Welcome To The World Of Gigapixel Photography

Welcome To The World Of Gigapixel Photography

If you feel that your pictures sometimes lack fine-grained detail, they probably do. At least when they’re compared to photographs taken with a new supercamera developed at Duke University that’s capable of instantly acquiring images packing in a staggering 960 million pixels.

The 93kg device (pictured below) stitches together images from 98 separate 14-megapixel sensors to create the images. While there have been other examples of gigapixel photography in the past, they have relied on panning a camera across a scene, sequentially recording images which are later stitched together. This device, however, captures all the images simultaneously.

The resulting images are so detailed that they can reveal a 3.8cm wide object from 1km away. The image above (click to see a bigger version) shows one of the camera’s test shots of a traffic circle. The insets images are digitally magnified by a factor of 13 and show details from 15m to 93m away. The images provide a 120-degree wide view, so look a little bit like the results you might expect to see from a fisheye lens.

One challenge remains though: to make the device, which currently measures 76cm x 76cm x 50cm, just a little more pocketable. [Nature]

Image: Duke/Nature


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.