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#42674 02/29/12 12:02 AM
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It seems that mobile phone companys are competing with each other to be first out in the market with the latest gadget.
Some project moving images or your pictures in a darkened room. Others will allow you to pay for goods in some stores by 'swiping' your mobile. Another will test for bad surface food bacteria.
But the latest Nokia boasts a 41 meg camera! It will be on the market in a couple of months.

I have tried to think what a 41 Mega P camera will do...or show? Or, as to why anyone would want one?

So I have searched the Web to find a VERY HIGH RES pic
to show you all the reason why you might NOT like one!.
Unless you were a Voyer !!!

So,down load this Giga Pic and zoom in on say the third pic from the left??

http://gigapan.org/gigapans/54825

Have fun.
Oh by the way - the (normal size) Nokia Mobile with the 41 Megapixel camera, is the Nokia 808.


Last edited by Mike Kremer; 02/29/12 12:55 PM. Reason: word change

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"You will never find a real Human being - Even in a mirror." ....Mike Kremer.


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UPDATE on the Nokia 41 Megapixel Camera

Well it does cost over £400, but it can do things no other
mobile phone camera can do.
Its Xenon flash can take a picture of a speeding bullet.
Super Dolby Hi-Fi, with sterio FM radio, with RDS and has an FM transmitter with A-GPS support and MIDP 2.1. Plus digital recording. Accelerator, proximity, compass.
It has lossless digital zoom when taking 41 Megapixel pictures. But can also take 5 Mgp pictures where each pixel
is made up of 7 pixels
Has 48 Gigabytes max of storage, Geo-tagging plus Face detection
Works and uses Voice command as required
With 7 or 11 hrs talk time using a standard battery .
***
Just shows you what can be achieved when science combines wth a mobile phone.
and if it can take pictures like:-

http://gigapan.com/gigapans/5322

And thats only 5.63 Gigapixels !

Last edited by Mike Kremer; 06/12/12 04:59 PM.

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I looked at those pictures. One of the things that kind of impressed me was that all the zooms were kind of fuzzy. That's kind of normal, but the thing was that the fuzziness seemed to be either the cameras optics or atmospheric. There was none of the pixilation you normally see when you zoom way in on a digital picture. At that zoom that must be some camera. Plus it must have a good stable mount. I know if I zoom my camera in all the way to the 23 times zoom the picture will almost certainly be fuzzy, just from the camera shake. They zoomed that picture in a lot more than that and the fuzziness really doesn't look like camera shake.

Bill Gill


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Originally Posted By: Mike Kremer

Mike Kremer replied to Bill Gill

Sorry Bill like yourself I now own a digital camera, but do not know enough to say where the fuzziness at max zoom comes from.

In my previous 35 mm film days, a really sharp printed picture from edge to edge, depended upon the quality of the lense used.

I suppose the maximum magnification or zoom that a digital camera can show,
must be dependant upon the number of pixels crammed onto a camera chip?
That means the pixels must be small, at least for the Nokia 808,
which has 47 Megapixels.
But that Gigapan picture was definately not taken with the Nokia
as 47 Megapixels is only equal to .047 Gigapixels.

I think the Gigapan picture is a composite stiching up of dozens of pictures.
Not sure how many composites, or how many pixels are on the camera plate?
that they used they used.

The Astronomical telescope cameras use large plates, numbering megapixels in surface number, and have superb optics as well.
I have just realised that the pixels are further divided into
Red, Yellow and Blue...Sorry thus is getting too complicated for my limited camera knowledge.
Are the 47 Megapixels really 47 divided by three to produce the color?
Yes that photographer must have had a large super plate digital camera,
bolted on to a stable turntable.
Prehaps the slight fuzziness at X 100's of Zoom are a result
of the lense? No lense is perfect at max mag:

***Thoughts
What might be the theoretical max resolution of a pinhole digital camera coupled to a computer?



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First a quick answer.

Each pixel contains all 3 colors. In practice they may be generated by 3 different sensors in a very small cluster, but they are all put together to make one pixel.

The maximum resolution that is usually quoted is just the number of sensor clusters (pixels) on the sensor plate. With a computer you can zoom in until you can see each individual pixel. Of course at that point the picture becomes almost impossible to see. Did you ever see and pointillist oil paintings? To make them the artist uses a lot of very small spots of paint, rather than filling a area with paint. From a distance they wind up looking normal, but up close you can see all the little dots. It is the same way with digital pictures. And that is what I noticed about the Gigapan pictures. At the full zoom there was no sign of the pixels. So the fuzziness may be from the optics. As you noted the optics on Astronomical telescopes are superb. Of course the problem may be the atmosphere. That is a problem with Astronomical telescopes.

Astronomical telescopes are working to overcome the atmospheric problems with adaptive optics. They change the optics to match the atmospheric distortion. In Ethan Siegel's "Starts With a Bang" blog he has an article about the European Extremely Large Telescope. This is going to be a humdinger. The mirror will be almost 40 M (131 feet) in diameter. With a state-of-the-art adaptive optics system it is going to be THE leading telescope.

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there are two women on that ridge taking pictures of another woman.
and three men wearng blue t shirts and white shorts close to the top of the hill face.

theres no way you could see any of them without optics.

I didnt see any pixels either but thats probably because the zoom is not set to zoom in that far.

I can visualize a few military / security applications that utilize optics such as this.

with this type of optics a single sniper could dispatch an
entire battalion coming over that ridge if he had enough ammo.


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The picture and the quality of the zoom is extraordinary, there is no doubt of that. The idea that I was trying to express was that while we can see the people, and birds, and what have you, they are fuzzy, you wouldn't be able to recognize them. It is amazing that you can see them at all. The thing that I was trying to point out is that the fuzziness is due to either the limits of the optical system, or atmospheric effects. They do not, as you noticed, show any sign of the pixilation that happens when you try to zoom most digital (or digitized) photos. So that even in that small area there are still a enough pixels to show the shapes, rather than a lot of spots in the general shape of a person or whatever.

As far as being used by sniper. I'm afraid that the telescope doesn't lend itself to mounting on a weapon. The telescope they used is probably a pretty big object. As explained in Ethan Siegel's blog post I put a link to up above bigger is better when it comes to optics.

Bill Gill


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woops , sry , I thought the picture was made with a phone. LOL.

I didnt try to open it up in a image editor I just used the web site.

I see now where Mike pointed out that this was just a sample of a really high res picture.

I dont think we would want our snipers lugging around really big telescopes , I know it would be better if we didnt need snipers but as it stands we do.

sometimes snipers can spend several months manuvering into a desired position , and lugging anything large around would be really tricky.

my thoughts on this was that if per chance we ever did go to war with china or china invaded with their military we would really need some really high powered scopes because the number of the enemy would greatly outnumber our military.

this way even if they succeeded in taking out our satellites and vehicles with emp weapons our ground forces could still reach out and touch them with specially delivered little presents made in america.

sort of like the movie wolverines.


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As a further step in the discussion of the zoom capabilities shown in the link above Skulls in the Stars blog has a discussion of how well the 2 Hubble class telescopes just presented to NASA could do at distinguishing objects on the ground. The theoretical limit seems to be about 2.5 inches (6.35 cm). But there are other factors that also would influence it, as mentioned in the comments.

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Quote:
had some extra unused “hardware” to donate to the space agency


LOL , looks like the 2.5 inch resolution they gave away was probably replaced by 0.5 inch resolution by my guess.

giving away telescopes built for satellite recon muhahahaha haaaaa

I suppose they could probably match a set of fingerprints or
tell what someone had for breakfast.

its really awesome.





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Well, I kind of wondered how they happened to have a couple of surplus telescopes on hand. Maybe they decided they didn't need that kind of resolution, since they wouldn't want to invade anybodys privacy.

Of course one of the reasons for surplussing government equipment is when it has been replaced with something better. What would be better than Hubble class is a big question. As pointed out in the article I linked to the Hubble is about as big as they can launch. The big problem being the diameter, which of course is the constraint on the aperture of the telescope. I guess you might be able to do better with multiple mirrors. That could enhance the imaging power.

Bill Gill


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Quote:
multiple mirrors. That could enhance the imaging power.


yes , that must be it!


LOL

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3/4 inch of dust build up on the moon in 4.527 billion years,LOL and QM is fantasy science.

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