Slashdot Mirror
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"
Even with todays current range of digital cameras massive images are possible — such as the amazing 720 Megapixel image of Sydney Harbour"
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.
Global warming is a cube.
The sysadmins that host the 720 megapixel image of Sydney are probably not going to be sending you thank-you cards, I'm guessing.
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." ;)
Yeah, nothing like seeing the pores on the mole on Ron Jeremy's butt.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It's a lens with a scanner !
Fast scanner, big resolution scanner!
But a lens with a scanner !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
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.
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.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
I highly recommend giving Dans "Enough already with the megapixels" article a read. He explains the situation more clearly than I ever could.
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
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
HDGary secures my bank
Was the Goatse man inspiration for this design?
I would love to own one, though.
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
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
(I prefer Canon so substitute in your preferred cameras where you see fit.)
:wq
You just slashdotted my country.
It's a Bagel.
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.
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.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.