The first camera Nayar, Cossairt and their team at the Computer Vision Laboratory (part of Columbia Engineering School's Computer Science Department) created is a single-element, monocentric camera that uses a pan/tilt motor to sequentially scan a single sensor to emulate an array of tiled sensors. The second camera is a system that actually uses an array of five sensors arranged side-by-side that produces a contiguous field-of-view (FOV). In the second system the packaging around each sensor leaves some space between them. To account for this, the researchers added five secondary relay lenses placed between the spherical lens and the sensors. This configuration enables each sensor's FOV to overlap slightly so that there are no gaps in data that might distort the final image.
The third design attaches the secondary relay lenses directly to half of the ball-shaped lens (giving it a bumpy rather than a smooth look) and includes a large number of small sensors around that half of the lens. These sensors could be attached to the inside of a spherical half shell slightly larger than the lens itself. The spherical lens would then be positioned inside the half shell so that each sensor would be coupled with a relay lens. Any images viewed by the smooth part of the lens would be captured by the sensors inside the half shell.
"We want to show there is a path to getting to gigapixel cameras, video or still, using the form factor and the weight and the cost of something that would be a camera today," Nayar says. "It was deemed in the past that you could not do that without building a really complex system. What we are saying is that by using computations and simple systems, you can do it."
Athale acknowledges the potential of the work being done by Nayar, Cossairt and their team, saying, "Computational photography is crucial to providing 'persistent wide-area surveillance.'"
Other single snapshot approaches
Microsoft Research Asia is one of a handful of other groups experimenting with single-shot gigapixel imaging. Researchers there have since 2007 been developing a prototype they call the dgCam, whose high-power accordion-style lens configuration gives the device the look of an old-time large-format camera. The dgCam, which takes 1.6-gigapixel images and is not expected to be sold commercially, also uses a sensor much larger that those used in Columbia's prototypes. The dgCam, which is not intended to be a compact camera, is designed to help museums archive, manage and research ancient paintings and drawings.
Large-format cameras—which in their early days required the use of large photographic plates and films and now rely on sensors much larger than those used by the Columbia researchers—are well-suited for taking detailed pictures of small objects, says Moshe Ben-Ezra, a researcher in Microsoft Research Asia's visual computing group who designed and built the dgCam. "The lens does not move during image capture, which is essential for archival quality imaging of any object that is not entirely flat," he says. The dgCam scans images and, like the Columbia project, uses computational algorithms to capture information about those images.
Another large-format approach to taking gigapixel snapshots is the Gigapixl Project, which physicist Graham Flint formed about a decade ago. Gigapixl's camera uses 23-by-46-centimeter film—the same used in military spy planes such as the U-2, to capture images—which is then scanned and digitized to create images up to four gigapixels in size.
Gigapixel digital imagery is still in its infancy but demand for it will grow quickly as the technology develops. "In 1999, megapixel cameras were a dream," says Christopher Hills, a security consultant with Securitas Security Services who also runs the site gigapixel360.com. Now high-end digital cameras can take 25-megapixel images. "I absolutely believe it's going to be the next big step in the evolution of surveillance and video," he adds. "The world is always going to move toward bigger, faster, less expensive pictures and video."
Slide Show: Columbia Researchers' Prototype and Conceptual Gigapixel Cameras
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17 Comments
Add CommentIf I understand correctly, in the example described a motor would be rotating a spherical lens within a sensor housing. This process would reintroduce a delay factor to photography, requiring the subject to remain motionless as the picture is being 'exposed'. Don't move!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just saw the slide show. I'm not sure that all the suggested designs incur any mechanical delay, but the impact for those that do of course depends of the duration of that delay.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe last slide in the show includes an image of a person that appears to be walking. I suspect that the worst case would be for objects that are moving in the same direction as the sensor unit, at proportionally similar speeds. In that case I'd expect to see 'streaking' of those moving objects appearing across multiple pixel exposures.
http://www.gigapxl.org/project.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe photos in the story hardly do justice to the true ability of the technology check it out on there website.
It seems that similar lens/senor positioning methods could be used to produce nanoscale cameras with high, perhaps megapixel, resolution. You know, for those tiny bugs...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKH 11
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf they are reading this the site referenced has a picture labeled "Seattle OR" which of course should be Seattle, WA. I worked with a Rollei close-range photogrammetry system, a medium-format camera, though 35mm was also available, in development as Intel 386 math chips made the process available from a number of photos registered on a large tablet which allowed 3D measurements from software to be obtained from a sequence of photos, (or photo) with the factory documented camera and lens for aberration or distortion. I think this method might aid the science of close-range photogrammetry, where very accurate measurements are needed. Was that pipe on the oil platform, to be replaced, as it was on the "blueprint", or how much needs to be adjusted, or other uses, accidents, preservation. "as-builts" etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGigapixel photography owes much to Dr.Graham Flint (see gigapxl.org & Google him) & the earlier U2 & satellite technology he helped develop & still uses. Newer technology (& eventual lower costs) may make these techniques more widely available in the near future. RBinSC
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA question for consumer applications of a gigapixel photography; where would you archive these photos?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI understand government and spy uses. It's the family reunion that is of concern.
Of course, like the 4MP cameras of a decade ago, progress will happen.
As someone who worked with satellite pictures during the Vietnam War, I find this technology amazing. We had to launch very heavy, low-earth-orbit satellites from Vandenberg AFB, and the film was returned to earth in capsules that were captured in mid-air over the South Pacific. The resolution was breathtaking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis new methodology, even with its drawbacks, sounds far faster, and as for cost, I do not imagine it is possible for it to be as expensive as a Titan liquid-fuel rocket with multiple solid-fuel strap-on boosters.
A gigabyte picture on an iphone sounds like just the sort of gizmo that technology victims will leap at.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is a ver interesting article, thanks
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisalex garza
http://photoshopquickly.com/
You can host and archive gigapixel images now via GigaPan.org (publicly or privately). (disclaimer, I work for GigaPan :-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a good example: http://gigapan.org/gigapans/67894/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor a project in which we have 10 to 15 seconds to take gigapixel images, and would like to take at least 3 or 4, how much write time does each image take?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo how much do these cameras cost?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere do you Buy these?
Quite amazing, I would assume that the movement of the sensor was similar in speed and function to a focal plane shutter used in many 35 mm cameras, which I find kinda ironic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am also curious how they deal with noise from so many pixels
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