300-mp?

<a

href="http://www.time4.com/time4/microsites/popsci/howitworks/lightfield_camera"

>http://www.time4.com/time4/microsites/popsci/howitworks/lightfield_camera</a>.

<br><br><i>Specs are already circulating for a 22-megapixel cellphone camera,

and within a few years 300-megapixel sensors will be no problem. But lenses,

ground from glass, can?t focus light sharply enough to take advantage of this

windfall. In other words, at some point you simply can?t capture any more

detail. Engineers at Adobe Systems, pioneers of Photoshop, see this limitation

as an opportunity to rethink photography and put those megapixels to work.

Their prototype ?light field? lens attaches to a normal digital camera to shoot

the same image from dozens of focal points at once. Later, software combines

all the images, so you can refocus your photos after they?ve been shot. A

system from Stanford University researchers achieves a similar effect by

placing a lens like this directly over the sensor.</i><br><br>

The article is about new lens technology being developed by Adobe, but the

snippet about 300-megapixel sensors is what caught my attention.<div></div>

Sorry, link should be <a href="http://www.time4.com/time4/microsites/popsci/howitworks/lightfield_camera.html">http://www.time4.com/time4/microsites/popsci/howitworks/lightfield_camera.html</a>

it's a logical extension of their Photomerge technology in PsCs3 - -which is a huge advance

over what was in PsCS2.

 

I've been using it to stitch together up to (so far) 13 16.7mp images from a Canon 1Ds

mark2 to make panoramics that are printing at 16 inches x 72 inches @ 300dpi (in other

words 104megapixels) - -and these prints are downsized from the original composite.

This is why I think full frame sensors are going to be passe. It's about the density and technology, not the size.

Why would we want to do that? There is no replication equipment that can display this resolution, and even the human eye is limited.

 

Do we all want to make huge print outs ...?

300 Megapixels is indeed more than is useful when making a single

print to be viewed in the usual way, since the eye can't see that

much detail. So I think the logic is that they use the 300 megapixels

to record information that can be used to create various images,

by changing the focus point or depth of field, for instance. Even

if you only print one in the end, you get to choose after taking

the image rather than having to get the focus and aperture right

to start.

That's the bees' knees. ;-)

I would rather have a 300MP camera than stitch 30 10MP images. Stitching is arduous.

A lot of this is hype. The science and technology are fine, but the application is limited.

 

Sure you can use 100 lenses and focus the image on a sensor array with 300 million 1 micron photosites (although it's going to be about 20m x 15mm, not exactly a small sensor). But the image from each lens won't be all that great, the lenses won't be all that fast and the application will be a bit limited.

 

There's no way the image will approach the quality of a full frame digital image shot with a fast prime lens.

 

Good enough for cell phones and P&S for sure, as long as the light is good and you don't need to jack up the gain on those 1 micron square pixels.

-- "There's no way the image will approach the quality of a full frame digital image shot with a fast prime lens."

 

Or use a LF camera with a good scanner.