank-you cards, I'm guessing.

Re:Educated guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither is the half-naked girl that you can see in the third tower on the right, fifth window down....(Zoom to maximum)

Re:Educated guess

[cashman73]

The scary thing is how many slashdotters went back to the file and actually looked for it after you posted that,... ;-)

Re:Educated guess

[whitehatlurker]

They didn't say that she isn't there - go back and check again.

The world's friendliest DDoS . . . . . .

[failure-man]

That's it. Link a 720 megapixel image, on the front page of Slashdot, from an Aussie server, just as North America is getting into the office and commencing "working." ;)

Re:I have seen it!

[smooth wombat]

The future of high-rez pr0n!

Yeah, nothing like seeing the pores on the mole on Ron Jeremy's butt.

May I be the first non-cynical /.er..

[bytesex]

to say: wow. I think my jaw just dropped.

This is not a digital camera

[denisbergeron]

It's a lens with a scanner !
Fast scanner, big resolution scanner!
But a lens with a scanner !

Re:This is not a digital camera

[dmatos]

denisbergeron is correct. If you look at the specs, it says the sensor is a "TDI" sensor. This sensor scans across the focal plane of the camera. It is 7500 pixels tall, with 2500 each R, G and B pixels. The full pixel colour is interpolated for each pixel.

I think it's neat that they use the same "digital back" module on a 360 degree panoramic camera. The camera rotates at a constant rate, and the sensor can then capture the 360 degree image.

The only thing to watch out for with the 160MPix camera is the rolling shutter. One side of the image will be captured almost immediately, but the other side will be captured 1 second later (at max speed, max resolution). With moving subjects, this can lead to lots of strange image artefacts - squishing or stretching, multiple images, etc. Their website has a couple of images where this effect has been used artistically, but a tripod would be absolutely required to take a decent image of a still subject.

What is its dynamic range?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

What is the big point in churning up the pixel count, if the dynamic range is the same old 1.0e03? Human retina has a dynamic range 1.0e06, three orders of magnitude better. And it has about 2.7 million rod cells and cone cells. One can create amazing speakers with absolutely perfect sound fidelity at 150 KHz, but human ear cant hear it. There could be some applications not involving human hearing/cdplayers/boom boxes. But at that point it is not really a "speaker". Same way at 160e06 pixels or 720e06 pixels it is not a "digital camera". It is some exotic machine with really pathetic dynamic range and huge number of pixels.

Brace for the pr0n jokes

[192939495969798999]

20" long eh? That's almost big enough to *SANTIZED BY FCC* in one shot!

It's the lens stupid

[nuggz]

The reason people use DSLRs is because even at todays 6-8 Megapixels the lens is the weak element.
Add all the pixels you want, without a bigger and better lens it doesn't matter.

Sure we can improve on the dynamic range and noise of the sensor, but the megapixel days are over.

Re:It's the lens stupid

[EvilAlphonso]

Quality glass is important, but you left out some other important aspects:
The sensor size, bigger is better but also more expensive
The heat dissipation of the sensor, so you don't get insane noise/deformation on long poses (astrophotography for example)

I'm still shooting film (Leica SL and Rollei SL66) most of the time, as until very recently it was hard to beat those cameras with decently priced DSLRs. On paper, 10Mpx DSLR isn't as good as professionally drum-scanned 6x6 negatives. However the gap isn't as big as one would think for most applications. Add to that the incoming pricing war in the prosumer market and I'm ripe for the switch (getting a Pentax K10D in November, with K-R adapter rings for my leica lenses).

I also honestly believe they will increase the megapixel count on full-framed sensors as there is demand for that in the pro market. For the sensors in P&S and phone cameras, I couldn't care less as it has been purely marketing gimmicks for some years now. :)

Re:Moore's law has what to do with this?

[dmatos]

Since pixels need to collect photons in order to generate the electrons that form an image, the smaller you make them, the less responsive they are. With smaller and smaller pixels, you either need longer exposure times (opening yourself up to blur if the subject is moving), or larger lenses (which cost mucho mucho dinero). People are already making pixels at 2.5um pitch. You are unlikely to see any further major reduction in that size, given the constraints of responsivity.

i found waldo

[brunascle]

he's in the second tall building from the left, 12th floor, 6th window. he's the one screwing his secretary.

Obligatory Dans Data "Enough already..

[mr_stinky_britches]

I highly recommend giving Dans "Enough already with the megapixels" article a read. He explains the situation more clearly than I ever could.

Re:Moore's law has what to do with this?

[rjstanford]

This is why even a pretty good 6MP sensor - like, say, a Nikon D50 today - can produce much better pictures than a crappy 8MP point-n-shoot camera sensor does. By better I mean cleaner, less noisy, with more realistic color, etc, etc. Even with good lenses, the tiny sensors just aren't getting the light information they need to do well.

TMPI - Too Much Personal Information

[queenb**ch]

I think that I will *not* be taking pictures of my coworkers with this. I don't want to see anyone I know in that kind of detail. My most of my co-workers look like this anyway. Why would I want a closer-in shot to see the pores, etc.

2 cents,

QueenB

Nice but...

[jonr]

Was the Goatse man inspiration for this design?
I would love to own one, though.

Re:Moore's law has what to do with this?

[MasterC]

...the smaller you make them, the less responsive they are.

Seitz: 160 megapixel in a 60x170mm sensor = 15,686 pixels per mm^2
1Ds: 11.4 MP in a 35.8x23.8mm sensor = 13,379 pixels per mm^2
Rebel: 6.3 MP in a 22.7x15.1mm sensor = 18,379 pixels per mm^2

The digital rebel has a higher pixel density than the Seitz. According to your quote, that makes the Seitz more responsive than the rebel but less than the 1Ds.

Like usual around here, the invocation of Moore is just to get /. editors to accept the story. The density has clearly been exceeded by *much* cheaper cameras. The only thing novel here is the 11.97 time increase in sensor area over the 1Ds......well, and the gigabit ethernet but... :)

(I prefer Canon so substitute in your preferred cameras where you see fit.)

It's not even new

[grahamsz]

These guys:

http://www.betterlight.com/products4X5.asp

Have been making high resolution scanning backs for large format cameras for years now.

I'd love more pixels

[dk-software-engineer]

My dream is to have a fisheye-lens and a wicked amount of detail. That way I can take a picture without knowing exactly what I'm photographing. When I get home I can find many interesting high resolution photos of stuff I didn't even see when I was there.

That would open up for a completely different kind of photography. Put this in a mobile phone, and take one of those boring pictures of your friend looking very uninteresting on the bus, but now in the same picture you may find an interesting scene happening on the side walk.

Yeah yeah, it might not be worth the time once you get used to it, but I'd sure like to try.

Thank guys.

[Devar]

You just slashdotted my country.

Diffraction, shmiffraction...

[SnowDog74]

Negative Refractive Index... specifically read the last paragraphs about superlenses and breaking the diffraction limit.

We're not talking science fiction. The concept has been tested in practical application and yielded orders of clarity beyond the diffraction limits of the wavelengths of light being captured.

150MPixels on 1"x1.5" = 35mm film

[davidwr]

I read an article a few years back rating film resolution. They used "Pro" 35mm cameras with the best available lenses at the time, a good tripod, and test-pattern images. The best films rated in at a bit over 100 line-pairs per millimeter. That's 100 black lines with 100 equally-sized white lines between them, or 200 dots per millimeter. When you digitize, you play it safe and double that number to 400 dots/mm.

400 dots/mm on 24mm X 36mm film is 9600x14400 dots, or 138.24 megapixels.

When we can squeeze 138.24 megapixels down to a 24mm X 36mm area, "we have arrived." I'm putting my money on this being available in high-end-yet-still-under-$2000 cameras by 2012.

By the way, for some applications, such as portraiture, 8 megapixels produces beautiful 20"x30" prints. However, some applications demand better, particularly those involving severe cropping and expanding.

Optical Limits On Miniaturization

[Steve B]

how long before we see this resolution in a mobile phone?

Never. The basic limit of resolution you can get is set by the Rayleigh criterion:

sin theta = 1.22 * wavelength / lens diameter

where theta is the angular diameter of the smallest detail that can be resolved.

Using a 5*10^-7 m (green light, more or less in the middle of the visible spectrum) and a 0.01 m diameter lens (which is generous for a mobile phone), this gives us a 3.5*10^-3 degree angle as the minimum amount of viewfield that can be covered by one pixel. Thus, a picture with a 20 degree viewfield* would be, at most, 5700 pixels in each dimension, or 32.5 megapixels.

*Of course, a viewfield could be wider, but getting a wider-angle picture without distortion raises a whole other batch of problems if you have to do it in such a small package.

Re:Optical Limits On Miniaturization

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

The basic limit of resolution you can get is set by the Rayleigh criterion:

There's nothing 'basic' about this completely empirical law. What we see with a camera is, roughly, a convolution of a 'perfect' image with the Airy disc. If you convolve an image that consists solely of two points then when the angular separation of the points is less than roughly the angle set by Rayleigh's criterion you end up with a function with a single central peak rather than two distinct peaks. So naively you end up with a single peak not two. Nonetheless, the intensity you get is still a function of the distance between the points and even when the points are much closer, the resulting intensity pattern is distinct from the pattern from a single point. All this means is that in order to clearly see two distinct points you need to do a bit of image processing to deconvolve the Airy disk. Digital cameras already apply image sharpening kernels so that's nothing fundamentally new.

So what I'm saying is that nothing special whatsoever happens at the Rayleigh angle. It just gets increasingly more difficult to produce good images at higher and higher resolution. These difficulties come from signal-to-noise ratio issues, not from 'diffraction limiting'.

Storage device - Mac mini !

[guzi]

Apart from the fact that the controlling device is a Zaurus (or other PDA), did you guys notice that the storage device is a Mac mini ???

Storage device: Portable Mac Mini 1.66Hz Intel Core Duo (2 MB Cache, 2 GB RAM, Mac OS X, Windows XP)

G.