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Graphics Software Hardware Technology

When 8 Megapixels Just Isn't Enough 236

Posted by timothy from the hair-on-your-chinny-chin-chin dept.
squidfrog writes "AP has an interesting article on a half photochemical, half digital process to produce 2.6-gigabyte photographs at 'more than a thousand times the size and resolution of those generated by a typical digital camera for consumers.' 'A vacuum pump ensures that the film is flat to within one-thousandth of an inch, and a dual-mirror device keeps the film parallel to the lens. Sand bags strapped to the camera and tripod prevent the machine from shifting, and a reinforced aluminum cradle maintains the parts of the camera in perfect alignment.' The images are apparently higher resolution than can be reproduced on available printing technology (5' by 10'), but the designer hopes to use an 18' by 36' digital display wall to reproduce the images at their best possible resolution in the future. The camera has apparently only been utilized for landscape photography thus far."
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When 8 Megapixels Just Isn't Enough More

When 8 Megapixels Just Isn't Enough

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  • wow (Score:4, Funny)

    by narkotix ( 576944 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:24AM (#9256873)
    imagine penthouse printed out in this size format....

    • Re:wow (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah.. it would be cool - you would need some brown bag to get it out of the shop... and one hell of a big bed to hide it from your mom!

    • re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)

      by roll_w.it ( 317514 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:36AM (#9256924)
      This guy [superlarge.com](from the link at the bottom of the article) came up with his own large camera format. But looks like he's found other uses [superlarge.com] for those big pictures...

      • Re:wow (Score:2)

        by tsa ( 15680 )
        What a crappy camera. It's all blurry! :-)
      • Good grief. Somebody linked a site with nude photographs from a highly rated article near the top of a recent slashdot cover story, and the site hasn't even slowed down, let alone be slashdotted. That's impressive.
      • From his site: 40"x60" (shot with the world's largest portable camera, designed and built by the artist himself)

        Yeah, but how about this camera [wired.com]. Dude turned an old mail truck into a camera that produces prints in feet! I suppose you could argue that it isn't portable, but it is mobile . . .


      • Dude - you should warn us that it's not safe for work!

        - Thomas;

    • Re:wow (Score:3, Funny)

      by noidentity ( 188756 )
      imagine penthouse printed out in this size format....

      It's their new response to piracy: make the images so large that it's easier to just buy the magazine.

    • Re:wow (Score:3, Informative)

      by MikeHunt69 ( 695265 )
      Penthouse/Playboy used to all use cameras similar to this - and some still do. Of course, they use regular 4x5 inch, rather than 9x18 inch.
      • I'm not sure I understand why.

        Don't you lose a lot of resolution when printing out to a line-screen format like a magazine (*)? Isn't medium/large format film overkill in this situation?

        (*) let me restate that assertion as a question: what is the effective resolution of a "typical" glossy magazine photo, as measured in dpi (pixels, not lines)?

  • Yeah right... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The camera has apparently only been utilized for landscape photography thus far.
  • I wonder if we will see compact versions of this in the future... High quality film and digital signal processor that transfers the info to the film..

    • Re:Nice! (Score:2, Informative)

      by GhostChe ( 585665 )
      There is something similar to this. You can buy digital film backs [luminous-landscape.com] for medium format cameras that essentially is the film. Although nothing compared to this camera the resolution is much better then 35mm.

  • Interesting, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by WegianWarrior ( 649800 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:31AM (#9256899) Journal

    ...110lbs of camera, vacumpump, sandbags and a specially reinforced cradle? Me think we won't see this kind of sofistication (and stunning pictures) from a consumerlevel camera anytime soon. Or at all, as he rightly points out in the article.


    Maybe as well - a 5'x10', sharply focused photo of my own fingertip wouldn't be all that interesting ;)

  • Room Sized Computers (Score:5, Funny)

    by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 ) <<deliverance> <at> <level4.org>> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:32AM (#9256904) Journal
    Remember them, just another thing japanese business men will have on their keychain in a few years.
  • Half analogue, half digital? He's just scanning a large negative, hardly earth shattering.

    Everything is sharp? well he's just stopped down the lens. thats why he needs sandbags to weigh the thing down, the exposure times will be quite long i would imagine.

    The camera has some intersting features for film flatness but this is really the only innovation.

    The neg size is quite puny really. At Antwerpen Photograpic Museum I saw a camera which was HUGE - as tall as me. Took something like 4 foot negative plates
    • If he had used photographic plates (i.e. glass covered with emulsion) then he could have saved putting a vacum pump on the thing to keep the film flat. I mean its not as if you're going to get that sized film in a roll, is it? :)

      • Re:which reminds me (Score:5, Informative)

        by cei ( 107343 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:48AM (#9256974) Homepage Journal
        I mean its not as if you're going to get that sized film in a roll, is it?

        Actually, I believe 9" film is still pretty standard for aerial photography. At least in the old days, they had to do so much overlap to compensate for the speed of the plane (vs headwinds) and other factors, they'd only end up with about a 5" square of new data in the middle of a frame, and they'd have to overlap quite a bit to stitch together an accurate map.

        Interestingly, this is in part why RC paper was developed. Fiber photo paper stretched and shrank too much, and when you're doing things like plotting bomb trajectories, the accuracy of your maps is pretty important.

        Or not.

      • Re:which reminds me (Score:4, Informative)

        by cei ( 107343 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:59AM (#9257011) Homepage Journal
        Ok, cheapest I can find the film is a little less than $600 per roll [bhphotovideo.com]. Unless he's shooting color, which is more like $730 for a 125' roll, which would give him about 83 exposures per roll.

    • Re:not earth shattering (Score:4, Insightful)

      by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisumNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:39AM (#9256936) Homepage Journal
      Half analogue, half digital? He's just scanning a large negative, hardly earth shattering.

      What is with this freaking diminutive attitude? Is your life so shallow and meaningless that you can't see any beauty in the effort it took to set this up, from a geek angle?

      Honestly, this is one hell of a cool project. So its not portable, so what? Its still some interesting science, well applied, to a real-life situation with good result.

      The neg size is quite puny really. At Antwerpen Photograpic Museum I saw a camera which was HUGE - as tall as me. Took something like 4 foot negative plates.

      Yeah, well while you're all "cool" and "elite" and everything for having visited Antwerp, on the web I saw this... and since it could drive to Antwerp and take a picture of your so-called 'cool place', it shits all over your 4 foot negative plates ... [cameravan.net]

      Really. What a negative person you are.

      • Re:not earth shattering (Score:2, Interesting)

        by torpor ( 458 )
        ummm ... its since been pointed out to me that my bookmark for "The Camera Van" has been borked/hijacked by a spycam outfit ... the site I was referring to is this one... [cameravan.com]
      • Heehee... All of a sudden i feel totally "elite"!

        As a student i worked in that Antwerp museum almost every week, this year!

        (The huge camera *is* impressive, to be sure..)

    • Not Earth Shattering, But Advanced (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DonnarsHmr ( 230149 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:00AM (#9257018) Homepage

      You're right. Nothing here is absolutly earth shattering. However, you're overlooking the extent to which the process has been taken. The film flatness is a HUGE issue at the enlargement rations at which he is working. Vacuum systems, while comercially available for medium format, are pretty much unheard of for large format cameras. The mirror alignment check is also a critical detail. Commonly used in telescopes, and within the last few years, enlargers, this is the first camera I have heard of that employs such a thing. Keeping the film plane absolutely perpendicular to the optical axis is, again, critical at these enlargement ratios because even an arcsecond of misalignment will produce visible defocus. The use of aerial film contributes greatly to the finished product. Aerial film has a MUCH higher resolution than standard films. The problem, as stated in the AP article, is using aerial film to reproduce a scene and produce a final print containing reasonable contrast and color values. This is where digital imaging comes in. The negative on the film cannot be used to make a "photo-realistic" print with conventional wet-process materials.


      Oh, and it is highly unlikely that he "just stopped down the lens" At smaller aperatures, diffraction starts to become an issue and the resolving power is lowered dramatically. As for the sand bags, their purpose is likely twofold. Well, one purpose, two reasons. Obviously, they're there to reduce movement during the exposure. Part of this need is brought on from the length of the exposure time, but part of it also comes from the maximum allowable movement during the exposure. Take, for instance, the blades of grass. They're x millimeters wide d meters from the camera. From this, you can determine the degrees of arc that a blade of grass subtends. Moving to the back of the lens (inside the camera) you can work from the subtended angle and the distance to the film plane to determine the size of the blade of grass on the film. To avoid triganometry, consider that the entire vista before the camera is shrunk down to the size of the film, a small detail like a blade of grass is really, REALLY small on the film. If the film or lens moves by the size of the blade of grass on film, the blade of grass will be completly obliterated. If it moves even a small fraction of that size, it will be visibly unsharp. There's a reason holography is done on giant, sand filled isolation tables (no, I'm not implying that these photographs are resolved to somthing on the same order as the wavelengths of the light being recorded, I'm just saying thery're out there in the same freaky territory).


      This camera isn't a new thing, it's an old thing taken to a place never before explored.

      • (no, I'm not implying that these photographs are resolved to somthing on the same order as the wavelengths of the light being recorded, I'm just saying thery're out there in the same freaky territory).

        Actually, it's not. The effective sensor size is about ~7umx7um, which is very like the 8umx8um of top range digital SLRs. So not much gain in resolution here (resolution is number of pixels per mm, not number of pixels per frame). And then he throws away a lot of the colour information and reproduces it fro

      • Re:Not Earth Shattering, But Advanced (Score:5, Informative)

        by n6mod ( 17734 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:48AM (#9257128) Homepage
        So many misconceptions, so little time.

        OK, here goes:

        Vacuum film planes are ancient tech for prepress cameras. At 20x24 and up, it's not just cool, it's an absolute requirement to use film (instead of plates).

        Mirror alignment check to get the film plane and lens parallel? Useless in landscape work. Worse than useless. You don't *want* them parallel. You want the film plane vertical, and you want to tilt the lens forward (top away from the film) to move the plane of focus and *improve* sharpness. Otherwise the only way to get the depth of field you need is by stopping way, way down. And you're right, there are diffraction limits, (you obviously do telescope optics) but they don't start to bite you until at least f/45, more likely f/64.

        "Aerial Film has a MUCH higher resolution..." Not really. The color aerial films only have 80-100 lp/mm resolution...pretty much the same as professional chrome film. They have wacky spectral sensitivities, because they're designed for data collection, not photorealistic images, and that's what forces this guy to scan the film and work in Photoshop. There are some very high-resolution b/w aerial films, but they really aren't that much better than something like Tech Pan. The real reason he's using aerial film is because he can get it in that size.

        [Note to another poster: You do get it in rolls. In fact, that's the only way you can: 9.5 inches by 200-2000 feet. This guy is cutting sheets off one of those rolls...yet another reason he needs a vacuum film plane.]

        Getting film this big is actually a real problem because nobody uses it. I checked out an 11x14 view camera from the cage over Christmas one year, and had to shoot Cibachrome directly because I couldn't get film. EI 6 and 30CC Cyan over the lens, but it worked....and let me tell you, contact prints look soft next to a direct Cibachrome.

        Sandbagging view cameras is nothing new...and for all your discussion of the arc subtended by the image of a blade of grass...remember that the grass is likely to move. ;) I don't see any thing special about the "aluminum cradle" either, this looks like a classic studio view camera.

        The camera isn't a new thing at all. It's a very old thing, in territory explored and abandoned decades ago, with a few bits of new tech to work around not being able to get the right old tech. :)

        Now, with all that said. I do think it's very cool that there's someone out shooting 9x18" film. Big view cameras produce really amazing images, and I applaud this guys work. (I understand the problem too...Mt. Sopris is gorgeous, and all of my photos of it are really dull.)

        The real problem here is that the article was written by someone with no knowledge of the subject.

        -Z
        • Shooting direct to Cibachrome sound cool, I never thought of that ... if you can make a contact print look soft, I am quite impressed. I guess every processing step is a chance for distortions, so eliminating film can only help.

        • The real problem here is that the article was written by someone with no knowledge of the subject.

          There's a magazine article with different details, a few more facts and knowledge of a different aspect the subject.

          I could have sworn it was the latest issue of I.D. [idonline.com] (not to be confused with iD Magazine) but their website does not seem to have the latest issue (the new water issue). I don't have it here at work, so I could be mistaken- it could be another of my magazines.

          For all the use of the Internet, I c

      • Just a comment on the holography statement.

        While people do use normal sized isolation table (dinner table size), it's kinda pointless making them any bigger. You just can't do large holograms using a continous laser beam - you'll spend all day trying to get it to be even remotely stable, and even then it's pot luck.

        IMHO, pretty much all holography in the future will be done digitally and with pulsed lasers. With a pulse laser you could do the hologram in the back of a moving van. Be pointless, but I ju

      • The article is making something mundane sound really impressive. A little research shows that there is an entire community of Ultra-Large Format Photographers [janvanhove.com] who will laugh at this guy.

        After all, ULF cameras can be easily purchased commercially, at sizes up to 20x24:

        Ebony cameras [ebonycamera.com] (Look at bottom-left frame for 20x24 cameras).

        Wisner cameras [wisner.com]

        Film (which comes in single-shot sheets) must be custom-ordered from Kodak, Fuji, Ilford, Bergger, etc.

        As far as the focussing question: these cameras hav

  • And I thought normal-sized family portraits were bad enough...

  • Odd restrictions... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cei ( 107343 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:33AM (#9256910) Homepage Journal
    I think it would be kind of limiting to force your focal plane to always be parallel to your film plane. Sure, it works fine for most 35mm SLRs, but when you're working with a view camera like the one the inventor is pictured with, you often find it useful to tilt your plane of focus while keeping your film plane vertical or at some other angle.

    Depth of Field is the area of acceptable sharpness, generally considered to be 1/3 in front of the plane of focus, and 2/3s behind it. It's limited based on a number of factors including lens length (and thus, aperture) and distance to subject. If you were shooting a landscape, and wanted to ensure your foreground was in focus, as well as the mountains off in the distance, you'd tilt the top of the focal plane forward a bit, for instance.

    Not to belittle this guy's ideas, but going that far out of your way to keep your lens parallel to your film plane, with that type of camera, seems a bit silly.
    • If you were shooting a landscape, and wanted to ensure your foreground was in focus, as well as the mountains off in the distance, you'd tilt the top of the focal plane forward a bit, for instance.
      The article says that the mountain tops as well as blades of grass in front of the mountain are all in sharp focus.
    • Take a look at this page. [photo.net], especially the photo accompanying this text:

      Another advantage of having used a view camera is that it gives you an understanding of perspective. With a view camera, the lens and film aren't fixed parallel to each other. This opens up a huge range of creative opportunities that are unavailable to most users of 35mm and medium format gear. For example, if you want to take a photo of a building with a Nikon, you have to point the camera up towards the sky. You will then be projecti

  • Genuine Panorama photo equipment was similar! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:33AM (#9256911)
    Genuine Panorama photo equipment was similar in quality.

    A long strip of negative was gradually pulled slowly across the focal plane as the camera was slowly rotated .

    The photographs from 80 years ago are staggering in detail.

    BTW his , method was replicated using CRT and mirrors with a negative moving along in a long strip to create ultra hi rez newspaper printing plates in the early 1980s. This stuff is old hat.
    The reason? The negatives themselves are very tall but astonishingly long.

    A modern camera can never be desinged to do that. Its a lost artform.

    luckily examples of the photos exist in libraries

    if dig camera manufacturers did not LIE and count the colors seperately RGBG (two greens per blue and red) then the megapixels would not be 400% inflated.

    a 16 megapixel camera is actually only 4 megapixel

    a primitive 33mm negative is 8,000 "pels" wid in resolution.

    digital cameras will take years to reach that.

    even the best real 1920x1080 camera (the Thompson Viper) can take a phot at that res in one 60th of a second exposure at 12 bits of color depth.

    Thats a joke compared to a 40 dollar SLR camera.

    let alone a 1930s panorama camera

    Wake me up in 20 years when i can finally be impressed.

    • Never mind 80 years ago, this was the method for school photographs just 30 years ago and probably more recently. I had my photo taken along with the rest of my school, and I found a similar photo in the attic of our house, belonging to the younger guy who lived here before me. So I suspect the equipment may not be so impossible to find now.

      Theoretically there's no reason why a camera mount couldn't be designed to do the same thing as the clockwork rotation of the old system. The camera would take a sequ

    • if dig camera manufacturers did not LIE and count the colors seperately RGBG (two greens per blue and red) then the megapixels would not be 400% inflated.

      Sorry, but they don't lie: they still have the same amount of effective pixels as declared, and each pixel registers its own photons. Sure color interpolation amounts for some quality loss, but it is far from 400%.

      even the best real 1920x1080 camera (the Thompson Viper) can take a phot at that res in one 60th of a second exposure at 12 bits of color de
    • if dig camera manufacturers did not LIE and count the colors seperately RGBG (two greens per blue and red) then the megapixels would not be 400% inflated.

      a 16 megapixel camera is actually only 4 megapixel

      a primitive 33mm negative is 8,000 "pels" wid in resolution.

      digital cameras will take years to reach that.

      Umm... the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

      Make a, say, 11x17 print from a film negative. Then make the same-sized print from a digital file produced by one of the current crop of digital SL

    • Re:Genuine Panorama photo equipment was similar! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Cecil ( 37810 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @11:59AM (#9259983) Homepage
      a 16 megapixel camera is actually only 4 megapixel

      That's a ridiculous statement. First of all, my 6.3 megapixel camera outputs images that are perfectly sharp and full of detail right down to the pixel level, at a resolution of 3072 x 2048. How many pixels is that? 6291456. Sounds pretty damn close to 6.3 MP to me.

      Your fearmongering about the Bayer pattern (RGBG) interpolation is unjustified. It's not marketing bullshit to have alternating colors (and double green) the way the Bayer pattern does, it's very much intentional. The Bayer pattern is designed to mimic the way our eyes detect light, and for most people, very professional photographers included, it does a superb job. If you are doing serious astronomical work (one of the few places where the interpolation fails to give optimal results, because you don't want to see what the human eye sees, you want to see more) then the Sigma Foveon X3 [sigmaphoto.com] sensors may be something you're interested in. But other than that, the cones in the eye are not laid out alltogether in little blocks of RGB. If you want to record what a human being would see if standing where you are, there are people who actually prefer Bayer pattern sensors.

      even the best real 1920x1080 camera (the Thompson Viper) can take a phot at that res in one 60th of a second exposure at 12 bits of color depth.

      That's ridiculous too. The Sigma SD9 and SD10 using Foveon X3 sensors have 3.4 MP, which is significantly more than 1920x1080. And what does exposure length have to do with anything in this discussion? 1/60 sec? Huh?

      Wake me up in 20 years when i can finally be impressed.

      Don't worry, we'll wake you up when CDs sound better than records, too. Some people just can't get over the fact that we know exactly where the limits of digital technologies are, whereas the limits of analog don't lend themselves to quantification, therefore people assume that they have no limits and are 'perfect'. Just another form of zealotry. I'd prefer to know exactly where my limits are, so I know when I've exceeded them. Helps me avoid situations where I'm asking too much of the camera and have to try something different (multiple exposures, filter, whatever)

  • Digital? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Janosh ( 777222 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:33AM (#9256913) Homepage
    There is noting digital about the camera. It says in the article that the film is scanned after beeing proccessed.

    • Digital comes in (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Because the images produced are so high in quality that scanning it in is the only way you can realistically actually *DO* anything productive with these negatives once you've created them.
    • "You have to ask the question, `What's the point of painting a scene like this when you can reproduce it with no loss of resolution?'" says Conor Foy, a 36-year-old painter. "The resolution of this seems to be more than anything I've seen before."

      What an idiotic thing to say! To reduce painting to mere representation seems like an incredibly cretinous thing for a photographer to say. It's like saying "what's the point of doing math when a computer can calulate for you?"

  • A painter should know better... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by quake74 ( 466627 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:33AM (#9256914)
    "You have to ask the question, `What's the point of painting a scene like this when you can reproduce it with no loss of resolution?'" says Conor Foy, a 36-year-old painter.

    So, the point of paiting is making something that is as close as possible to a photography?

    Maybe it's because I saw a Miro exposition just last Sunday, but the quote gave me a good laugh!

  • Impressive camera (Score:5, Insightful)

    by donkeyoverlord ( 688535 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:34AM (#9256917) Homepage
    The topic is a little misleading I was expecting that the camera somehow used film to store a digital image (makes no sense I know that's why I was interested). But what is really going on is Ross created a really stable, perfectly focused camera and then scanned the negitive in to make color corrections. The camera is not digital at all.

  • 2.6gb file online? link posted on slashdot!!?? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Whitecloud ( 649593 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:34AM (#9256918) Homepage

    luckily his website [cliffordross.com] doesnt have a 2.6 gigabyte image file...slashdot crowd + 2.6gb file = *shudder*

    if anyone has a sample of the mountain picture post a link.

  • Professional cameras (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dimss ( 457848 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:35AM (#9256919) Homepage
    There are professional medium-format cameras with digital sensor. They do more than 20Mpx at $10-15k. I'm waiting for the day when I can afford one of them...
    • Just hire it for a week, its going to be far more cost effective unless you are a pro and need it all the time. mind you they are not portable, they have to be lashed to a laptop with firewire.

  • Released in 2006? (Score:5, Funny)

    by JC-Coynel ( 250322 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:37AM (#9256931) Journal
    2.6GB files would be perfect to use as a wallpaper in Longhorn.

  • 110 lbs, eh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by cei ( 107343 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:40AM (#9256943) Homepage Journal
    Finally, a compact camera. Beats lugging around a 235 lb Polaroid [polaroid.com] for those snapshots you always want to take on vacation.

  • 2.6gb (Score:4, Informative)

    by gfody ( 514448 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:43AM (#9256952)
    at that rate you'd need better storage than those 512mb flash cards. even an 80gb slim hd would only store about 30 images.

    • Re:2.6gb (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hutkey ( 709330 )
      at that rate you'd need better storage than those 512mb flash cards

      or a better format for storing the pictures

    • Re:2.6gb (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mrdaveb ( 239909 )
      It's true that he wouldn't be able to fit the image on even a huge flash card. But since this isn't actually a digital camera, that's pretty irrelevant. The image negative has to be very carefully scanned. Once it has been scanned into digital form, it needs many colour corrections and adjustments. The guy says he can only do at most a few of these in a year - it's not like he's taking holiday snaps! :-)

    • Re:2.6gb (Score:5, Funny)

      by stephenbooth ( 172227 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @07:19AM (#9257592) Homepage Journal

      Already got one. I have a method of storing in excess of a Gb of information on a 60mmx60mm piece of porous plastic less than 1mm thick by coating one surface of the sheet with gelatin into which is embedded silver halide crystals and certain other chemicals. Currently it's Write Once only (WORM) but given the small size and very low cost I do not see this as a problem, infact given the durability (if stored correctly) of this material I believed that it would be excellent for use as a medium to long term storage solution. No electric power or electronics are required in the storage or reading of the media, although methods using both exist and some users may prefer to use them.

      I think I'll call it........film.

      Stephen

  • Here [tawbaware.com].
    It was /.'ed back in December....where u take a regular high-megapixel camera, and a specialized tripod and take many pictures and then use software to stitch 'em together.

  • Missing something (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dark Bard ( 627623 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:50AM (#9256979)
    The article seems incomplete. What he's describing isn't that unusual except for the size of negative and that's not record setting. Stat cameras have operated with vaccuum assist like he describes form decades. I used to use one in the mid 70s and it was an old machine. I'm sure he had difficulty working with files of that size at first but technology has caught up with him and a workstation board running 8 gigs of ram would handle an image that size quite easily and other than a beefy video card not require any special or custom equipment. It's not a digital image so I'm not sure what he's doing that is so landmark. As the article points out others have worked with much larger negatives. I recall one who even turned a van into a camera for shooting large format landscapes. Most did B&W but it was primarily for artistic reasons. The images sound stunning but there's nothing new as far a technology. He basically updated an old aerial camera then scanned the neg like everyone else.

  • A bridge (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Alcoyotl ( 157542 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:11AM (#9257046) Homepage Journal
    to reconcile photographers about the paper vs digital feud. It sums up exactly what are the advantages of both technologies : film for accuracy and digital treatment afterwards combined to make near perfect prints.
    On a smaller scale, I have both an EOS 500N and an EOD 300D, and I use both, but for different reasons. Digital gives me instant verification of my settings and allow me to do lots of tests without burning my money on prints, and my old 500N is used to take the final picture that I will be able to print in large.
    To go back to the current topic, it illustrates what direction the digital cameras should take to make film based ones really obsolete: it's all about resolution, although many will say this is false. I agree with the fact that better lenses are far more important than a high resolution, but when you already have a good lens, the only way is to go up in details.
    • Film isn't nessesarily any more accurate than digital. Infact many consider digital to be more accurate.

      Where film has it's advantage is resolution. It's cheaper to get more resolution, and has a higher limit than digital the moment (and probably will for a while).

      • Where film has it's advantage is resolution.

        Also color fidelity and saturation, low-light photography, slow shutter-speed photography (i.e., those cool pictures of a city at night with all the streaky red lights from the vehicles), medium-and-large format photography (though to be fair, Mamiya has digital backs now for their medium-format cameras), infrared film photography, and lower power-consumption.
        • Well I'm by no means a professional, but I have done a fair amount of slow shutter stuff with my 300D and I don't see any problems with the results. If anything, the number 1 advantage of digital (keep trying until it works) is even more important when trying these "unusual" techniques. As for low light, just yesterday I was taking some macro pics of a flower in dim light, they came out pretty well with a 40s exposure at f18. Again, with macro stuff I end up taking 10 pics for every one which is usable, and
          • I have done a fair amount of slow shutter stuff with my 300D and I don't see any problems with the results.

            I have some photos on my site that I took with a borrowed Nikon D100, a top-of-the-line Digital SLR. You can see the gallery I'm talking about here [kombat.org]. Virtually all of the nighttime photos had to be retouched in Photoshop, because they had tiny specks of color in the dark areas. I thought there was something wrong with the camera, or maybe just dust on the lens, but after talking to other digital ph
            • You do get phantom firing of the CCDs, it's what causes noise in digital photos. As the "ISO" is raised it gets worse, because in a DSLR the ISO setting is actually ramping up the voltage (and thus the sensitivity) of the CCD. Increased sensitivity = increased phantom firing = increased noise. However, this (in my experience) looks like a layer of random colour noise over the image (as you'd expect given how it occurs) not white spots. As I mentioned in my post before I've taken lots of long exposures (30s
            • I have some photos on my site that I took with a borrowed Nikon D100, a top-of-the-line Digital SLR.

              A D100 is hardly a top of the line digital SLR. It's not even a top of the line Nikon digital SLR. While the image problems you mention are typical of long-exposures on a digital, the D100 is, frankly, just crappy at low-light, long-exposure photography.

  • Great... (Score:2, Funny)

    by uarch ( 637449 )
    Great, I can see it now...

    100 lb sandbags, the next must-have accessories for your 3oz, matchbox sized camera.
  • They should use this in weather satelites, then you could say "I can see my house from here!"

  • Nothing truely new (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MikeHunt69 ( 695265 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @05:12AM (#9257181) Journal
    As other posters have mentioned, this is nothing more than an arial camera updated for "normal" use. Note that the neg size is 9x18 inch - the 5x10 foot print is a print, not a negative.

    The reason the film is held flat under pressure and the front standard is held perfectly parallel to the film is that when you are doing aerial spy photography in WW2, you want to use a large apeture and high shutter speed. This means that your DOF is quite narrow and if the film and/or front standard is out of alignment, some of the photo will be out of focus. Using mirrors would also dampen/eliminate some of the vibration of the planes at the time. Of course, when using the photo for non-aerial/spy photography, you sometimes don't want everything parallel, because you want to change the plane of focus (one of the reasons for lugging such a large camera around in the first place!). So I would have thought this would be a disadvantage rather than an advantage.

    Plus the fact you would have to cut your own film for it..

    • After reading the article again, I noticed that they use aerial film for it. So you wouldn't cut your own film, but you wouldn't be able to buy it from your local photo store either. I doubt even pro film stores would carry this sort of film in stock. In which case, you would have to buy direct from fuji/kodak. (or get it special order)
  • He doesn't get it
    "what's the point of painting this scene when I can take a photo with no loss of resolution"

    Yes he might have high res photos, but he misses the entire concept of art.

    Myself I have a SLR and a 2 megapixel digital camera. One is for photos, one for snapshots.

  • Digitize IMAX! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KanSer ( 558891 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @06:21AM (#9257359)
    IMAX is such a brilliant form of cinema but it's really restricted due to film costs. The length of the film (Not in minutes but kilometers) is also a problem that drives up cost. (The Human Boday which just came out on IMAX recently is 12 km long)

    If we could digitize the process it would allow for widespread IMAZ screen implimentation. However, due to the colossal massive-ness of the screen you need some hiiiiiiigh ass resolution. You would also need some 30 fps out of the camera, so maybe film will be essential to IMAX in the cmoing years, but we can get there!

    I'm sure data storage isn't a problem, but resolution and projection are. I'm not calling for implimentation tomorrow, but the digitization of all formats benefits the art, so maybe a 10-year goal?

    The major advantage is cutting out the cost for the film (which is high) and the cost of processing the film. (Also high)

    Just think of IMAX pr0n!!! Minka can truly be the number one, asian, big-boob queen.

  • More than 8 Megapixels is not new (Score:5, Informative)

    by rduke15 ( 721841 ) <(rduke15) (at) (gmail.com)> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @06:36AM (#9257408)
    For example, there is Sinar [sinar.ch]'s 22 Megapixels Sinarback 54 [sinar.ch]

    Anyway, the problem with digital photographs is not really the definition, but the very narrow luminance range the sensors are able to record. That's where the photo-chemical process makes a huge difference: it is able to keep much more detail in the very bright areas. That wouldn't matter for advertizing photography in a studio with controlled lighting, but in the real world, our eye sees a huge range, photographic film much less, and digital sensors far less.
    • hmmm [spheron-usa.com]
    • but in the real world, our eye sees a huge range, photographic film much less, and digital sensors far less.

      Nope. The term you are looking for is "dynamic range". There are several ways to measure it, but to keep things photographic, we'll be talking about dynamic range in f-stops.

      Slide (aka positive) color film has a dynamic range of 5-6 f-stops. Negative color film has a range of 9-10 f-stops. Current digital has a dynamic range of 7-8 f-stops, slightly better than slides and a bit worse than negatives
  • ...then I'll be prepared to say that someone has actually managed to improve on Cinerama.
  • As I have mentioned before, for the ultimate in resolution, get a view camera. That's basically what this thing is, though it isn't a "conventional" view camera in the sense that is uses somewhat larger film.

    View cameras have been around forever. They are basically a light proof box to hold film, with a lens and a focusing mechanism (about the simplest camera you can have). They are large, but use bigger pieces of film for each photo - It's a simple rule of physics - the less you enlarge, the less detail i

  • Display Wall (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 )
    The images are apparently higher resolution than can be reproduced on available printing technology (5' by 10'), but the designer hopes to use an 18' by 36' digital display wall to reproduce the images at their best possible resolution in the future.

    He'd better be careful about the specifications on his display wall, or he'll end up in the same boat as Spinal Tap did.

    "Dude, I got an unbelievable deal from this guy who's going to build us an 18' by 36' display wall! This is going to make a great backdrop

  • is half photochem half digital these days. They've been using a computer for years to adjust the printing colors. It's pretty badass that this guy is using film so large though.

  • more than a thousand times the size and resolution of those generated by a typical digital camera for consumers...

    Isn't this kind of insane reoslution encroaching on the limit of what our eyes can even see??? How many "pixels" can your eyes even interprey ( as in, how many rods and cones are there on the back of your retina ) ? I can't see there being more than a few billion... your brain just "fills in" the gaps.

    Honestly, when you're talking about resolutions like this I think it's probably beyond anyt

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