13.4 gigapixel camera. We could be monitored from miles away without even knowing it.

This video I was looking at caught my attention. Camera can zoom in on somebody's face from miles away. You can zoom in clearly on anything that was in site when the picture was taking. Check out the video.

www.break.com...

could our government or anybody be spying on us like this already. Sorry if this is the wrong section . I'm kind of new here. Anyways was just wondering if anyone else had thought about this or seen this video.

I have a hard time believing that's 20 miles. 2, maybe - which is still a feat in it of itself.

Imagine if it has a macro function on it!

Yea just figured I'd post it because I didn't even know that was possible. And if this is possibly being released to the public imagine how much better it could really be.

I flagged your thread because I think its an important piece of information. just like you, I had NO IDEA this is possible already. on the downside this means that we have even less privacy or need some good curtains, on the upside it means that we will also be able to see more (imagine having a camera like this at secret facilities like area51)

Let's be honest.. what the public gets, the government has HAD for decades.
If we get a 13MP camera, they have one 25-30MP, and we'll see that a few decades down the road.

And to the OP.. it's not a matter of IF they're spying on us, its for HOW LONG have they been.

nono, this isn't true. there is no 13.4 gp camera, this is a 13.4 gigapixel picture made from a bunch of smaller pictures.

let me find the link real quick where it explains this.


AH HAH!

www.harlem-13-gigapixels.com...


its a 'stitch' of a bunch of other pictures.

[edit on 9/3/2007 by xxblackoctoberxx]

Sorry, but I have to protest. Gigapixel???????
Just calculate the size of the hard drive you would need to have for even a few minutes of footage, let alone the connection to the computer needed. A sata 300 will only transfer 3 gigs a second. I will presume it was mis-posted on Break.com, and it is really a 13.4 Megapixel. Further, the megapixel resolution doesnt really have that much bearing on what is shown, it's the telephoto lens that makes all the difference. I can get about 1/8 of what was shown on my 8 MP with the stock lens, without going into digital zoom.

reply to post by xxblackoctoberxx

Damn yer quick.
Now that I went there-----yup.

Heres a link on a gigapixel project. I remember seeing some images from this a year or two ago. Pretty cool stuff. It's basically an oversized camera using oversized film then scanned. When you are using such a large piece of film the magnification and resolution you are able to get from it is incredible.

www.gigapxl.org...

If you figure that the movie "Enemy of the State", with Will Smith and Gene Hackman was portraying that technology about a decade ago, the just think what kind of surveillance is going on today unbeknownst to us. This goes for Earth and space based systems.

Personally I think that if they want to see what you are doing, they can do just that. We would not know the emans but the only privacy now is the privacy of our own head.

13.4 gigapixel? I bet they have a 1000gigpixel one just waiting to stare down at you. Welcome to America Sir.

ALso if I remember correctly Either the camera lens or the film he is using comes from the DOD.

Kind of interesting, but all cameras need light and the F stop I think is the aperture size that lets the light in. As many might have notice with small cameras that are 7 Megs these still have crappy pictures in areas with low light, but look great in a bright area. This is because the aperture is small and only so much light can enter.

That said I’m not sure how this camera can take what appears to be a wide angle picture and then zoom in using software on objects and other far away buildings with greater detail than what was in the wide angle shot. As example, in the wide angle a dark spot near a tree becomes a zoomed in picture of 2 people and other very detailed items on the sidewalk and street, or a building that is a dark blur from the distance and the zoom in shows fine detail of its structure.

Normally the more pixels you have the bigger the picture can be reproduced without pixilation, and so a camera with gigs of pixels would allow you to make a picture to cover a building or larger and not show any pixilation. This doesn’t mean you can take a picture of something and zoom in and get more detail than what you actually started with. That example looks more like an art project than something that can actually be done.

If there is a dark blob in the photo you can zoom in all you want and it will still be a dark blob, and still not show pixilation.

The picture is not taken with a digital camera it is taken with a large format film camera then the image is scanned. You have to think of a huge piece of film, I'm not sure what size he is using but is is a big piece of film. With that size negative you get an incredible amount of detail.

Typically with a 35mm slide you can enlarge it to a good looking 30"x40" print on a 4"x5" slide you could produce a billboard he is using something with more area than a 4"x5" negative. As I said previously I believe he is using film taht was made for sateillite or reconissance photography. And yes this is the type of stuff the gov can get from their spy stuff.

The gigapixel term is only applied to the resolution of the negative itself. For instance most digital prints are printed at a resolution of 300 DPI for most cases this is all you need for the eye to see a nice picture. In relation to digital printing a true photographic print printed on an enlarger is said to have a DPI of approx 1500. You have to remember digital is made up of electronic dots film is made of silver emulsion and the film grain can be much smaller and more entwined than a digital file. Gigapixel is only a term the man coined to express the quality of the shot. When you see the full image he is not scanning the entire image at a "gigapixel" rate he is only scanning at the nessesary size to print. For example he may only be scanning the full negative at 300 DPI but then in order to get the closeups he is only scanning in a small portion of the negative at perhaps 1500 DPI to capture the detail of a smaller area. I doubt very seriously he has the full negative scanned in at such a high resolution(gigapixel) because the space requirements and computer power to process it would be astronomical.

[edit on 3-9-2007 by photobug]

Im not a tech guy, but I would love clarity on how this type of technology could help identify anomalies on the moon. I know it sounds like a stretch, but can these type of cameras be equiped to a telescope and would you still be able to zoom in with the telescopic lens in between the object and the camera.

Thanks.

Originally posted by DeeMack
Im not a tech guy, but I would love clarity on how this type of technology could help identify anomalies on the moon. I know it sounds like a stretch, but can these type of cameras be equiped to a telescope and would you still be able to zoom in with the telescopic lens in between the object and the camera.

Thanks.

Sure you could, Get yourself a good 4x5 camera. I am sure that you could get the mount to put a telescope to it. The only downside I see would be is that you would need a fast film to compensate for the F stop of the telescope unless you have a large trust fund you could tap into for a high end lens or telescope. Telescopes typically do not have the larger aperature openings that camera lenses have. I also know that there are a lot of telescopes on the market that have 35mm mounts on them. You could use a 35mm with slide film and get pretty good detail of the moon providing you do not end up blurring the image.

There are a lot of astro photographers out there do a google search you will find out a lot of great info on photographing the heavens



[edit on 3-9-2007 by photobug]

Originally posted by photobug
[Sure you could, Get yourself a good 4x5 camera. I am sure that you could get the mount to put a telescope to it. The only downside I see would be is that you would need a fast film to compensate for the F stop of the telescope unless you have a large trust fund you could tap into for a high end lens or telescope. Telescopes typically do not have the larger aperature openings that camera lenses have. I also know that there are a lot of telescopes on the market that have 35mm mounts on them. You could use a 35mm with slide film and get pretty good detail of the moon providing you do not end up blurring the image.

There are a lot of astro photographers out there do a google search you will find out a lot of great info on photographing the heavens



[edit on 3-9-2007 by photobug]

Since the moon is pure sunlight and a 8" telescope is about f10 then you could take 1/60 pictures. Most people would not take full moon pictures because there is little shadow, and so it gets washed out where a half moon shows a lot of crater shadows, and makes for a nice picture, but in the case where you want to zoom in with the most light and least shadow a full moon shot would be interesting to see how far you could zoom down.

Allot of people here seem to be missing the point - this is not a 13.4 gigapixel camera (the title of this thread is very misleading), it's a bunch of smaller photos that have been seamlessly joined together to create one very large panorama. There is no new technology involved here, it's just standard technology used in a novel way. It can't be used to spy on you any more than an ordinary CCTV camera can, in fact, your average CCTV camera does a much better job because it works "on the fly".

reply to post by gotrox


the U2 spy planes have DECOM'd ...these used a 4 plus GIGApixel film camera.....here is a link : www.gigapxl.org...

although this is film ...this shows what the military had...so this would indicate that they have much higher resolutions currently in use....
possibly digital in nature....

the satalites google maps is using are in orbit with a resolution of
1 inch equaling 100 ft....this is what the public is allowed to view...
also indicating that much higher resolutions as easily attainable...