Researchers Developing Single-Pixel Camera

Assassin bug writes "According to the BBC, researchers in the US are developing a single-pixel camera to capture high-quality images without the 'expense' of traditional digital photography. The idea behind such a device is that traditional digital photography is wasteful. Most of the information taken in by the camera is thrown away in the compression process. From the article: 'The digital micromirror device, as it is known, consists of a million or more tiny mirrors each the size of a bacterium. "From that mirror array, we then focus the light through a second lens on to one single photo-detector - a single pixel." As the light passes through the device, the millions of tiny mirrors are turned on and off at random in rapid succession. Complex mathematics then interprets the signals assembling a high resolution image from the thousands of sequential single-pixel snapshots. '"

Comments

RAW format anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Most of the information taken in by the camera is thrown away in the compression process.

Doesn't the RAW format take care of this?

Ah, more moving parts. THAT's helpful.

[ScentCone]

Is it just me, or does the concept seem inherently more complex and fragile than a multi-pixel sensor with light cast on it?

And how can this possibly deal with the equivalent of a range of shutter speeds in front of a standard sensor? Perhaps it's a matter of how many times the pixel is exposed to the same part of the lens' projection in repeated scans... but that just seems clunky, and that much harder/slower to re-assemble into a stored image.

And it doesn't stop the megapixel chest thumping - it just starts up megamirror arguments, instead.