Ice, Rock and Life

A bit out of my price range at 28,900 Euros, the astounding Seitz D3 6X17 panoramic digital camera offers shades of what’s to come (I hope). With an image size of 21250 X 7500 pixels (160 megapixels from non-interpolated red/green/blue photosites), resolution will depend more on optical performance and perfect focusing than any camera limitation. Having used a Linhof Technorama 617 (film camera) extensively, I can attest to the fact that optimal focus and perfect technique are needed to extract the potential resolution. Digital capture will only exacerbate those demands.

At about 1/2 meter wide (19.4 inches), the Seitz D3 will attract considerable attention. An accompanying Mac Mini is the storage device (via gigabit ethernet), and a huge 640 X 480 touch-screen controls the camera. And yes, it can be used handheld. Perfect for candids (just kidding).

There’s no technical reason that I’m aware of that would preclude engineering a scanning sensor into a conventional digital SLR camera body—with image quality that would put to shame anything seen today with a standard Bayer Pattern sensor. Certainly 32 megapixels would not be out of the question, but even 12 or 16 would produce images with far higher quality than a standard sensor.

While far from the best shot from my Norway trip, the image below shows the unusual rendering of glacial ice, bedrock, and living plants taken together using my modified Canon EOS 5D-IR and the 85mm f/2.8 PC-Micro Nikkor.

The intense blue glacial ice renders more like red-hot lava than frozen water. Bedrock becomes gray, brown and black, living plants become light blue, and waterfalls render as white (normally water renders as black, but air bubbles change that).

The living plants, pressing their luck ever closer to the unyielding and implacable ice, show the remarkable determination of life to colonize bedrock in the face of potential destruction.