Gigapixel anyone?

[nmoushon]

Saw this on the news this morning. Gigapixel Camera Pretty dang cool if you ask me. Wonder how the noise read out is on it? lol Wonder how long our military will take to allow it for civilian use...anyways will be exciting to see how this tech will effect AP and CCD cameras in the near future.

[Jessun]

Interesting piece of kit! Most of us are limited by cash, and then by seeing and I think that for most amateur imaging applications the pixel count is already more than most can make use of. I'd perhaps rather pay for higher QE than more pixels. But hey I live in a city centre...

[nmoushon]

Well of course its going to be a very hefty penny. Just wonder how it would do if it got in the hands of one us AP nuts lol

[Mr TamiyaCowboy]

thats why asda ran out of £3.99 webcams, these guys purchased all the stock to make a supercamera.

i could see it mounted lovely on a SW 24" OTA as a guidecam mounted to a anti aircraft gun mount .

an old honda suitcase generator should have enough juice to run it.

wonder if it will come windows 7/android/ipad ready.

[sgazer]

I would have throught it would be cheaper and easier to make a 6x6 array of decent DSLR sensors to get the same effect. Or is the idea to squeeze 1GP into the same area as a normal sensor? In which case, why is it so big? The last paragraph seems to be indicating that it will be used for a wide FOV which the ability to zoom in, so a 6x6 array of DSLR sensors with an appropiate lens would do. There you go, $25million saved.

[Mr TamiyaCowboy]

98 single cameras make up the gigapixel cam, the reason it is so big.

but then take into account moores (sp) law, and over time the electronics will shrink down to a more suitable size.

it also has to take the data and shunt it to the PC interface, convert it etc etc, so size also includes other gubbins like cooling etc etc.

cameras have a true mp and a mp count that software gives, usually what you see on the box a large fancy 10mp is really taround 2mp and software boosts it to the higher pixel count.

each camera camera on the gigapixel cam (98 single units) records a different area of the sky,

[nmoushon]

I would have throught it would be cheaper and easier to make a 6x6 array of decent DSLR sensors to get the same effect. Or is the idea to squeeze 1GP into the same area as a normal sensor? In which case, why is it so big? The last paragraph seems to be indicating that it will be used for a wide FOV which the ability to zoom in, so a 6x6 array of DSLR sensors with an appropiate lens would do. There you go, $25million saved.

I don't think thats quite right. If what you say is true then just 1 camera should be able to get an image with enough resolution that is exactly like the one in the link just a smaller FOV.

[dph1nm]

The scientific paper about the camera makes the point that it is not well suited to astrophotography. Something to do with having to put stops on the secondary lenses.

NigelM