[LargeFormat] Latest Camera Technology

[Ken Strauss]

You might me interested in http://www.gigapxl.org/ for more details of the
camera design. It produces a 9x18 inch image on roll film with a vacuum back
to ensure flatness. The viewfinder is a modified Nikon F2. Focus is
apparently by measuring the film to subject distance and then adjusting the
lens position by using three dial gauges and a table of focus data.

>-----Original Message-----
>From: largeformat-bounces at f32.net [mailto:largeformat-bounces at f32.net] On
>Behalf Of Schuyler Grace
>Sent: June 13, 2005 13:54
>To: largeformat at f32.net
>Subject: [LargeFormat] Latest Camera Technology
>
>I was watching The Science Channel's "Discoveries This Week" program this
>morning, and they had a segment on the "latest" in camera technology.  It
>seems one of the people who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, and who's
>now retired,  has designed a completely new, digital camera with a
>resolution of 3.1 Gigapixels, which (according to the reporter and the
>designer) is an astounding level of resolution, never before attainable.
>They even showed how much detail the camera captured by progressively
>blowing up shots and picking out very minute pieces of the image.
>
>But all the while, I was thinking, "that's pretty good, but I'd think you
>could get something close to that, if not better, with a good old LF
>camera."
>
>Well, it turns out this very industrial looking device--it's big hunks of
>metal, with dial indicators all over the thing and a serious roller cart to
>move it around--is actually a LF roll film camera (what looked like a car
>window crank is used to move the film through).  Judging from the film
>handling mechanism, the film is about 18" to 24" wide, and I couldn't tell
>how they focused it (didn't see a ground glass, viewfinder, or video link),
>unless they were using the dial indicators for that.  It also appeared to
>have a fairly short lens for that film size.
>
>What made it a "digital" camera was that they were using the film as a
>"buffer" to capture the image (their words)--direct digital capture would
>be
>too slow--and then scanning the film to create the digital image.  Wow!
>Whoever would have thunk it was possible?
>
>The more things change, the more they stay the same...
>
>-Schuyler
>
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