I have more pixels than you.

[apples]

Check it out:

http://www.nature.com/news/gigapixel-camera-catches-the-smallest-details-1.10853


Supercameras Could Capture Never-Before-Seen Detail - Yahoo! News

Already pre-ordered, haha!

 

[sovietdoc]

I can't use my EF lenses on it.

/yawn

 

[Espike]

98 14MP sensors looking through the same lens. A pretty cool trick for sure, but I was hoping for a single 1000 MP SENSOR.

 

[unpopular]

^^ then you could have 96, 1000mp sensors!

 

[Jaemie]

Reminds me of my 30MB hard drive.

 

[oFUNGUSo]

i have megapixel envy

 

[Alex_B]

Well, interesting concept.

But I personally would have no use for it.

 

[Solarflare]

Handheld ? Hmm.

It is my understanding that the current Nikon D800 pretty much marks the limit of affordable optics. I.e. only the best of the best lenses out there produce circles of confusion small enough to actually realize the full resolution the D800 may produce.

I am under the impression the D800 pretty much marks the end of the Megapixel battle. If you want even more Megapixel than that, then get a larger sensor already. (***)

So we can saftely assume that unless we find a way to drastically improve the quality of our optics, which is unlikely in near future, a realistic gigapixel camera probably would have to look like a 4x5" camera, with a relatively small prime lens(*) and a huge fotosensor.

So according to Wikipedia, the Nikon D800 has a 35.9 x 24 mm fotosensor, for a total of 861.6 mm² surface, and 7,360 × 4,912 resolution, for a total of 36,152,320 pixels. That is 41,959.517177 pixel / mm² which we can shorten to 42kpixel / mm² for simplicity and because our error is higher anyway.

To reach 1Gpixel, we thus need a 24,000 mm² fotosensor. In a 3:2 format, we can just divide this by 1.5 and then take the root to get the shorter side of it, which would be 126.49 ~ 128mm, thus the required fotosensor size would be about 192x128mm.

Or we can state OK at this point we would prefer to use a square format to get minimal sensor size, then its root of 24k and thats 154.919 ~ 155, so its a 155x155mm sensor.

This is quite a bit larger than 5x4", which is "only" 127x101.6 mm. But probably not too much larger.

Can you shoot 5x4" handheld ? I was told you can. In fact I remember reading reports of people who drive around with a 5x4" while biking, without a tripod, so they are not necessarily very heavy either.

So yes, I guess a 1Gpixel handheld is possible, once we can produce fotosensors of the above described size.


(*) Prime because prime lenses are much more compact, and are relatively "cheap", which for a camera like this would still be quite expensive.
(**) The human eye also has dynamic ISO, which results in its ability to resolve up to about 24 stops of dynamic range.
(***) At least if you want actual resolution, not just a big number that means nothing at all since your optics is too blurry to give you this resolution, anyway.

 

[Alex_B]

Can you shoot 5x4" handheld ? I was told you can. In fact I remember reading reports of people who drive around with a 5x4" while biking, without a tripod, so they are not necessarily very heavy either.

It is not so much the weight (that only depends on your strength ) ... but it is about the resolution vs shutter speed. If you shoot handheld with a large resolution camera, you will need faster speeds to really make use of the high resolution without seeing the camera shake. Double linear resolution and you need to double the minimum shutter speed needed (given you use the same angle of view in both cases and the same equivalent f-stop).

If of course doubling resolution also means that you double the angle of view, then the minimum shutter speed remains the same.

4x5 film cameras are sometimes complicated to shoot handheld, since a) often film speeds are rather slow, b) in order to get DOF on the large format, a larger f-stop is needed.

 

[MWP]

At what point can the human eye no longer tell the the difference in MP increase? Probably 22? 30 tops?

 

[unpopular]

The human eye can resolve about 250-300 pixels per inch, so it really depends on how large the print is. If you printed a 22mp image on a page 100" wide, the pixels will be about 1/50" square, well within our ability to resolve them, at least at close distance.

However, if you printed, without interpolation, a 22mp image on a 3" wide page, then the pixels would each be around 1/1600, well below what the human eye can resolve.

So what you are asking is a bit of a non sequitur.

 

[manaheim]

I have 36MP... that's pretty close, no?

 

[unpopular]

Can you shoot 5x4" handheld ? I was told you can. In fact I remember reading reports of people who drive around with a 5x4" while biking, without a tripod, so they are not necessarily very heavy either.

It is not so much the weight (that only depends on your strength ) ... but it is about the resolution vs shutter speed. If you shoot handheld with a large resolution camera, you will need faster speeds to really make use of the high resolution without seeing the camera shake. Double linear resolution and you need to double the minimum shutter speed needed (given you use the same angle of view in both cases and the same equivalent f-stop).

If of course doubling resolution also means that you double the angle of view, then the minimum shutter speed remains the same.

4x5 film cameras are sometimes complicated to shoot handheld, since a) often film speeds are rather slow, b) in order to get DOF on the large format, a larger f-stop is needed.

I used to shoot 4x5 hand held with my RB S. B, though this camera was specifically designed for handheld operation, and had a traveling slit curtain shutter.