Engineers build 'smallest' gigapixel camera

[Sankari]

I didn't even know such things existed!

Engineers in the United States have built a prototype gigapixel camera the size of a bedside cabinet that can capture an image in a single snapshot with 1000 times more detail than today's devices.

It is not the world's first gigapixel camera, but it is the smallest and fastest and opens up prospects for improving airport security, military surveillance and even online sports coverage, its developers say.

(Source).

[SLATYE]

How does this capture "1000 times more detail" than current devices? Nokia's already released a phone with a 40MP camera in it; this 1GP (really 1.372GP) camera has 34.3 times as many pixels.

A tenth of a second also doesn't sound too promising. Presumably they had to go that slow just to get enough light in for all those pixels, but any sort of motion would be blurry with such long exposure times.


I think the most interesting thing about this is the use of multiple sensors in one camera. It's the sort of thing that the big camera companies (Nikon, Canon, etc) might be interested in, as smaller sensors would tend to have much better yields than the current huge ones.

[Eddyah]

Not really that impressive unless they manage to get a ridiculously detailed image (super high pixel density / high resolving power).

From the article "The optical system consists of a six-centimetre ball-shaped lens surrounded by an array of 98 micro-cameras each with a 14-megapixel sensor.", so it sounds like they just combine 98 14 MP cameras to make the entire image, sort of like what the panoramic image does on your phone, except with individual cameras taking each frame. I'm thinking the major delay in the system is due to the high volume of data recorded.

Never-the-less, I appreciate the engineering effort required for the task

[mtma]

It sounds like it's a bit like a giant retina but the article doesn't really let about how they overcome the tessellation problem. I can see benefits (e.g removing the need to produce expensive aspheric optics) to the layout if it was done in a true retinal fashion but I don't think that's happening here. If they're not dealing with the tessellation problem at all then all I can say is... get out.

Also I imagine all the sensors are locally shuttered, rather than actually scanned through a 1/10th of a second over all of the sensors. The latter would make the thing somewhat pointless. The 1/10th of a second is probably the time it takes to for the data accretion to make a whole image.

[patto]

Originally Posted by SLATYE

Nokia's already released a phone with a 40MP camera in it;

And 90% of those pixels are all but useless! Its more about lens quality than megapixels.