gigapixl project (sic)

[Richard Schlesinger]

Those of you interested in digital imaging and how far it can go may be interested in going to the MOPA (Museum of Photographic Arts) web site and looking at the Gigapixl Project. If you can get there to see the very large prints it might be worth the trip. They are stunning!

[Graeme Hird]

They might be sharp in real life, but they're not worth the click on the net - dead boring if you ask me. They should find a decent photographer to run their camera.

[Richard Schlesinger]

That's what the whole thing is all about. The sharpity/resolution is remarkable. Grainless. Far ahead of anything I have seen.

[David Luttmann]

Hey Grump,

Check out the top Betterlight backs as well. The top model will give a 300 dpi print at a size of 6 feet wide. As the files are "only" about 320MP, they are a little easier to manage than a gigapixel ;-)

[Graeme Hird]

Well, if sharpity (sic) is your thing, you've found the right idol to worship ....

[John_4185]

"SHARPITY" - There's something really 'sticky' about that term. I kinda like it.

[paulr]

interesting articles on the site ... especially on the lens design, and on actually estimating the MTF of the atmosphere.

[Eric Woodbury]

I'm with you Graeme; a great camera doesn't make a great photographer.

[QT Luong]

Here is a comment that was emailed to me by a subscriber:

For those of us who don't know much about cameras, that looked like a magic
trick when they zoomed in and the picture just got clearer with more detail.
We are all scratching our heads and going, "how did he do that?". It was
just something that made you say "wow".

For now, the technology is what fascinates people but for the pictures to
have staying power, they will have to be more artistic. Otherwise, it will
end up being a gimmick (in my opinion). I told my husband that I had never
thought about investing in a picture for "art's" sake but that would be
something that would make me rethink photography as an investment.

[Don Miller]

Did you notice that most images are scanned in 10" sections and spliced in photoshop?

Wouldn't it be much easier to design a nodal-point head for an 8x10 and stitch 2 or 3 images? Choice of lenses. Transperancy film. Movements. Might take a day or two. Ya gotta love engineers. The $10,00 toliet seat.

I can build a computer to edit these files for $3000. Where's Chris Jordan? I'm ready to get started.....

[David A. Goldfarb]

Wouldn't it be much easier to design a nodal-point head for an 8x10 and stitch 2 or 3 images?

Easier than that. You could just set up a monorail camera with the nodal point of the lens positioned over the rail clamp. No special panoramic head required, but a strong head that can handle all the weight cantilevered behind the clamp would be needed.

[John_4185]

Some monorails won't put the tripod underneath the nodal point of a wide lens such as the 90mm S/A or 75mm S/A. The Linhof Color is one example; the standards wrap around the rail, just as the tripod mount does putting the tripod mount far, far from nodal point. The Sinar Alpina has a problem with the front standard poles interfering; I end up raising the standards so far there is none left for front rise, and even front rise is not needed, it ends up a flimsy setup for outdoor work. Dunno about more spendy cameras, but those two are a pain, and why I make my own nodal-point offsets.

Regarding QT's comment - zoomies - I find people get over it the thrill almost immediately. Ain't nothing gonna replace prints in real life any time soon, and I have an Apple Cine 23" screen, going on 30" after January! It's still 120ppi rez, at best.

[Don Miller]

Anyone know the resolution difference between Velvia 100F and aerial film?