3.2 GP

[wolfnowl]

What? You're still talking about MEGA pixels? 

http://www.photographybay.com/2012/04/30/3-2-gigapixel-camera-has-189-image-sensors/

Mike.

[francois]

What? You're still talking about MEGA pixels? 

http://www.photographybay.com/2012/04/30/3-2-gigapixel-camera-has-189-image-sensors/

Mike.

Mike,
Thanks for the article. I read it [too] quickly and thought what's the fuss with 3.2 MP images! Re-reading the article and I then realized that it was 3.2 GB!!! I guess that we'll need some pretty powerful computer to handle that kind of images, Lightroom 4.x won't cut it.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Can I use it hand-held?
And how many assistants do I need to carry the memory card?

[David Sutton]

And you'll need a healthy dose of optimism to believe you'll live long enough to see the buffer clear.
One decent exposure bracket and you'd better will it to your grandchildren.

[francois]

Can I use it hand-held?

Of course, you can!

And how many assistants do I need to carry the memory card?

I bet that you'll need a "cohort" of assisants. With that pixel count, memory cards are out... we need hard drives.

[Chris Pollock]

You could get similar resolution by stitching together a few hundred frames from a DSLR. I can't say I've ever produced a 3.2 gigapixel image before, but I have exceeded 500 megapixels on occasion.

Stitching has its limitations, but it doesn't require a medium-sized truck and a crane to carry and set up your gear. That's an important advantage for me, since I much prefer to drive a smaller vehicle. My wife also appreciates the lower cost.

[Justan]

The device is impressive as heck, but as hinted at above by others, I’d like to know more about what they use for computer storage and processing for the 30 GB per night of content they plan to capture and process.

[Chris Pollock]

I’d like to know more about what they use for computer storage and processing for the 30 GB per night of content they plan to capture and process.

You understate the magnitude of the task. It's 30TB of data per night.

[aduke]

I would think that it is some sort of supercomputer, perhaps purpose-built for this task, and a lot of special hardware to facilitate the image processing.

Alan

[Justan]

You understate the magnitude of the task. It's 30TB of data per night.

Thanks, that was a typo.

For comparison sake, this past weekend, I copied about 2 TB of data to new drives on the same server. The server is a PowerEdge 2950, which is a nearly state of the technology, enterprise class server, and it uses RAID5 drive config and 7.2K RPM SATA drives. This “mere” 2 TB of data took nearly 2 days for a complete copy. These folks are producing 30 TB of data storage (15 times what I worked with) per night suggests a whole lot of parallel processing and/or a new generation of processing hardware, or perhaps both.