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First of all, this effort and its result are fanastic! Question: how close are sensor densities getting to present capabilities of glass in smartphones? For e

First of all, this effort and its result are fanastic! Question: how close are sensor densities getting to present capabilities of glass in smartphones? For example, if a 10 gigapixel (100000x100000) sensor existed that would fit behind an iDevice's lens, how much digital zoom cropping would we really be able to enjoy before we hit details that are bigger than pixels but smaller than the tiny lens can pass clearly?

nakedrobot2 13y ago
Hi OldSchool, Thank you very much. In terms of pixel density: You may have noticed that the "megapixel wars" have pretty much stopped. And even the sensor that I've been using for nearly all of my "world record sized" is the 18-megapixel APS-c (1.6X "crop") Canon sensor (550D, 7D). The 7D is nearly 4 years old! Only in recent months has Canon released a camera with smaller pixels (the 20 megapixel 70D). Why? One major reason is that lenses can't resolve much more than this. Your 10 year old lens that was built for film might not yield any detail at 100% zoom. Another reason is that they are hitting limits with the wavelength of light. Correcting "chromatic aberration" on the sensor at this resolution is becoming a major issue. Each RGB sensor on the camera responds to a range of wavelengths, each one of which gets distorted differently. These all get mixed together and it's definitely not possible to disentangle them. So, to some degree, CA is impossible to fix completely. These are large sensors and large, expensive lenses we are talking about here. With smaller phone sensors and their tiny lenses, the problem is worse. Looking at all phone photos, there isn't really anything interesting at 100% zoom, I think you won't lose any detail at all if you make the photo 70% of its original size. To answer your question - it will take a great number of breakthroughs before there is anything like a 10 gigapixel sensor, with a lens that can resolve details for such a sensor.
- OldSchool 13y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to reply in detail :) Keep up the great art/science!
- cclogg 13y ago
  That is one of the cool things about 'film' I should add... large format film has a crazy large megapixel equivalent. This guy's blog post has some interesting information about it: http://genotypewritings.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/digital-resolution-is-higher-than-film.html http://genotypewritings.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/digital-reso...

nakedrobot2 13y ago

Hi OldSchool, Thank you very much. In terms of pixel density: You may have noticed that the "megapixel wars" have pretty much stopped. And even the sensor that I've been using for nearly all of my "world record sized" is the 18-megapixel APS-c (1.6X "crop") Canon sensor (550D, 7D). The 7D is nearly 4 years old! Only in recent months has Canon released a camera with smaller pixels (the 20 megapixel 70D). Why? One major reason is that lenses can't resolve much more than this. Your 10 year old lens that was built for film might not yield any detail at 100% zoom. Another reason is that they are hitting limits with the wavelength of light. Correcting "chromatic aberration" on the sensor at this resolution is becoming a major issue. Each RGB sensor on the camera responds to a range of wavelengths, each one of which gets distorted differently. These all get mixed together and it's definitely not possible to disentangle them. So, to some degree, CA is impossible to fix completely. These are large sensors and large, expensive lenses we are talking about here. With smaller phone sensors and their tiny lenses, the problem is worse. Looking at all phone photos, there isn't really anything interesting at 100% zoom, I think you won't lose any detail at all if you make the photo 70% of its original size. To answer your question - it will take a great number of breakthroughs before there is anything like a 10 gigapixel sensor, with a lens that can resolve details for such a sensor.

OldSchool 13y ago
Thanks for taking the time to reply in detail :) Keep up the great art/science!
cclogg 13y ago
That is one of the cool things about 'film' I should add... large format film has a crazy large megapixel equivalent. This guy's blog post has some interesting information about it: http://genotypewritings.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/digital-resolution-is-higher-than-film.html http://genotypewritings.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/digital-reso...