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Thoran · 07-12-2006, 08:23 AM

Most of those cameras are used in spy satellites... because they're REALLY expensive. A couple years ago we bought a 4k x 4k camera that was at the time the highest resolution you could get... it was $70k. The other problem with camera's this size is that the optics cost more than the sensor. Think of how expensive lenses for medium format camera's are... and this camera has a 4 INCH sensor.

There are a LOT of applications for these sorts of resolution, hell the last 4 systems I've built all had image analysis problems with far larger data sets than 110mb. The system I'm building now takes multi-terrabyte images, of course you don't STORE that image... you process it and throw away 99.9% of it in realtime... so it's not really like a camera... although you COULD store the image if you for some reason wanted to (and had the disk space). The other difference is that for large area imagery you end up taking multiple images and stitching them together... since there is no single imager large enough (even this 10k x 10k one is too small for many applications).

[ 07-12-2006, 08:36 AM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

07-12-2006, 08:23 AM	#5
Thoran Galvatron Join Date: January 10, 2002 Location: Upstate NY Age: 57 Posts: 2,109	Most of those cameras are used in spy satellites... because they're REALLY expensive. A couple years ago we bought a 4k x 4k camera that was at the time the highest resolution you could get... it was $70k. The other problem with camera's this size is that the optics cost more than the sensor. Think of how expensive lenses for medium format camera's are... and this camera has a 4 INCH sensor. There are a LOT of applications for these sorts of resolution, hell the last 4 systems I've built all had image analysis problems with far larger data sets than 110mb. The system I'm building now takes multi-terrabyte images, of course you don't STORE that image... you process it and throw away 99.9% of it in realtime... so it's not really like a camera... although you COULD store the image if you for some reason wanted to (and had the disk space). The other difference is that for large area imagery you end up taking multiple images and stitching them together... since there is no single imager large enough (even this 10k x 10k one is too small for many applications). [ 07-12-2006, 08:36 AM: Message edited by: Thoran ]