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

Hasselblads?

[sudog]

H3DII-50 has had 50 megapixel backends for quite some time..?

Is it unprecedented because it's now available at a cheaper price or something?

Re:Hasselblads?

[Z00L00K]

Just take a look at the camera here.

So this news may not be the really latest news.

Re:Hasselblads?

[Anonymous Coward]

that camera uses the exact same sensor CCD you idiot.

Re:Hasselblads?

[bradleygibson]

Correction: I meant to say that the H3DII*-50* won't be available until late this year. (Other H3D-II models are already available.)

Re:Hasselblads?

[afidel]

Why, that's only ~72MB per shot, or about 13.9K pictures per TB, are you really going to shoot 69,444 shots before your 5TB NAS is obsolete? If you are you're probably a professional and the couple grand for the storage is a drop in the bucket compared to your other costs. I can't even fathom what 69K shots would have cost in media format film and developer solution (not to mention if you farmed it out to a lab!)

Re:Hasselblads?

[Andy Dodd]

H3DII-50 isn't out yet, only the H3DII-39 at this point. IIRC it was announced around the same time as the Kodak sensor, which I think the Hassy uses.

Actually I just looked it up - http://www.hasselbladusa.com/promotions/50-promotion.aspx - the 50 is not available until October 2008 and DOES use the new Kodak sensor, the promotion is that if you buy a 39 before September 30, you get a discount on a lens and an opportunity to upgrade to the 50 for the difference in list price.

Re:Hasselblads?

[idobi]

H3DII-50 has had 50 megapixel backends for quite some time..?

Is it unprecedented because it's now available at a cheaper price or something?

The H3DII uses kodak's 50 megapixel sensor, and was announced this month.

Re:Hasselblads?

[Missing_dc]

Thank you for underminig my attempt at humor.

Note

[ucblockhead]

This is pretty much useless without really expensive lenses, so don't expect to see it in any consumer-level cameras.

Re:Note

[ihatethetv]

So does anyone know what kind of resolution the typical "good" medium format lenses top out at? That's a lotta data.

Re:Note

[Silicon_Knight]

It's a medium format sensor; the silicon imaging area is twice as big as a single 35mm film slide. Currently there's only a handful of cameras that has a "full frame" sensor for 35mm.

So, no, it will NEVER be used in a consumer-level camera. This is for people who shoot billboard ads.

This is the camera that sensor's going into:

http://www.hasselbladusa.com/products/h-system/h3dii-50.aspx

$1k per Megapixel is about right for a Hasselblad - the H3DII-39 is about $35k. And that's just the body only. Lenses start at 3k. Zeiss makes'em. Aside from Zeiss's optical reputation, these lenses are special because the clockwork mechanism and the shutter are integrated into the lens.

http://www.zeiss.com/C12567A8003B58B9/Contents-Frame/2DFB31CE532E5E32C125711B0038D874

Unlike a DSLR which has to expose the image sensor a slit at a time at higher shutter speeds, this means that the entire frame can be exposed simultaneously, down to 1/8000 sec.

In other words... not your typical point and shoot or Digital Rebel XSi :-)

Re:Note

[Jeffrey Baker]

If the lens is perfect (which it isn't, but let's assume that) the camera will be diffraction-limited. At a certain aperture, the Airy disk will be larger than the pixels in the sensor. This camera has 6-micron pixels, which is very small indeed. Cameras with this sensor will probably be diffraction-limited at f/5.6 and smaller apertures.

Re:Note

[Opr33Opr33]

This is pretty much useless without really expensive lenses, so don't expect to see it in any consumer-level cameras.

But Steve Jobs could put this into the iPhone right???? The reality distortion field would correct any lens issues plus now that 3G is here, the pictures could be sent wireless.

Re:Note

[Anonymous Coward]

Billboards can be shot with the cheapest of consumer digital cameras due to the fact that they are printed at an extremely low DPI. If you were standing two feet in front of a billboard it would look absolutely horrible regardless of what it was shot with, but for people viewing them from 50 feet away it looks perfect. The only thing you need a ton of megapixels for is very large prints that can be viewed up close. An average print in a shopping mall is anywhere from five to ten feet tall and you can walk right up to it. For those you need a lot of resolution. Having said that, billboards are still probably shot with medium format due to the nature of the assignment, even the two by three inch pictures on product boxes or catalogs are shot medium format because that is what is used by commercial photographers, almost exclusively.

Re:Note

[El Puerco Loco]

this is really a very small incremental improvement over their 39 mpix sensor. to double the resolution of a sensor, you need to quadruple the pixels. and memory bandwidth and image processing power is becoming a huge limitation with these things, the uncompressed image from these is like 150 MB. the $30000.00 39 mpix back has a 3 second shot-to-shot delay, so it is really only useful for studio work.

Re:Note

[Zeinfeld]

It's a medium format sensor; the silicon imaging area is twice as big as a single 35mm film slide. Currently there's only a handful of cameras that has a "full frame" sensor for 35mm.

The release of the D3 and the announced D700 have changed that. Full frame is now maintstream, albeit pricey ($3K). But this sensor is medium format. It is 4 inches by 5 inches, not an inch by an inch and a bit like 35mm.

So, no, it will NEVER be used in a consumer-level camera. This is for people who shoot billboard ads.

This sensor is destined for pro level studio cameras, but Sony have a 22MP sensor for Full Frame 35mm that should be in cameras announced at Photakina this year. Nikon are expected to release at 22MP D3 and Sony should have the A900 out. But they are certain to be very pricey at first. Expect the D3x to be $6500.

The 'blad will continue to be absurdly expensive but its that huge sensor size that demands the expensive lenses. The only improvement you get going to a larger sensor size on digital is that your low light performance improves. That is not an issue in the studio which is where 95% of 'blads live. Out in the field you might as well lug full frame format gear round with you. Most pros use 35mm outdoors.

Answering some other confusions in the thread: no diffraction is not an issue here. Diffraction softens focus at small apertures. It does that regardless of whether you use film or digital and regardless of your pixel resolution. The only point where pixel resolution becomes an issue is at smaller f-stops or at levels of MP we have not reached yet.

The hard limit for 35mm full frame format cameras is the wavelength of red light. If the pixels are sized 2 wavelengths of light on each side you can squeeze a maximum of 320MP on a full FX frame. That is lower than the limit set by diffraction which is 1050MP at f/1.4.

In practice current lenses are not good enough to go to 320MP. But the current pro-range Nikor lenses are good for at least 50MP and probably 100MP. My mid range ($670) 18-200 zoom delivers pixel sharp results on a 12MP DX body. So it would deliver pixel sharp results (in the center of the frame anyway) for FX format at 22MP.

Re:Note

[Anonymous Coward]

"The release of the D3 and the announced D700 have changed that. Full frame is now maintstream, albeit pricey ($3K). But this sensor is medium format. It is 4 inches by 5 inches, not an inch by an inch and a bit like 35mm. "

Not to start a holy war, but the Canon 5D made full frame mainstream three years ago. It's just Nikon that have finally caught up.

Re:Note

[dfghjk]

Wrong. Current 12MP DX sensor SLRs have pixels smaller than 6 microns and they are certainly not limited to f/5.6 by even the most absurd definition of "diffraction limited". This sensor has a pixel size roughly the same as a 10.5MP DX frame SLR so f/13 or f/16 no problem. f/22 starts to see diffraction. There is no hard limit, only a knee in the curve of resolution.

Re:Note

[Lumpy]

Um 8 megapixels is useless without really good lenses. The crap lenses put on most consumer DSLR cameras are worthless. I regularly freak people out with a really old 3 megapixel DSLR (interpolates to 6MP) and a $3200 lens that takes better photos and produces better 8X10 prints than their new rebel XTi with it's $22.95 stock lens that it comes with.

it's ALL in the lens. Megapixels makes very little difference if your glass sucks.

Granted that Rebel XTi kicks my arse hard if you put a $3200.00 or better lens on it, but someone with a consumer digital and a high end L series lens are incredibly rare.

Re:Note

[Jeffrey Baker]

Well I'm sorry to break it to you, but the size of the Airy disk at f/5.6 is 7.5 microns, therefore any sensor with smaller pixels can be said to be diffraction-limited. If you want to discard the issue of color, and consider just the luminance, then the 2x2 pattern gives you a 12 micron area diameter in which case the system is diffraction-limited at f/11 and smaller. But if you do that you must be willing to admit that the system has only 3 megapixels instead of 12.

You appear to be operating under some definition of diffraction-limited other than "limited by diffraction". Also I would like to point out that 12MP on a 16x24mm sensor is 6 microns, not "less than 6 microns".

Re:Note

[quenda]

> useless without really expensive lenses, so don't expect to see it in any consumer-level cameras.

That has never stopped the consumer camera makers before.

My phone claims 2Mp, but because of the cheap lens, the pictures are crap compared to an old 1Mp camera.

Re:Note

[Zeinfeld]

Not to start a holy war, but the Canon 5D made full frame mainstream three years ago. It's just Nikon that have finally caught up.

And in response Nikon's board decided that enough was enough. They had lost too much face to Canon. Which was somewhat ironic as Nikon had been leading the charge to bring out affordable DSLR models.

Since then the story has been rather different. Nikon has refreshed their entire exotic lineup (superteles, tilt-shift) and brought out 3 new Canon killer cameras in the past 8 months (D3, D300, D700) with a 4th expected very soon (D3X).

It is a rather interesting competition. Canon has vastly more resources, but they are spread out over many markets and pro-photography is not the absolute top priority for the company. Nikon has to make pro-photography their top priority because its the reason most of the consumers buy Nikon over other brands.

Canon really does not seem to have an answer so far. They have a bunch of f/1.2 lenses, but that is of questionable value in the digital age. If you want bokeh the Nikor line of Defocus Control lenses looks more interesting.

Full frame is not very interesting at the moment unless you really care about ultimate wide angle performance in the 14-18mm equivalent range and don't want to use a fisheye. Otherwise the 1.6 crop you get on the DX sensors is like a built in teleconverter. A 200mm lens becomes a 300mm exotic, sweet. I am not planning to buy a D700, it is not worth $3000 to have 12MP in the FX format. I would rather spend the additional $1,400 over the price of the D300 on a lens.

Full frame is going to be really interesting when the full frame sensors have the same pixel density of the crop sensors. A 22MP full frame camera is like having a full frame camera with a built in 11MP DX mode. They will definitely get there, but it could be another year before they are affordable.

All things being equal, its better to spend money on lenses than cameras at this point. A DSLR is obsolete in 24 months, I can still use my 25 year old Nikon lenses on my D300.

Re:Note

[LordKronos]

You should have repeated an important point from your first post. You qualified your original statement as "if the lens is perfect".

A perfect lens may be diffraction limited at f/5.6 on such a camera (I haven't done the calculation...I'll take your word and assume you did them correctly). However, real lenses aren't perfect. At f/5.6, most lenses aren't at their sharpest, and their loss of sharpness is easily greater than the diffraction at that level.

In addition, there is a depth of field issue. As you stop down the lens, you increase the depth of field and more things become clear. As those previously-out-of-focus things come into focus and thus become sharper, the other stuff that was already in focus becomes less sharp due to diffraction. Depending on what you want to achieve, that may be an acceptable trade off.

Re:Note

[Jeffrey Baker]

Sure, I agree with everything you wrote. I was only trying to answer the question of whether a camera has enough resolving power to justify this number of pixels. The answer seems to me to be "yes, under certain ideal conditions." If you are taking your photo at f/11 for aesthetic reasons or because your lens is sharper at that stop, then clearly having more than 50MP on this size sensor would be totally pointless.

The rule of thumb is that the Airy disk for visible light has roughly the same diameter, in microns, as the f number. Therefore it is impractical to decrease the pixel size much below 2 microns. The only thing you can do to get more resolution is make the sensors physically bigger.

Re:Note

[Anonymous Coward]

"Since then the story has been rather different. Nikon has refreshed their entire exotic lineup (superteles, tilt-shift) and brought out 3 new Canon killer cameras in the past 8 months (D3, D300, D700) with a 4th expected very soon (D3X)."

I wouldn't qualify any of those cameras as Canon killers--they're new and exotic, and everyone's excited about them, but when push comes to shove, they're baby steps ahead of Canon's 3 yeard old 5D, not leaps and bounds. I'm a huge Nikon fan, but it looks to me like Canon is still ahead at the moment, especially with the XSi--which is an amazing entry level DSLR. Photokina will decide who's top dog for the next release cycle, however--if Canon's new camera(s) aren't amazing improvements on their current line, they're going to be in real trouble, especially with the D3X and Sony's new FF camera on the market. In the end, I think the competition is going to be good for everyone. I'm certainly looking forward to some great price wars come Christmastime!

"Canon really does not seem to have an answer so far. They have a bunch of f/1.2 lenses, but that is of questionable value in the digital age. If you want bokeh the Nikor line of Defocus Control lenses looks more interesting. "

f1.2 (or f1.4) means you can shoot night like it's day without having to lower the shutter speed or push or ISO too far. Even on modern cameras, I don't like pushing the ISO too far. If you haven't done it, I seriously recommend renting a really fast prime or two and doing some night time photography. You'll find it addictive, especially when you manage to pull off a tack sharp hand held shot of your girlfriend at f1.2. DOF is problematic (to say the least), but moonlight or starlight portraiture can be amazingly beautiful.

I find the bokeh argument to irrelevent. Except for some odd lenses (mirror lenses, and the occasional five-bladed design) bokeh is bokeh--it has to be _really_ bad before it actually stands out. I'm far more concerned about what the lens will do to the things that are in focus, rather than out of focus.

"Otherwise the 1.6 crop you get on the DX sensors is like a built in teleconverter."

Except it's not. You gain no reach, you merely have a narrower angle of view. To me, the only good thing about a crop sensor camera is the increased DOF...and I have serious doubts about that, honestly.

Re:Note

[Jerry Coffin]

Unlike a DSLR which has to expose the image sensor a slit at a time at higher shutter speeds, this means that the entire frame can be exposed simultaneously, down to 1/8000 sec.

This is the first time I've heard anybody claim a leaf shutter could to anywhere close to 1/8000 of a second. I can't find any indication that Compur or Copal has ever heard of such a thing either (most leaf shutters are manufactured by one of the two). OTOH, it's true that the entire frame can be and is exposed simultaneously down to its top speed of 1/500th of a second (and for the same reason, you get X sync at all speeds as well).

Re:Note

[doctor_no]

For medium format digitals the body & lens are minuscule costs compared to that digital back that cost between $14-40k.

Re:Note

[triffid_98]

If I recall correctly, the top-end camcorders use 3 CCD's with the lens to help with low light issues. Low light is something that film was way better at, even at decent (Hi-8) resolution levels. The issue is not necessarily more pixels but larger ones to capture the ambient light without F/stopping it to hell.

The 'blad will continue to be absurdly expensive but its that huge sensor size that demands the expensive lenses. The only improvement you get going to a larger sensor size on digital is that your low light performance improves. That is not an issue in the studio which is where 95% of 'blads live. Out in the field you might as well lug full frame format gear round with you. Most pros use 35mm outdoors.

Re:Note

[afidel]

I bought a Nikon because they have the single best hobbyist lens available, the 18-200 (24-300 equivalent) VR lens. It's far from perfect from the perspective of a pro for absolute image quality, but it's "good enough" for most prosumers and the flexibility to shoot just about anything you see without having to carry and waste time changing lenses is just too nice. My wife, a complete novice, has already done some nice macro work with it despite it not being what you would typically think of as a macro lens. I'm not sure why so many people are obsessed over megapixels, my D40 is fine for anything up to tabloid sized. Sure if you are routinely cropping small sections of a shot and blowing them up to poster size you might care, but that's a tinny fraction of the market.

Re:Note

[bhima]

I'm not so sure I want the sort of pixel density found in minicams in a full frame DSLR. I own a 5D and 40D and comparing the noise on those to a digicam is very, very unfavorable. I'd rather they spend their time making other features of the camera better⦠rather than just making cameras with more megapixels.

Re:Note

[0xygen]

I'm speculating here, but does decreasing the pixel size always lead to increased the noise in the image?

It sounds to me like we are reaching a point where increasing the len size is not an option to continue increasing the sensor pixel counts.

I remember reading an article asserting that 6 - 8MP actually produces the best picture in a compact camera for the same reasons. ie highest SNR and lowest fringing.

Re:Note

[aoteoroa]

Full frame is not very interesting at the moment unless you really care about ultimate wide angle performance in the 14-18mm

The larger film/sensor size of 35mm, or full frame digital gives you much better selective focus.

For the non-photographers out there selective focus is one of the first techniques professional photographers use to separate their photos from the point and shoot shots. Selective focus is why a good wedding photo has the bride and groom in sharp focus and the background is soft and nicely blurred. How a camera lens handles the out of focus light is called bokeh, and some lenses do a better job at producing pleasing bokeh than others but larger film, and sensor sizes will always provide better selective focus when compared to similar techology with a smaller sensor.

Re:Note

[dredwerker]

Thanks for that I thought that 'bokeh' was a typing error :)

Re:Note

[HughsOnFirst]

Keep in mind that this is a Bayer sensor , so the resolution is about half what you think. Until you have at least one each red blue and green photosite under the Airy disc (probably two green of course), your lens is still sharper than the sensor.

As for sharp enough lenses , Zeiss has made a number of lenses that are diffraction limited at 2.8 in the past. Also , software can extract a pretty good image out of a lens with a high resolution and poor contrast unlike film.

Then of course there is that minolta / sony trick of getting around the problem of diffraction.

The real future is in computational photography , using lots of small cheap lenses and sensors where you can change f/stop and focus after the exposure, and can get things like f/.01 lenses

Re:Note

[cetan]

[[I'm speculating here, but does decreasing the pixel size always lead to increased the noise in the image?]]

All else being equal, then yes. However, as we're all aware, advances in technology does not make all things equal.

[[I remember reading an article asserting that 6 - 8MP actually produces the best picture in a compact camera for the same reasons. ie highest SNR and lowest fringing.]]

I think that is dependent on sensor size. The bigger picture here is that the average consumer will never use more than the 6-8MP and that these 10, 12, 13 MP point and shoots are (from a sensor standpoint) nothing more than snakeoil.

Re:Note

[gravis777]

Not necessaraly. When I first got into digital photography, my little point and shoot Nikon was 1.2 megapixels, with a Nikor lense. Wonderful pictures. The high end cameras, such as the D1, I believe at the time only shot 6 or 7 megapixels. People were saying you probably would not see that high of a megapixel in a consumer based camera because of the lenses. I now have a 7.1 megapixel Nikon L12 point and shoot that, if you know how to take photographs, produce photos similar to those early high-end Nikon cameras (minus the ability to change out lenses, you are limited to the built in zoom lense which is like 3x or 4x, and the higher ISO settings). Point is, if you understand how your camera works, you can take professional quality pictures with your point and shoot.

The main thing is you have GOT to understand the differences in camera manufactorors. My $170 Nikon 7.1 megapixel camera BLOW AWAY the consumer level Olympus 10 megapixel cameras that most of my friend have. They have trouble understanding why, but it seems as if the Nikon has a better CCD sensor than the Olympus low-end cameras (zoom in and look at how much noise is in the picture), and the Nikon delivers MUCH better color and sharpness to the pictures, which I attribute to the Nikor lense. And lastly, if you are shooting in JPEG format, a camera really must have the option to set your compression level. JPEG is not a bad image format to shoot in if you do not compress the crap out of it. Granted, it will never be as good as RAW or TIFF, but that does not mean that JPEG is bad. I can easily blow my shots up to 30x40 posters, and they look great. People are blown away when I tell them that I shot that with a point and shoot camera saving the image in JPEG.

The Nikor lense is a wonderful thing, and Nikon has done a great job at putting high-quality lenses in consumer level cameras. I could easily see Nikon coming out with point and shoot cameras in the 20 and 30 megapixel range in the next couple of years. Kodak's EasyShare cameras are currently pretty good, and I could see Kodak getting there. The other manufactorors I think need to work on what they have now, because the consumer level Fujis, Cannons, Olympus, Polariods, etc that I have had a chance to play with are CRAP, and most, as you said, are due to crappy lenses and cheap ccd sensors.

Re:Note

[deathcow]

Don't forget Mr. Nyquist.... even if you are diffraction limited, we (probably) aren't taking pictures of point light sources, but extended objects. Oversampling to some extent is a good thing.

With or without Bayer pattern?

[Jeffrey Baker]

The article doesn't seem to mention whether the new Kodak sensor uses the new-and-perhaps-improved pixel pattern that Kodak announced in 2007. See http://johncompton.pluggedin.kodak.com/default.asp?item=624876

Re:With or without Bayer pattern?

[ptcheezer]

Yes, when I read about Kodak again I instantly thought about this too. I was convinced my next camera would be using the new panchromatic filters and pattern. I was willing to but a Kodak digital camera if they didn't license it to anyone. Sadly, I still can't find any info about whether or not this tech is in any consumer cameras yet. It seemed like such a great breakthrough because low light pictures are so hard to take -either the flash isn't strong enough (or it's too strong and you get redeye, etc.) or you just get blurry pics because your shutter speed has to be so slow.

Nice

[Misanthrope]

Happily this sort of development drives down prices on consumer grade products over time. I wonder how this compares to scanning low iso medium format film on a drum scanner.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/shootout.shtml
Is a good example of such a comparison, though I've seen differing results with older digital cameras.

Re:Nice

[san]

That test is seriously flawed: the only real comparison they show is done on buildings with lots of perfect verticals that line up with the pixel grid of the digital sensor, making the enlargement of the digital camera look better than if a scene with lots of small detail is shot through what is essentially an aliasing artifact.

There is a second series of pictures with more details, but there the scans (that have many more pixels than the digital camera image) are then reduced to match the size of the digital camera, throwing away all the details, making the comparison useless.

That doesn't mean high-end digital is worse than medium format film; it just depends on the type of picture: if there's lots of smooth color, and not too much contrast, digital is better. If there is a lot of detail and you want a large print, film is better. I have some 60x90 cm - 24"x36" enlargements off of scanned 6x7 slides and they look incredible.

I'm sure a 50mp sensor would give a better image but I'd rather buy a boat.

Re:Nice

[Reality Master 201]

So, film is better? Cause, basically, if you want lots of detail, film is better, and if you don't need lots of detail, then digital is good enough?

Re:Nice

[san]

Image quality is not just about resolution: it's also about dynamic range and noise. Digital cameras at low ISO have really low noise which makes for very smooth-looking color transitions in, for example, out-of-focus areas of the image.

Re:Nice

[san]

Hardly.

The camera that was reviewed was the Canon 1Ds, an 11 megapixel camera that shoots 4064 x 2704 pixel images. The 1Ds mk III has 21 megapixels, and shoots 5616x3744, so the number of pixels in any given (linear) direction only went up by ~1.4 times.

That's isn't 'worlds beyond' by any stretch of the imagination.

I can't use this

[v1]

I mean really I have a 6mpix camera and have never been lacking for resolution. It's got a 12x optical zoom (powershot s3 is) so I don't need resolution to make up for magnification either.

I wonder how big the market is for people that really NEED that much resolution?

And I wonder how many people's computers will absolutely CRY when trying to open a 50mpix tiff. My 6mpix jpegs are 2.5-3.5mb. (the tiffs are 15-16mb iirc) at 50mpix, 29mb would make for a terribly large and unwieldy jpeg.

But then there will be those that just want the biggest there is. And I need someone to drive the SD card prices down for me, so go for it.

Re:I can't use this

[mschuyler]

You can't use this. I can't use this. But a real pro can. I'm just a point and shooter with a small amount of knowledge to be dangerous. 5-6 mpix is probably all I need because I don't have a discerning eye. I only want to blow stuff up to 8 x 10 once in awhile when I accidentally take a great picture (like when the airplane went right by Mt. Rainier (REALLY close) and I just happened to have a window seat. I coulda seen a climber pee in the snow on there!)

But to a real pro I could see how this would be a must have, and if it is a must have they'll pay whatever it takes to get it, and the cost will be too much for both of us. And if producing this ultimately brings down the cost of my Nikon Coolpix 5700 next time I have to buy one, that's cool with me.

Re:I can't use this

[negRo_slim]

And I wonder how many people's computers will absolutely CRY when trying to open a 50mpix tiff. My 6mpix jpegs are 2.5-3.5mb.

Here is a 24mb tiff from the Phoenix mission.

Re:I can't use this

[MajorDick]

You may not but I could.
Its not a Mom and Pop ccd for a $299 camerat at walmart.
Current digital backs for film cameras like I use are 20,000 a POP !

Try to take one of you 6mp pics and blow it up to a 6ft poster or art piece, youll be swimming in boxes

I still shoot film, medium format 6cmx6cm, 25 iso high silver film. I took a picture of a building in NY and the 60th story I can count rivets in the windowsill vents when I blow it up.

For high quality there is no comparison for film, currently, I would trash my darkroom in a New York minute if I could forgo the nasty chemicals and space in my house, but I cant affork 20,000 for a digital back.

HOPEFULLY this will drop the price in the even the 3-4k market....

Re:I can't use this

[techno-vampire]

You can't use this. I can't use this. But a real pro can.

Exactly. And not just any pro, either. Somebody who makes his living doing weddings, bar mitzvahs and high school yearbook photos would have no use for it because it's too big for the job. Where this will be useful will be things like aerial photography (Think Google Earth, here.) or, as another poster pointed out, bullboards. Possibly magazine advertisements too, but I'm not sure they're detailed enough to need this.

Re:I can't use this

[westlake]

You can't use this. I can't use this. But a real pro can.

I remember visiting an exhibition of very large format glass plate landscape photography from the nineteenth century. The detail and depth of field was astonishing. It was an entirely different experience from seeing even the finest modern small or "medium format" images in reproduction.

Re:I can't use this

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And I wonder how many people's computers will absolutely CRY when trying to open a 50mpix tiff.

Do you really expect that the buyer of this nice toy will spend $35k on the camera only to cry that his $500 Wal-Mart computer is too slow? It is much more likely that the prospective buyer already has an adequate workstation. Damn, he could buy a dozen of adequate machines just for the price the camera body and digital camera back. (They could probably even afford to add one such computer as a nice gift or bonus. :-))

Re:I can't use this

[glitch23]

I wonder how big the market is for people that really NEED that much resolution?

Market size doesn't matter when your product is a couple orders of magnitude more expensive than mainstream models. This is for the extreme, just like a Ferrari is for the extreme. Quantity doesn't matter. It's the quality and you will pay dearly for it.

Re:I can't use this

[drinkypoo]

You could do IMAX bullet-time with a few hundred of them...

Re:I can't use this

[TooMuchToDo]

New CCD sensor + lots of UAVs = always current Google Earth/Maps aerial views

Re:I can't use this

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

You can have a discerning eye and still not be a good photographer, BTW.

Re:I can't use this

[Jerry Coffin]

I wonder how big the market is for people that really NEED that much resolution?

Tiny. Then again, if it was very large, things could get interesting in hurry. There's virtually no such thing as a medium format camera being produced in huge quantities (e.g. like SLRs in the APS-C and 35mm size range are).

And I wonder how many people's computers will absolutely CRY when trying to open a 50mpix tiff. My 6mpix jpegs are 2.5-3.5mb. (the tiffs are 15-16mb iirc) at 50mpix, 29mb would make for a terribly large and unwieldy jpeg.

I fairly routinely put together panoramas with 15-20 shots from a 12 MP camera, and my computer has no major problem with them at all. Oh, and I certainly do not work from JPEG as a rule -- I normally start from raw, convert to 16-bit TIFF, and splice those together. When these are put together, the result is typically in the 150-200 megapixel range (in case you're wondering why it's lower than multiplying the resolution by the number of images, you need some overlap to match the images together).

Re:I can't use this

[TheLink]

Once you get to the gigapixel range you start to have bandwidth issues if you are going digital.

With film, you expose the film, unexpose the film, and voila, the data is now on the storage medium.

For digital you'll have to have some additional intelligence in the "retina" so that the various bits of the image can be buffered while you trickle all of it out to the less volatile storage (drive, flash or whatever).

Not a big problem, I guess but something to consider. 1 gigapixel photo, 256 levels, 3 colours = 3 gigabytes. It will take 50 seconds to write the entire picture to a 60MB/sec HDD. Add more gigapixels and you're going to need something like RAID10.

Of course 50 seconds might be faster than the time it takes to change a gigapixel film to the next one ;).

Re:I can't use this

[BlackPignouf]

Yeah, but the pixel density of your camera is around 24 MP/cm, which implies that your pictures are useless at sensitivity above ISO400 because of the noise.

I also got this kind of camera (lumix FZ8). It has the best lens ever (36 mm/432 mm f2.8/3.3) and is really cheap & light thanks to the tiny sensor.
At ISO100 and enough luminosity, it can compete with any $10k DSL+lens, but it's a useless crap for anything that moves too fast or is too dark. I never shoot any ISO200+ with it.

The sensor from TFA has a pixel density around 2.9MP/cm, and I'm sure you could take handheld pictures from moon craters without any noise. This could also be interesting for indoor sport events. If you shoot good pictures with it at big events, I'm sure a couple of them would pay your investment back.

Right tool for the right job!

Re:I can't use this

[kv9]

don't worry, it's not for tourists.

This must be the new Hasselblad H3DII-50 sensor

[John Whitley]

Bing! Right on the heels of Hasselblad announcing their new H3DII-50 camera (to be released in October) which presumably uses this sensor. Hasselblad has also announced a future 645 format sensor (roughly 56mm x 45mm), more details to be revealed at Photokina 2008 (major bi-annual worldwide photography trade show) later this year.

Re:This must be the new Hasselblad H3DII-50 sensor

[John Whitley]

[Sorry for the late response...]

Here's a link to the Hasselblad press release... which strangely doesn't actually appear on their own site (H's press releases page doesn't appear to have been updated since 2006). Third paragraph is the most relevant to your question.

http://dpnow.com/5010.html

Gargoyles are coming

[pagen]

When you can watch everything - like google street view - snow crash's Gargoyles get closer to reality. The fact that so many have searched for cool things to see in such a huge amount of data is an indicator of what people will search through it.

That's a tall tripod

[greyhueofdoubt]

>> 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

That's either a really tall tripod or image stabilization has come a lot farther than I thought.

-b

Re:That's a tall tripod

[OrangeTide]

you assume you can only sample the sensor once.

Also look at aerial photos today. a 1m square area (when shot at 2.5km) is pretty easy to discern at least for the film-based technology I've seen.

I hope you didn't assume that they could read the keys on the laptop or something at that distance.

Re:That's a tall tripod

[dannys42]

I'm not sure that's an either/or there. With a tripod that high, you'd may still have similar stabalization issues. Even assuming a perfectly rigid structure unaffected by the wind, you may have vibrations from the ground. Anyone still in school care to do the calculations?

Re:That's a tall tripod

[Anonymous Coward]

no, i'm just happy to see you.

Re:That's a tall tripod

[glitch23]

That's either a really tall tripod or image stabilization has come a lot farther than I thought.

Image stabilization has come a lot further than you thought. If you saw the Discovery series Planet Earth you will have seen what the latest image stabilization can do. I don't know if the gyroscope-based camera mount works with both still and video cameras but it wouldn't surprise me if it did.

Re:That's a tall tripod

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Or a fast shutter speed. Unless you are going to make me look like an idiot with some aerial photography details.

Oooo...

[jo42]

Hi-Rez Pr0n!!

Gimme!!!

Re:Oooo...

[CheeseTroll]

More like 'Noooo...!'

Sometimes a little airbrushing is a good thing.

Make your own back?

[Easy2RememberNick]

I have a Mamiya 645 J (I think it is) and an older Yashica Mat 124 G that I wish had digital backs. I wonder how hard it would be to make my own back.

Re:Make your own back?

[ti1ion]

It is called an Epson 4490/4990/V500/V700/V750. I have a 4490 for my Rolleicord/Rolleiflex combo and it does a pretty good job. I have to admit, though, since buying a used 6MP DSLR I have not had much time for the old beauties.

Re:Make your own back?

[ChrisA90278]

I's not imposable to make one. I worked on a digital camera project twice. Today to skill set you'd want to develop is learning how to program an FPGA.

Kodak sells the "engineering grade" chips cheap because they may have minor defects. I'd say a "few" thousand bucks and about a year of your spare time and you'd have it. I've been through this process twice now. Both were amateur projects to build astronomical cameras. For use in a studio it would be easier because you would not need the vacuum or thermoelectric cooling systems.

Look around in the Internet and you see that quite a few people have done this, designs and ideas are floating around and there are text books that cover the subject.

Hasselblad and Film

[arigram]

I have an extensive Hasselblad V system which totals more than 30,000 euros but it is completely film-based. Unfortunately only major photographic studios can afford MF digital backs, save for the small 16mp back for the V System. So, at the moment, I consider a better investment the scanning of 6x6 film frames which at 4800 gives an image around 10,100 pixels square which can reach up to half a gig in size in 16bit resolution.

Unfortunately, Hasselblad has given up on the V system line (as the H system is a completely different design) and only the lowly 16mp back is offered with a square sensor. And its mostly as a tribute to V system diehards and possibly be discontinued soon.

That means that if a V system user want to upgrade to a new digital back, like the 50mp one, will need to dump the whole system. The lenses can be used with adaptors but then you will miss their real focal length and the autofocus and electronics of the H system. Which unfortunately goes against the philosophy of the "old" Hasselblad company where one could mix modern and old components freely. That meant that you could stick a modern lens and a digital back on a 50 year old body. Now, its pretty much "dump everything" to upgrade.

Re:Hasselblad and Film

[arigram]

You don't need to be aggressive, for it was not really a gripe, maybe a slightly sad look at reality.

Hasselblad HAD to move to a different system, to accommodate the new technologies, as the box design of the V system would need many things changed and in the end wouldn't worth it. The autofocus is a bit of a bonus, as the photographers who used Hasselblad camera rarely missed it. Otherwise it would have been incorporated by Carl Zeiss and Hasselblad long ago. The real design focus wasn't so much the 6x4.5 frame as the square never really stopped magazines from accepting pictures. The competition isn't from the 645 cameras, but from the 35mm DSLRs of Nikon and Canon. The professionals who jumped from film to digital did it not for the sake of quality, but for the workflow that digital provided, the convenience and opportunities digital manipulation opened. Professional photographers who go by the tastes of their clients, saw the demand for this new digital market and they settled for the lower quality as their clients didn't seem to care. "Good enough for my clients" is a common motto among the commercial photographers.

Now, since Hasselblad doesn't produce the sensors and since they even had to merge with Imacon for access to some technology (like the drum scanners and some backs), they had to adjust to what was offered. Since the market for square backs is pretty much down to Hasselblad, digital sensor manufacturers didn't see the point in designing sensors just for them. So, instead, Hasselblad had to adjust to that and accept the rectangle, since they were going for a redesign anyway. So, with the adjustment to the rectangle (thus the 645 format), came the new body, new lenses (from a new manufacturer, Fuji instead of Carl Zeiss) and all the other electronics, like autofocus.

The film backs for the H system, from the very beginning was a stop-gap measure, a way to lure and facilitate the conversion of V system and film users to the new format and then to digital.

Hasselblad did the only thing they could do and one cannot blame them for being realistic, especially since they adapted so well to the new marketplace and kept their avant guard status. When a clean break is required, sacrifices have to be made.

From my perspective and that of other V system users, of course things aren't that rosy. The main attractions for professionals to the Hasselblad system is the high quality of the products and the support for them. My investment still stands, as I can still make photographs of exceptional image qualities (aside from the aesthetics which is up to me). But the support has but disappeared. Local repaired shops have closed and one has to send the gear all the way to Denmark even for just a CLA. Also, even talking to a Hasselblad representative, his reply would be to get rid of the V system and move over to H. Hasselblad does not make any new products for the V line and the existing offerings have shrunk tremendously. The V will be discontinued soon as it is but a tribute, nostalgic retro product now for Hasselblad (see the new chrome Carl Zeiss lenses that differ only in looks from the standard CFE).

As it stands, my Hasselblad still remains a great investment. It will be a while since digital becomes attractive enough, in quality and economics, for me to consider moving over. And then, I might have a chance of a new digital back. Otherwise, I would still have saved a lot of money not forking for incremental upgrades from H1, to H2, to H3 and so on.

When it comes to my photographs, my final output that is, I can make a 50x60cm (20x24") print from a 50 or even 100 iso film (color or BW) that shows absolutely no grain, has detail to spare and will a couple lifetimes atleast. My negatives are also a more secure storage medium and can always scan them (as I do) for that 10k square image.

Re:Hasselblad and Film

[doctor_no]

If you have a Hasselblad V-system and want to use a modern digital back you should get the new Mamiya/Phase One 645 AFDIII with a V-adapter. Its an open system so it'll take all your old blad V-lenses (as well as Contax, Zeiss Ikon, Pentax lenses as well). Also the 50MP sensor will be available to Leaf and PhaseOne later. Not to mention the availability of cheap backs (the Mamiya ZD back is around $8k now)

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/phase645.shtml

Re:Hasselblad and Film

[arigram]

Thanks, but I don't need to change bodies. The vast majority of digital backs come with Hasselblad V adapters. Plus, it will be a while since I will be seriously interested in a digital back.

Mmm, I4U gadget models!

[joe_n_bloe]

I did manage to spend about 30 seconds reading the article though.

better have a steady hand

[v1]

from cnet we have:

The specs on the two cameras, however, show the lower-resolution version to be faster: 1.4 seconds per capture for the H3DII-39 over 1.1 seconds for the H3DII-50. That could simply be implementation-specific, though.

Indeed, 1.4 seconds is a very long time to not move. Only useful for objects and scenery, certainly not going to do people or wildlife.

Re:better have a steady hand

[Anonymous Coward]

You're operating under a misapprehension. The picture itself can be taken in 1/1000th of a second (or less). It takes 1.4 seconds to move the image from the buffer to your storage card.

Re:better have a steady hand

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is talking about capture time, not exposure time.

Exposure time is the time you have to stay still for - the time the shutter is open.

Capture time is how long it takes to move the picture to memory.

Re:better have a steady hand

[j_peeba]

from cnet we have:

The specs on the two cameras, however, show the lower-resolution version to be faster: 1.4 seconds per capture for the H3DII-39 over 1.1 seconds for the H3DII-50. That could simply be implementation-specific, though.

Indeed, 1.4 seconds is a very long time to not move. Only useful for objects and scenery, certainly not going to do people or wildlife.

The times refer to saving the photos, not exposing them.

Re:better have a steady hand

[w00d]

from cnet we have:

The specs on the two cameras, however, show the lower-resolution version to be faster: 1.4 seconds per capture for the H3DII-39 over 1.1 seconds for the H3DII-50. That could simply be implementation-specific, though.

Indeed, 1.4 seconds is a very long time to not move. Only useful for objects and scenery, certainly not going to do people or wildlife.

I do not think that means what you think it means.

It has nothing to do with shutter speeds. You just can't shoot again until 1.4 seconds, which is how long it takes the camera to process and write the image to the card. The camera has a frame rate of about 0.7 FPS.

Re:better have a steady hand

[Anonymous Coward]

The shutter is open from 1/8000 to a few seconds. The 1.1 or 1.4 seconds referred to in the article is the fastest time between photographs, and is dictated by the time required to to extract, process then store the information from the sensor.

Re:better have a steady hand

[T-Bone-T]

I was pretty sure you were going to point out that 1.4 seconds isn't faster than 1.1 seconds but then you went a completely different direction.

Won't be able to shoot many pics

[Dracil]

If you shoot RAW. Only about 200 pics on a 16GB card. Even less if you do RAW+JPG.

Re:Won't be able to shoot many pics

[gujo-odori]

Considering the tremendous porn applications of a camera like this, I rather imagine "raw" is just what they'll be shooting

Medium format cameras are certainly in the price range where they'll have internal hard drives and/or firewire or USB connections for external drives. This isn't really intended for putting imagines on flash cards. Medium format cameras are used by professionals and very serious amateurs.

Telescope

[MrKaos]

I would really like to put one of these in a telescope, maybe there is a camera adapter I could use. I think that would be cooler than using it for ad's (which is probably what it is for)

Re:Diffraction limit?

[AaronW]

That is becoming an issue, though the aperture also fits into this. With an APS-C sized sensor (the most common in D-SLRs) a 12MP camera starts to hit this limit around F11. Having a larger sensor helps in this case.

ISPs better prepare

[spir0]

those of us in third world countries like New Zealand who have to pay in blood for our bandwidth are going to start seeing Users sending (or trying to send) their friends 40+ meg attachments once those cameras become standard consumer issue. Trying to explain to my dad how to load MS Paint, and shrink the image, resulted in him writing down the instructions, and then promptly ringing me the first time he had to follow those instructions.

The major ISPs in this country who offer "broadband" plans with 200MB traffic per month -- yes, you read that right: MB -- are going going to have to do some serious reassessing. As it is, with Xbox demo games upward of 1GB, I don't know how we're putting up with this garbage.

As Uncle Ben said: "With great power comes great responsibility." Everybody wants the power, but nobody wants the responsibility.

I'll probably be marked as a troll, but this is a serious issue. How many of you have received one page word docs, or excel spreadsheets from companies, only to find that those files were over 5 megs? just a bunch of text, and fecking huge 12 million DPI logo.

I'm not saying we should stay in the dark ages, but we need to start preparing.

Re:ISPs better prepare

[Macgrrl]

those of us in third world countries like New Zealand who have to pay in blood for our bandwidth are going to start seeing Users sending (or trying to send) their friends 40+ meg attachments once those cameras become standard consumer issue. Trying to explain to my dad how to load MS Paint, and shrink the image, resulted in him writing down the instructions, and then promptly ringing me the first time he had to follow those instructions.

Get your dad a Mac.

I managed to teach my mother how to us iPhoto to save an email friendly version of a photo to send to friends with a minimum of fuss.

That said, I wish someone would teach our marketing people that a 'blank' one page word template doesn't need to be 5Mb and the social club should stop killing our mail network by sending 4Mb upwards emails to the entire work userbase nationally. :/

Re:ISPs better prepare

[Tatisimo]

Your wait will be well worth the time. Fellow third world dweller here. From what I see happening in towns in the middle of nowhere, you will soon catch up. Here in the city, we have the standard 1.5 meg broadband, but in places where the technology is new, thay are making the jump from 128 kbs dial up to the newest 4-8 meg at the same price I pay! It seems that it's cheaper when they put in brand new tubes than to upgrade... Just wait till some rich guy who wants to get richer decides to invest in connecting your area to the internet. It may take a few years, but it'll happen. Just check out the growth of the internet in Vietnam, South America, and Africa. Their connection is either very slow, or freakin' fast! Nothing in

Re:ISPs better prepare

[figleaf]

Or just install a product like Windows Live Desktop Mail -- it automatically resizes and has a easy GUI option to reduce the file-size if required.

Re:ISPs better prepare

[ptbarnett]

Trying to explain to my dad how to load MS Paint, and shrink the image, resulted in him writing down the instructions, and then promptly ringing me the first time he had to follow those instructions.

Have him download and install the Image Resizer Power Toy:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/ImageResizerPowertoySetup.exe

One installed, all you have to do is right-click on the image and choose Resize Pictures.

If you mark multiple images before doing so, you can do all of them at one time. It gives you a simple menu to choose the desired size, and can either resize the original file or create a resized copy.

Re:ISPs better prepare

[Lumpy]

oh cripes. install imagemagick for him

mogrify -resize 640X480 *.jpg

simple as pie and far easier than the paragraph of instructions you have to give to do it in any other program. Hell make it a batch file and grab the filename from when he drags and drops it on the bat file icon and it will do it magickally.

Most of the time a command line program is the best option, and surprisingly computer newbies find then easier as well.

Re:ISPs better prepare

[spandex_panda]

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!)

Re:ISPs better prepare

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Tell your non-techie friends and family to get a Mac. If you're in iPhoto and use the e-mail option, it re-sizes them to something a bit more sane by default.

As for our ISP situation, it is crap. But 200MB? Sure you're not getting confused with mobile broadband? Because I have a 10GB cap, and it's not exactly a high-end plan.

Re:ISPs better prepare

[TooMuchToDo]

New Zealand have nice weather? I'd love to come out there from the states for a year and set up a non-profit/coop fiber concern to provide high speed access.

Re:ISPs better prepare

[spir0]

Get your dad a Mac.

don't get me started on that. I've tried. trust me. I've tried. If you look up "stubborn old mule" in the dictionary, you will see a photo of my dad.

In fact, the last time I mentioned a Mac to him was last night. I even offered to give him one of mine. No go. And for the record, I think iPhoto is the biggest piece of dogpoo i've ever had the misfortune of using in my life. :) I'm not teaching that to anyone.

Re:ISPs better prepare

[spir0]

New Zealand have nice weather? I'd love to come out there from the states for a year and set up a non-profit/coop fiber concern to provide high speed access.

depends on how you define nice. it's much colder than older places, but it's no Siberia. If the temperature here gets to 30 degrees C, we're in the middle of a heatwave. I personally think it's nice, and when I last went to Australia, I near melted.

in NZ, bandwidth costs a shitload. I'd invite you over, but you would fail. basically, that which is happening or threatening to happen is something that we've been used to since day one. the reason is because most of our traffic is international. in the states, most of the content you access is national; therefore, your ISPs are a lot more generous.

we have a fiber network in my city (wellington), but you wouldn't get it out to the residential areas unless you had a boatload of cash. and you can't rely on piggybacking onto our primary telco. they are still running a network with NEAX 61Es and Ks. they won't upgrade because it'll eat into their profits and the bigwigs will lose their bonuses. oh they've got the money. and they'll save millions a year just on power savings by cutting down from gargantuan racks of switches to something current. but they don't look that far ahead.

the last problem you'll face is that NZ is tiny. our entire country has half the population of New York. I'm talking New York City, not the state.

Re:ISPs better prepare

[TooMuchToDo]

When you have a chance, see if any of this info helps:

http://www.google.com/search?q=municipal+fiber&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t

Re:ISPs better prepare

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yeah, but that is their minimum, and for only $10 more you get a 3GB plan. But yeah, that still is bad.

Re:ISPs better prepare

[LadyLucky]

Oh come on, if you're with xtra you get what you deserve. They're way more expensive and have lower caps than everyone else.

Optics

[Drunken_Piper]

I know very little about optics, but how big would the lens need to be to capitalize on all 50 million pixels? They say the sensor could detect a laptop from an aerial photo, but could the optics?

Re:Optics

[opti6600]

Has a lot more to do with the quality of the glass than the size - the size tends to have to do more with how fast you want the shot to be (smaller aperture number/"bigger aperture" -> much bigger lens with normal optics).

The quality of the glass though...there's a reason why the lenses for a Hasselblad H3 are $4k for the same "version" of a $1k 35mm lens. Resolving power, for one.

Re:I don't know about how many LoCs this is ....

[corsec67]

.... but, you could spot the pimple on the Pron star's ass from 1000 feet away without using a zoom lens.

You mean a telephoto lens?

I have a Sigma 10-20mm lens that is a zoom lens that is from crazy-wide to very-wide, and doesn't get to a "normal" focal length. Perhaps you mean something like a 500mm lens, which doesn't zoom?

Focal length comparison, from 10 to 500mm on a 1.5x crop sensor here

Consumer grade medium format

[BenEnglishAtHome]

...when was the last time you saw a "consumer" grade medium format film camera?

Uh, ... today?

Re:Consumer grade medium format

[Kickasso]

It's not a "consumer grade camera". It's a toy.

Not a chance

[mbessey]

I don't think a do-it yourself digital back for your old camera is a very realistic project, unless you're an experienced Analog & Digital electronics designer. Kodak used to have a pretty nice demo board for their CMOS imager chips, which was about as "plug and play" as you could hope for, but I haven't seen anything for their higher-end CCD sensors...

Actually, they do have an evaluation board listed for the previous version of this sensor:
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/business/ISS/Products/Fullframe/KAF-39000/support.jhtml?pq-path=11937/11938/12138/12249/12265

That probably means they'll have one for the 50MP version soon(ish). Reading the documents on that page should give you an idea of the level of work involved.

Film captures 80-100 line-pairs per square mm

[davidwr]

To get the same resolution using a CCD, you'll want 400 dots per mm, or 10,000 dots per inch. That's 100 megapixels per square inch.

On a 35mm camera, that's approximately 132 megapixels. For a 6x9 medium-format shot, 56 × 84, it's approximately 718 megapixels.

If resolution doubles every 18 months or so, we should be there by 2014.

I'm probably 5 years too late in declaring that film is becoming a niche market.

Re:Film captures 80-100 line-pairs per square mm

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need to add some qualifications to your statement about film resolution. Fine grain, slow speed, black and white film can capture 80-100 lp/mm under ideal conditions after being developed by a meticulous professional in their own darkroom.

A 20 megapixel 35mm sensor can perform as well as the finest color film--the lack of grain and noise more than make up for the theoretical resolution difference. Hell, even a 5 megapixel digicam can produce prints that look better than anything I ever shot on film.

At this point film is beyond niche market and is headed (very quickly) into the territory where only true eccentrics and luddites will keep on using it.

these exist!

[rebelcool]

They are called scanning backs because that is precisely what they do.

And yes, the resolution is unparalleled. 50 megapixels was achieved in these, oh maybe 10 years ago. Its not uncommon today for these to generate files in excess of 1GB.

Re:these exist!

[jcupitt65]

I worked on the software for a colour-calibrated 20k x 20k pixel scan back (400 mpixels) in 1995.

A 400 mpixel scan took about 40 minutes, I think. It was so long we had to have extra corrections in the image assembly stage for the sag in the easel over that time.

Pics plus details are here:

http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/km/projs/marc/marcamera.html

buy an older one

[rebelcool]

Old digital backs are still for sale on the market because they have no moving parts to fail. They work great.

Some of them have to be tethered to a computer.

Pretty soon there will be a good surplus of used 22MP backs on the market for about the price of a 1DS MKIII ($8000). I think the mamiya ZD is trading at $10k, brand new, with lens and camera body included.

Re:I can't use this - YES YOU CAN

[visualight]

Wow, this would be so cool. At this resolution, I expect you could crop the tiniest square out and be able to enlarge the hell out of it with it looking pixelated.

So instead of taking 100 photos, you could just take one big one of the whole school (at a ball game maybe?) and then crop headshots out all day.

And then there's the voyeurs...hot girls better watch out I guess.

why not move the lens?

[way2trivial]

how impossible is it to take a shot- and move the sensor- and reshoot?

imagine a 25 MP sensor mounted with something that expands when a current is applied.
take a picture, and apply a smidge of current, and take a picture.

now process the two results into one double resolution pixle picture-- offset just enough of a hair to get double the resolution.

Re:why not move the lens?

[corsec67]

That would be called photo stitching, and is useful for panoramas of landscapes.

Not very useful for a picture of a person, unless you like arms that have seams.

I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[toby]

...in a typical medium format transparency (6x7cm) shot with a good lens (e.g. Mamiya Sekor). That's a careful assessment made by inspecting top quality drum scans. Yes, those lenses are expensive; up to $3K-4K new, but that's not just the optics - the lens integrates the leaf shutter (not focal plane, typical of consumer cameras).

For comparison, a 35mm film frame (24x36mm, iirc) carries about 15 Megapixels (there is wide consensus on this).

More here, here...

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[drinkypoo]

Only 15MP for a 35MM? That's fantastic news. It suggests that digital cameras may finally be more capable than a $200 SLR for snapshots :)

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[LordKronos]

You don't need that many pixels. Good quality 6-8MP digitals were considered by many to surpass film because of other characteristics (especially the lack of film grain).

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[Jerry Coffin]

For comparison, a 35mm film frame (24x36mm, iirc) carries about 15 Megapixels (there is wide consensus on this).

Wide, perhaps, but not very deep, so to speak. Anybody who believes the limit on film is around 15 megapixels has essentially no clue of what they're talking about.

A really good 35 mm lens, with the camera mounted on a tripod, carefully focused, and stopped down to maximum sharpness (typically around 2-3 stops from wide open), can resolve around 100-110 lines/mm. Since the film plane is 24x36, that works out to 2400x3600 up to 2640x3960 lines. Keep in mind, however, that this is lines, not pixels. It takes two adjacent pixels to capture a single line. IOW, you're looking at around 35-40 megapixels.

It is true that resolution tends to drop towards the corners so the real overall resolution is likely to be (slightly) lower, and even the best zooms aren't very close to that -- we're talking about a fixed focal length lens. Of course to record that you're also looking at a slow, fine-grained film like Tech Pan 2415 for B&W or Kodachrome 25, Velvia or Provia for color.

OTOH, 15 megapixels is probably a reasonable number if you're comparing to a more typical shot that's hand held, autofocused and only at the optimum f/stop if that's what the camera's programmed auto-exposure happened to choose.

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[torako]

A $200 film SLR will almost make better pictures than a point and shoot digital camera, but that is because I think you are comparing apples and oranges. You'd have to compare film point and shoot cameras to digital point and shoot cameras or film SLRs to digital SLRs.

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[Xiph]

Seen those big posters strung to cover a building, 37 mp photos looks better than 15.

This is why high end medium format photography is using 37 mp.

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[0xygen]

You are comparing area to length. Check your units.

Megapixels = area.
Frame dimensions = length.

35mm = 1.37" frame width
1.37" x 1.18in = 1.6 square inches in 7:6 format.
6"x7" = 42 square inches.

42 / 1.6 = 26.25 - suspiciously close to your number.

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[FlightlessParrot]

Perhaps a typo? Shouldn't it be 40 Megapixels?

If we take 15 Mp for a 35 mm frame, which is probably OK, though you might see better with extremely meticulous technique, then you'd expect 6x7 (which is actually 56mm x some other number less than 70) to give a bit over 4 times the number of Megaps.

But 35 mm cameras typically do better than medium format in detail per square unit, because the lenses are easier, and 35mm film lies flatter in the film plane than 120.

So 40 megapixels sounds just about right for practical results with your Mamiya.

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[cetan]

Sorry, but no camera can "make" better pictures than any other camera. Cameras are inanimate objects and are not capable of operating themselves.

Making blanket statements like "SLR can make better pictures than p&s's" is absurd on many levels. But to take it further and claim that you can only compare film p&S to digital p&s is to demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of how photography even works.

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[cetan]

I know of billboards over highways that have been shot with 2MP cameras.

You, like most consumers, believe that more MP means better. You couldn't be more wrong.

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[cetan]

Further discussion below:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=607661&cid=24108985

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[jschen]

A friend of mine had a picture he took put up on a billboard in his small town at about 640x480. Sure, the billboard is huge, but the viewer is never very close. If that's good enough for standard definition TV, it's good enough for a billboard.

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you're comparing inches to cemtimetres. Medium format is 6x7 cm, not 6x7".

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[Kickasso]

Yeah, I'd expect something close to 40 mega too.

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[Xiph]

ok, i guess i should've been more specific.

I was thinking of the huge cloth poster hanging in the metro in copenhagen. People get within 1 meter of it, and it's 3 stories high.

Im also fairly certain it was taken with a Hasselblad H1 camera and a Phase One P45+ back, i don't remember the lens, but it wasn't a cheapie.

Re:I've measured around 400 Megapixels equivalent

[torako]

You demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of what I was comparing. Naturally a good photographer can take fantastic pictures with any kind of equipment, just as a bad photographer won't improve his skills by using a $3000 DSLR.

So I guess there's no point of ever comparing any two cameras now, because it all depends on the photographer?

Wrong, because there are still properties that can be compared objectively. The available lenses for SLR systems are usually better (measurable) than the fixed lenses on P&S cameras. So it's unfair to compare those two.

The metering and focusing systems are usually more accurate and faster on SLR cameras, making it again unfair to compare them with P&S cameras.

And those are just two examples of what might be compared, without even touching the digital vs. film issue.

And to a certain extent just giving an SLR to a P&S snapshot guy will improve his photos, even if it's just a better automatic exposure or less noise on higher ISO settings (he will still continue to take the same boring photos he has taken before of course).

Who WILL use sensors like this...

[deathcow]

Amateur (and well off) astro-photographers.

Manufacturers who are probably playing with engineering samples right now:

http://www.sbig.com/
http://www.flicamera.com/
http://www.qsimaging.com/

Re:Who WILL use sensors like this...

[spandex_panda]

aerial photography will definitelly use something like this. digital photography is everywhere on the ground, but from my limited understanding, you can get higher resolutions from scanning large format film. Aerial photography is the thing which all our topographical maps were made from, getting medium format digital cameras for relatively cheap ($30000 is relatively cheap) means we can get faster turnaround and all that, this is good news.

but what we really ant to know...

[sTalking_Goat]

...how is this going to make my porn better?

A scanner hooked to a panoramic head is better

[od05]

You can get better results with a robotic camera mount hooked up to a zoom lens than this sensor, or even by film captured through a drum scanner. The only difference is this can do it in one shot.

Not bad for $37,000.00

[theshowmecanuck]

Only if you can afford $37,000.00+. That would buy a lot of film and developing solutions... I know that the larger the format when doing black and white, the better the tonality... I wonder how that translates in digital, given you have way less latitude than b+w film. But if you have the bucks, why not? Whoever who has the best toys when they die wins, right? And hey, it is environmentally more friendly than wet photography.

Re:Not bad for $37,000.00

[MadnessASAP]

Hey, some of us happened to like smelling like a walking chemical factory.

Re:Not bad for $37,000.00

[AmigaMMC]

Who said that? Maybe a few years ago, today we have cameras that are better than any B&W film. Hint: I'm a professional photographer. I'm on /. because I'm a reformed geek and every once in a while I get withdrawals ;-)

Re:Not bad for $37,000.00

[Xiph]

the h3-DII50 won't be available until October (possibly later)
their competitors are coming with 65 mp digital backs.

Hasselblad is a locked down proprietary system, hasselblad cameras only connect to hasselblad backs, and vice versa.

Mamiya and Phase One are using open protocols in their cameras and backs.

btw. Expect an announcement of an even higher pixelcount back at the photokina conference. 23 of september.

Re:Not bad for $37,000.00

[cerberusss]

Hint: I'm a professional photographer. I'm on /. because I'm a reformed geek

You don't fool us, buddy. You're still a geek! :-D

Re:Not bad for $37,000.00

[Z00L00K]

You are still brand bound regardless of camera brand since intermixing will give you lack of functionality one way or another.

Re:Not bad for $37,000.00

[cetan]

[[I wonder how that translates in digital, given you have way less latitude than b+w film]]

I would like to see proof of your statement. Do you have direct experience using a medium format digital back?

Re:Not bad for $37,000.00

[Walter Carver]

Yes, sensors have greater dynamic range and less noise.

Re:I can't use this - YES YOU CAN

[Zymergy]

That depends if the shooter gets paid by the head shot or paid by the hour.

I am putting my money on he will drag the process out rather than crop like a fiend at his/her workstation (and probably not get paid much fo that time)..
That, and the 50 kids that were talking to each other or had their eyes shut.

It WOULD be interesting to take some hi-res shots of stadium crowds to spot gems like this: http://my.break.com/content/view.aspx?ContentID=353366

I accept your challenge kdawson and wager $100

[victim]

You take this camera up to an altitude of 1 mile or whatever it is that gives you a 1.5mi wide field of view with your favorite lens, and I'll hide my original blue iBook somewhere in the field of view and you tell me where from a single snapshot to collect your $100.

If you lose, you can give me the (obviously overhyped) camera.

Re:I can't use this - YES YOU CAN

[rcw-home]

Wow, this would be so cool. At this resolution, I expect you could crop the tiniest square out and be able to enlarge the hell out of it with it looking pixelated.

Sure. Unless it's blurry. 50MP at 4x3 aspect ratio is at least 8165 horizontal pixels. Most digital cameras have a similar angle of view as a 35mm camera - which Wikipedia lists as 39.6 degrees. Can you keep your camera from moving more than 8 arc-seconds (half a pixel width) during the exposure period?

Forget just getting a good tripod. Get a remote, too, so you're not even bumping it to press the shutter button.

Also, divvying up those photons 50 million ways means each CCD pixel gets less, so unless you're using the sort of lenses that the medium format camera in the article would have, you'd have to use longer exposures (and/or cool down the CCD to well below freezing to reduce thermal noise, which is what many astronomy geeks do).

wobulation

[tepples]

how impossible is it to take a shot- and move the sensor- and reshoot?

You're thinking of wobulation. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't work too well when your subject is also moving.

Re:wobulation

[way2trivial]

thank you for that link, really.. for all the brevity it intrigues me, I note that about 'display' technology not 'input/digitize' side of things-- but it is the same idea.

It seems to me, for the most part-- things you want to shoot with a 50 megapixle lens, are things that don't move so fast that a sensor capable of XX frames per second -- it would notice the difference..

aren't cmos sensors capable of two images a very small slice of a second apart?

More Than 50MP That Meets the Eye

[Doc Ruby]

The fovea of the human eye, the part that sees details, is approximately (in a hexagonal layout) 4000x3000 photoreceptive cells. To saturate the foveal field with data, the Nyquist rate says that an image must deliver 8000 x 6000 dots. Which is 48MP. 50MP is enough to cover that field. It's still not quite enough to completely fool the eye, until the 50MP is in a grid that exactly matches the eye - and no two eyes are the same, even in a single person, and not regularly hexagonal, but actually a stochastic distribution in a roughly six-axial surface across the inside of an uneven sphere.

And even then, the fovea is only about 1mm, capturing a 2-degree field in the middle of vision, about double the width of your thumbnail at arm's length. These 50MP cameras only capture the amount of info that's in the central 2 degrees, though the human eye captures data (though much less per degree outside the fovea) from a visual field with a 160 degree horizontal width and 135 degrees vertical height. Unless the image delivery can track the eye's movement to stay projected on the fovea, the image has to have foveal (over) density imagery across the entire scene for the fovea to track across.

But for images to stare at, 50MP is about the foveal (over) resolution. Further improvement is probably better off invested in image delivery technology, as we're sampling at about the limit of what we can actually see.

Re:More Than 50MP That Meets the Eye

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

The problem is, all that maths and comparisons of electronics to biology doesn't really mean much in the real world. First there is how the digital data is used in producing something, the other part is how our brains process things in the first place, which we don't even fully understand yet. Basically, it makes no sense to compare the two for what you say in your conclusion.

Re:More Than 50MP That Meets the Eye

[doctor_no]

Actually the Hasselblad has a multipass system on their H3DII-39MP. This system will do the exact same thing as the Foveon sensor, it offsets so that each pixel via miniature piezo electric motor gets every color.

As for the Foveon, its a proven flop, its in the Sigma SD14 and have produced worse images then equivalent CMOs based sensors on Canon/Nikon/Sony, etc. Worse is the high-ISO noise level, the Foveon produces more noise then any modern CMOs.

Re:More Than 50MP That Meets the Eye

[TheLink]

My eyes seem rather low res to me. When I look at my screen there's only a very very small area where I can see a period or dot on an i. I could be wrong but I don't get the impression that I have anything like 4000x3000 res in that area - if i move back and look very slightly to the side, I stop being able to see the .

But I cheat, I move that very small high res spot in each eye to refresh the image so that my brain can put together a big high res image. Yes the image is stale, but it works well enough in most cases. And eyes do some tricks as well so it'll be easier to see . by itself than distinguish the dot on an i.

Most current digital cameras don't "cheat" that way[1] - it's high res from one corner to the other corner, and it's all taken at about the same time.

[1] Some specialized cameras do though - like those Mars probe cameras.

Re:More Than 50MP That Meets the Eye

[smallfries]

As SoupIsGoodGood notes above, your conclusion doesn't follow from your arguments. To add to his point: just because we can sample at the spatial resolution of the eye does not imply that we can sample at a temporal limit, or at the limit of colour resolution. Until each of those 50MP captures enough information about the colour and intensity of each dot then image capture still has a long way to go.

Re:More Than 50MP That Meets the Eye

[Doc Ruby]

It's entirely possible that you have bad eyesight. Measuring lots of other people over long time periods has shown that the average human fovea has about 4000x3000 resolution. We all also use eye movement to gather more visual info.

Re:More Than 50MP That Meets the Eye

[Doc Ruby]

My conclusion follows perfectly from my arguments. You're just not following the arguments. Because my conclusion states that more megapixels is probably not as good an investment now, after 50MP, as other investments, like better color precision and accuracy. As for the temporal limit (also not megapixels), the optic nerve signals at about 40Hz, so our fastest digital cameras can outperform that human bottleneck. However, the optic nerve is not only massively parallel, but is also "clockless": visual fields aren't carried to the visual cortex in discrete frames, but rather in parallel streams per "pixel" that arrive whenever they arrive, with a small latency (that cameras outperform). So not only is the retina's hexagonal grid more complex (and irregular) than our cameras' firmly regular rectangular grid (so we can see the static grid in our fluid visuals), but so too is the temporal grid in which the moving images arrive in our brains.

But none of that is megapixels. We've probably got about enough megapixels. As I concluded, we should invest in making the 3D (x,y,t) distribution of captured visual data match more closely the distribution of sensed visual signals, to get more fidelity return on our tech investment.

There's probably a complex argument to make about whether color fidelity is a better investment target than is improving the various "grid fidelities". But though that analysis requires a lot more complex economic and technical analysis than is appropriate to a Slashdot post, the industry has already backed away from 40bit color (that we delivered in the early 1990s) down to 32 or 24bit. Because humans distinguish (somewhat) fewer than the 16.8M total colors that 24 bits can specify. Again, the problem is the grid: the human colorspace is very complex, and there's no commercial colorspace that matches it exactly (even as an average of many tested humans). There's far too many reds and blues than greens in the artificial spaces, so there's many different greens our cameras can't capture, and many different reds and blues they do but we can't tell apart. And that is true across the gamut of colors in either the digital or natural spaces. Which again is a "grid problem". Not the resolution of the grid (this time the resolution of the gamut), but the distribution of the grid (to match the idiosyncratic distribution of the human colorspace in its natural grid).

So we have a long way to go. I didn't say we don't. The question I considered is how much further to go in the megapixels direction, rather than the others needed. My answer is accurate.

Re:More Than 50MP That Meets the Eye

[smallfries]

Your reply is completely correct, and expresses your argument well. I agree with you completely. But it is not what you said in your first post.

Further improvement is probably better off invested in image delivery technology, as we're sampling at about the limit of what we can actually see.

I'll just note that improving colour sampling is not a delivery technology. Also the fastest digital cameras do not operate at anything like the spatial or colour resolution that slower cameras operate at. In order to reach the limit of what we can actually see requires that we hit all three targets at once.

Yes, this is not pushing more megapixels into image capture. But that is not what you originally put across.

Re:More Than 50MP That Meets the Eye

[Doc Ruby]

In my first post, I said that 50MP is about enough. That we should probably invest in improving more than just more pixels. I did say that we should probably invest in better image delivery first, but that doesn't exclude investing in better color fidelity, which is probably also a better investment than in more pixels. And indeed I expect we'll get more ROI from investments in image delivery than in color fidelity, since we've already got very good color fidelity (if not nearly perfect, as I described), but our image delivery is really awful. For example, screens with limited viewing angles, low contrasts, glare... There's a lot more cheap improvements waiting in delivering images to the eye, probably at first with goggles or other delivery more directly to the retina.

That's what I've been saying since that first post. But there is indeed more to it than meets the eye.

Re:More Than 50MP That Meets the Eye

[avandesande]

That's not how we look at things.. our eyes don't look at a whole picture evenly. If you make a large print of a photograph, the eye scans over smaller areas over time. Pictures aren't just slabs of data that are scanned into our eyes.

Re:More Than 50MP That Meets the Eye

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

But you have overlooked many real world factors. One example is cropping. The other is the end product -- Who is to say that a photographer can't make a large print that requires a person to scan over the entire print, looking at the detail, rather than just focusing on only one point or area of the photo for the entire time they're looking at it. And what about science and commercial uses? And we still are no way near complete in understanding the visual system to the point where we have a full understanding of what makes up the subjective experience of seeing. If you think otherwise, then please post some links, because last time I checked, we had a good understanding of many different parts, but that's not the same thing.

Niche market film

[davidwr]

By niche market, I was thinking of 19th-century films and development processes, which some artists and hobbyists prefer because of what they can do or "just because."

Yes, there are people who still do Tintype. Not many, but they exist.

Depends on the notebook color

[SuperKendall]

Each photosite is around 1 ft across in that hypothetical 1.5 mile wide view (actually really a little smaller, and only in one axis - the image pixel count is 8176 x 6132).

But that's just a photosite. Each photosite is behind a grid in a Bayer array, which means each photosite is either red, green, or blue. If you have a green laptop behind a green filter - it'll just look black.

So it's an impressive number of pixels, but you lose more detail than you might think even with the huge numbers.

Actually, you can

[randolph]

All you need is a requirement for a really large print or, alternatively, a reason to shoot in low-light conditions. Most consumer digital camera manufacturers set a goal of matching 35mm film (they've actually exceeded it by now). But the joke of this is that 35mm film is just barely large enough to make good 8x10 prints, provided you've carefully composed your image. Me, I can't afford a camera that uses this sensor, so I'll keep on using my medium-format film camera. At least the parts are cheaper.

Resolution so high

[EEPROMS]

one can finally see if they are fake or not..

I knew camera geeks were geeks...

[xalorous]

but I didn't know how bad it was.

Oohhhh

[Big Hairy Ian]

Ok so when do they fit one on the Hubble?

Specs and news release: KODAK KAF-50100

[Futurepower(R)]

Kodak Specs

Kodak News Release

OK, then...

[BenEnglishAtHome]

All those university students who have done photo projects with them and all those (admittedly often faux-) serious artists who use them might take issue with you. But, if you insist, take a step up in price to this camera and experience a consumer/student grade medium format camera that's really quite rewarding and definitely not a toy.

Or do you insist that "consumer-grade" must necessarily employ useless bells and whistles and silly flashing lights? If so...never mind.

50MP image size

[comcn]

So that's about 8165 x 6124 at your standard 4:3, and an image of approx 27" x 20" when printed at 300dpi...

Re:50MP image size DPI vs PELS

[Nom du Keyboard]

So that's about 8165 x 6124 at your standard 4:3, and an image of approx 27" x 20" when printed at 300dpi...

I hope that you realize that your inkjet printer's DPI does not relate at all to PELS (Picture ELEments) resolution. In order to print the wide gamut of colors from just the CMYK inks, inkjet printers print color cells.

Example 1: An HP 600dpi printer has a 4x4 color cell (16 spots to put ink dots), resulting in an effective resolution of 150 pels/inch.

An Epson 1440dpi printer can put a partially overlapping ink dot every 1/1440th of an inch, but in terms of pels/inch it only manages about 240/inch.

The upshot is that most prints you see are less than 300 pels/inch, and they look beautiful. And sending an 1440ppi (Pixels Per Inch) image to your 1440dpi inkjet results in huge files and long transmission times just so that the printer can throw away about 90% of the picture information.

Just me bitching....

[EmagGeek]

I like the compact Point-and-Shoot cameras because they are easy to travel with. I spend some coin on a nice 7MP camera with nice optics, but I'm finding that the print quality sucks because I can't turn off the JPEG compression in the camera.

I'd love to find a compact Point-n-Shoot that can save images in uncompressed formats. Anyone know of one?

Re:Just me bitching....

[Kickasso]

http://chdk.wikia.com/

Re:Just me bitching....

[EmagGeek]

Thanks - I love it when people can hack firmware. I wish something like this were available for my Leica. I've never liked Canons and will probably never buy one.