Seitz's 160 Megapixel Digital Camera

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

FT submission

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

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

Re:FT submission

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

Re:FT submission

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

I have seen it!

The future of high-rez pr0n!

Re:I have seen it!

The future of high-rez pr0n!

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

In a camera phone? Why?

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

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

Re:In a camera phone? Why?

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

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

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

Diffraction, shmiffraction...

Negative Refractive Index [wikipedia.org]... specifically read the last paragraphs about superlenses and breaking the diffraction limit.

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

Not even 1Gp.

Ahem. Gigapxl Project [gigapxl.org].

Re:Not even 1Gp.

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

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

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

Educated guess

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

Re:Educated guess

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

Re:Educated guess

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

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

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

Just an idea...

Maybe they need to replace the camera on Hubble Space Telescope with one of these cameras? Seems like only the government can afford one of these things, and can blame the manufacturer if the technician drops the camera when taking it out of the box.

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

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

This is not a digital camera

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

Re:This is not a digital camera

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

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

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

cameraphones

160MP in a pinhole camera. That'll be sure to produce some great results...

What is its dynamic range?

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

Linux support out of the box

I find it interesting that Linux is mentionned as a control platform from the start. I doubt that many professional photographers actually use it since the tools aren't quite up to par with the commercial stuff for a number of uses (no "but Gimp can do it too whining please"). Were there that many requests for Linux support ? Or are the makers just Unix hackers ?

Even the portable control device is apparently by default a Sharp Zaurus.

Brace for the pr0n jokes

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

For the love of God, or at least the server

Lets do some back of the envelope math here, shall we? While it will depend heavily on how well the scene compresses, my digital camera averages about 400kb for a 2 megapixel shot at "pretty decent for mailing home quality" JPG. So that Aussie harbor is probably weighing in at above 300 MBs, and its a static file. This sounds like a job for bittorrent, not for "Hey, I've got a bright idea, lets Slashdot their webpage as the morning rush comes in".

It's the lens stupid

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

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

i found waldo

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

Nice Experiment

I am not sure that scan back digital cameras will ever be very useful for much more than studio work, as illustrated by the awful ergonomics of this particular one.

Molding finger grooves into anything is a silly idea. Molding them into a camera that couldn't possibly be handheld has to rank up there in the sillydom world.

Obligatory Dans Data "Enough already..

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

Seitz = Goat Cam?

This promo image [roundshot.ch] of the camera makes it look like goatsee...

My guess

The article is quite skimpy on the technology. By the size of the camera I am guessing all they have done is to split the image optically into some 16 or 20 pieces and are using some 18 or 21 CCD image sensors to capture the image. They read these chips in parallel and load it into an internal buffer. The dynamic range if each CCD sensor is exactly same as what you could get in 5 Megapixel camera.

Comes with a mac mini!

Anyone notice that the data storage device itself is a mac mini in a bag?

What's the point?

With other technological advances there are reasons for the extra speed, larger storage capacity, etc. Photography however suffers from other limitations that make anything above 8-16Mpixels virtually useless.

At best computer monitors have a resolution of 1600x1200, so without significantly zooming out, you can never display the entire picture on the screen. Printing is the only area where more Mpixels are needed, but even there, at 8.5x11 8-16 Mpixel images are crisp enough. There ARE areas where extremely high resolutions are needed, but they're definitely not consumer level.

I have an 8Mpixel camera, and I am not likely to want more any time soon.

Panoramic Camera

The camera is fairly specialized - it's a panoramic camera for commercial photographers. 160MP makes sense if you're going to do very large mural size prints. Think, giant travel scenery or product posters at trade shows or other commercial venues.

TMPI - Too Much Personal Information

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

2 cents,

QueenB

I say...

We take up a collection to purchase one of these for the playboy photographers.

Not gonna happen

[..]but how long before we see this resolution in a mobile phone?

I do realize that the future will bring us things that we simply cannot understand the use of today, such as computers exceeding today's super computers. But I doubt that just because the tech is going to be there, that we will see 160 MP consumer cams. Eventually, people will stop hearing megapixel and instead listen to other intuitive features. Maybe built-in software with 3D depth readability and such?

Scanners are about the same. Back when we had 300 DPI scanners, it was all about DPI. Now that scanners can make the balls of a fly look hairy with perception, there's no need for more.

OT: If you're thinking that 160 MP is a lot, how about 4 GP? You can check the proof right here [digital-lifestyles.info].

Not a 720 Megapixel Camera

"Even with todays current range of digital cameras massive images are possible -- such as the amazing 720 Megapixel image of Sydney Harbour"

To be fair ~ That image was made with 169 images from a Canon EOS 10D [dpreview.com] that has 6.3 Megapixels and then the multiple images were stitched together [docbert.org] using AutPan Pro [autopano.net].

Nice but...

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

"how long?..."

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

long.

Storage first, cameraphones second

Granted it is difficult to get great pictures using a small fixed lens (ie cameraphones), and additionally just increasing pixel count doesn't directly increase image quailty, so I would think that part of the reason that we are holding at roughly VGA resolution cameraphones has something to do with storage requirements. *Most* camera phones are now the standard/base model phones. They don't spend the extra money on hardware for external storage, and also most of their users don't want to spend the additionaly money on storage. All of that to say, even if this was "available" for cameraphones, until we can easily have/add several gigs of storage, the ability to have several photos will probably be more useful that having *better* photos.

Obligatory adolescent humor

Insert comment here about how this technology could be used to render highly detailed and accurate images of the undraped human form.

megapixels don't matter!

It doesn't matter if you have a bijillion megapixels in your cell phone camera. Tiny crappy lense = crappy pictures.

Sydney Graffiti

I've never seen Sydney in person, but now I know that just about every building in the city is tagged with "Scott Howard" graffiti. The guy is just out of control.

What does MP count really mean?

My phone has a 1 MP camera on it, my camera has 5MP, but an option to shoot at 1MP. Now, if i take a 1 MP picture with both of the same scene, the one i took with my camera looks exactly like the one i took with my phone, but without the snowstorm that seems to be raging on in the phone version. 700+ MP is not going to be any better in terms of actual image quality then current professional >50 MP cameras.

Thank guys.

You just slashdotted my country.

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

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

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

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

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

I can't imagine what for

I guess if you're printing the photos billboard-sized, and stand 3 feet away to view them, you need this resolution. Otherwise it just eats up disk space. I'm a pro with 8 megapixel Canon 1D2N and 20D's, and with a top-end lens, 13x19 inch prints look fantastic. Heck, a billboard from my camera would look OK - if your viewing distance is a couple hundred feet.

Batteries

Hmm. What a dilemma. I care about the environment, but should I risk using rechargeable batteries in this thing?

How about focusing on . . .

. . . making a digital camera that doesn't have a smear or blur issue during low light situations. Or one that will allow the user to take more pictures in quicker succession. I can get about 2 a second, which is okay, but lets advance some of the other features before we make more megapixels. What will that do for me anyways unless I want to make a Citizen Kane sized print of myself.

great camera..

http://www.roundshot.ch/pictures/Seitz-6x17-handhe ld.jpg [roundshot.ch]

No need of $35k for large images

When I want to do a proper landscape, I put my DSLR in the bag and pull out the $200 Graflex Crown Graphic from 1947. The 4x5 transparency film will be scanned at 2400 dpi on my $300 Epson 4990 flatbed scanner to give me just about 100 megapixels... Largely enough to get my 2GB desktop computer to it's knees when opened in photoshop :-)

Now, thats a deal.. Scanning medium and large format transparency gives fantastic images when scanned; you can the advantages of film (tones, size, and free 70 years backup of the image...) and the advantages of digital (photoshop!)

Boom?

Maybe we can use the 160 megapixel camera to take pictures of the servers hosting the Sidney image exploding, just like the Cox laptop.

Optical Limits On Miniaturization

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

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

sin theta = 1.22 * wavelength / lens diameter

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

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

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

In reply to the Tag

The tag says that there will never be a 160 megapixel camera phone but I say "never say never". I mean look how dumb Bill Gates looks now with his "You'll never need more memory then this" quote.

Storage device - Mac mini !

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

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

G.

Yawn

It's effectively a scanner with a fast data transfer; not like this is some wonderful new development in CCDs. The price seems pretty steep when you compare it with the PhaseOne P45 back that incorporates a 39Mpixel non-scanning back, too. I'm sure it's very nice, and has its niche, but I'm not convinced it's News That Matters...

Scanning back on a mobile phone? LOL

Yeah, next thing you know, they'll be cramming view cameras in there, too.

My esteemed article author, do you know what a scanning back is? It's like a flatbed scanner, only it scans the projected image from a lens one line at a time. But like a flatbed, there is a moving sensor which captures one row of pixels at a time. Only someone ignorant of what this camera is would suggest putting one in a mobile phone. Yes, my irony meter works perfectly, so does my ignoramous meter.

And this is not the largest one you can buy. That honor goes to the BetterLight SUPER 8K-HS, which has 384 Mpixels at 12,000 x 15,990.

http://www.betterlight.com/ [betterlight.com]

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

I have no idea how the photosensitive surface of a digicam works but I'd guess they are built using semiconductors. Obviously a higher element density on semiconductors means more pixel receptors on the surface then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Someone explain to me how that applies to Digital Cameras pixal density.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/digital-camera.htm [howstuffworks.com]

KFG