Kodak Unveils 50MP CCD Image Sensor

i4u writes in to let us know that Kodak has announced the world's first 50 million pixel CCD image sensor for professional photography (i.e., for medium-format cameras). Engineering-grade devices of the CCD, the KAF-50100, are currently available. Kodak plans to enter volume production in Q4 2008. "At 50 megapixels, the sensor captures digital images with unprecedented resolution and detail. For instance, with a 50 megapixel camera, in an aerial photo of a field 1.5 miles [about 2.5 km] across, you could detect an object about the size of a small notebook computer (1 foot by 1 foot)." Here's CNet's Crave blog with a few more technical details.

Comments

Re:ISPs better prepare

[spir0]

Or try a simple script for imagemagick in Ubuntu, and you can fill a folder full of photos to compress, right click, scripts, photos4email.sh. Now we have a folder full of smaller jpegs for email, right click on the new folder, compress to a zip file, then bobs your uncle, attach that to an email! (bloody macs making things GUI simple!)

basically, my post will amount to "fuck off." please stop reading if you don't need any further elaboration.

1. linux != ubuntu. fucking n00bs like you piss me off. same shit happened when redhat was starting out. everyone was referring to redhat when they meant linux. and they'd talk about linux 4 when they meant redhat 4. same now with ubuntu. I know, you will defend yourself by saying that you recommend I install ubuntu because it's easy. see #5.

2. I was talking about all the n00bs like my dad, not *just* my dad. helping one won't fix the general problem I was talking about.

3. he's running windows.

4. where the fuck did macs come into this?

5. something that is simple for you (and dare I compare myself to you) and me may not even be remotely comprehensible for someone else. you make the assumption that because you can do it, everybody must be able to.

Re:More Than 50MP That Meets the Eye

[Doc Ruby]

No, the problem, as I described it, is that the real world is very complex, with many interacting factors. It's true that the delivery of the captured image to the eye is a whole other system, with its own resolution, fidelity, and complex factors. But the point, which I made, is that investing in more MPs probably isn't as important anymore after 50MP as is investing in the rest of that complex system (probably mainly the image grids).

You're just uninformed about the visual system (though I'm doing my best :). The visual sense is extremely well understood, including the brain, though of course there's plenty to know. Visual neuroscience is probably the best understood sense. And we've delivered quite a lot of results using it. Imaging and color use quite a lot of our large and detailed neuroscience to deliver the high fidelity we've already got, and engineering is doing more with the neuroscience all the time.

It makes perfect sense to make the comparison. I've been doing it for almost 20 years, since I took my undergrad neuroscience and light physics training to a digital camera company (32MP@40bits in the early 1990s). People who know what we're talking about make quite a lot of sense out of the biology and physics to make good engineering. If you can't keep up, that's not our problem - we're sharing as well as we can.