back to article Look! Up in the sky! It's letters on a plane read with a 250MP camera

Canon says it's developed a 250-megapixel CMOS sensor that shoots at 19,580 x 12,600 pixels and captures so much information it “was able to capture images enabling the distinguishing of lettering on the side of an airplane flying at a distance of approximately 18 km from the shooting location.” That trick was pulled off by …

  1. FozzyBear

    makes text readable at 18km range

    and yet you will still be squinting to make out the fne print in any software licencing agreement

  2. ben kendim

    With what lens and what atmospheric conditions?

    If they saw text on the side of a plane 18 km away on a cool morning in the Atacama dessert, fine.

    If they saw it at Death Valley in the afternoon, bravo.

    But what optic was used? What was the field of view, what are the FPA dimensions? Without those text on the side of a plane is a meningless measure!

    more info here http://www.canon.com/news/2015/sep07e.html

    1. TReko
      Black Helicopters

      Re: With what lens and what atmospheric conditions?

      Indeed, without adaptive optics, a stable mount and and lots of light, this is just marketing.

      Even Canon's EF-S lenses battle to focus above 8Mpixel resolution at the edges of the field of view.

      Some sample images from Canon would be helpful.

      1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

        Re: With what lens and what atmospheric conditions?

        Even Canon's EF-S lenses battle to focus above 8Mpixel resolution at the edges of the field of view.

        Which one(s)?

      2. Domquark

        Re: With what lens and what atmospheric conditions?

        The EF-S lens is a very basic "consumer" product.

        If you want quality, go for one of Canon's "L" series lenses. The objective on any/all L-Series is one huge piece of glass, twice the size of a comparable EF-S lens. These are designed with the EOS-1Dnn cameras in mind - with sensors up to 21MP (1DS Mk3).

        The EF-S series were/are always designed to a price.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: With what lens and what atmospheric conditions?

          Now the 5Ds and 5Ds R moved it to 50MP - and the latest L lenses have been designed with hi MP camera in mind. Be prepared to shell some $$$$$ for them, though....

    2. Steven Roper

      Re: With what lens and what atmospheric conditions?

      It isn't that far-fetched. I photographed a gum tree near the top of Mt Lofty from the North Adelaide horse paddocks, a distance of 13.6 km as the crow flies, using a Nikon Coolpix P900 and basic tripod. Conditions were a warm clear afternoon in South Australia's Mediterranean climate. It's quite easy to make out individual branches on the tree in the resulting picture, and the effect of heat haze, while noticeable, in no wise obscures the detail of the tree. And that's with an entry-level pop camera.

      So with a decent lens and this sensor, given a plane flying high overhead where heat shimmer would be minimised, it's certainly possible.

    3. 45RPM Silver badge

      Re: With what lens and what atmospheric conditions?

      And what was the text? There's a considerable difference in size between, for example, the No Step signs on a plane (already pretty large) and the registration number (bloody massive).

      1. Peter Ford

        Re: With what lens and what atmospheric conditions?

        It says "E - A - S - is that a V? or a Y? - then J - E - something..."

    4. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: With what lens and what atmospheric conditions?

      Indeed... I could do this with an EOS500 if I plug it into my reflecting telescope.

      Technically there are NO lenses in the lightpath at all, doing that, but with a tiny little eyepiece somewhere inside the setup, it's not hard to pick out plane lettering (keeping it in the eyepiece - that's another matter!)... If I'm allowed to just point it at the sky, record 5fps and then go back through the shot images at a later date, there's a certainty I could pick out something like a plane lettering from that distance quite easily. Hell... they're designed to pick up planets and smaller, I'm sure a plane is no trouble at all.

      I know that I can view the moss on the chimney of a house down the street to such a degree that a botanist would be able to tell you what species it was. A plane? No problem. Just stick me on the flighpath with the cheapest of reflectors and an eyepiece or two, a camera body (no lens required), and something like AstroPhotographyTool so I can just make it snap an image one after another after another. I wouldn't even need to bother compositing multiple images.

    5. Tom 7

      Re: With what lens and what atmospheric conditions?

      The point about heat shimmer is it is dynamic. It fucks up the human eye because its moving - but like a moving picture the individual images can be clear.

      1. Billa Bong

        Re: With what lens and what atmospheric conditions?

        @Tom7, Clear, yes. Not distorted, no, possibly to the point of illegibility. Hey, maybe they could use images taken with this for captcha's.

    6. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Atacama dessert

      Does that have chocolate in it ?

      Cause if it does, I'm all for it.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Blade Runner

    But can it see around corners?

  4. Monty Burns

    Pfft, 4k is sooooo last week, I want 30k in my living room.

  5. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    Do you think that if I asked them nicely

    they'd send me a free sample to bolt onto my telescope, so I can see even more stars?

    1. xybyrgy

      Re: Do you think that if I asked them nicely

      Certainly the astronomers are already drooling...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Do you think that if I asked them nicely

      Probably not, but they might sell you one for a very large stack of big bills, I heard that it will retail above 30k.

      1. P. Lee

        Re: Do you think that if I asked them nicely

        > I heard that it will retail above 30k.

        But worth it for paparazzi?

  6. Your alien overlord - fear me

    It's designed for facial recognition - the computer now matches your skin pores and blood vessels (in your weary eyes) so the rozzers don't need to physically be at music festivals, they'll be identifying you from that drone flying a few miles overhead. Seemingly it's bad PR to be on site at the festival, ruining everyones drug taking experience.

    1. Denarius
      Unhappy

      or worse

      not only the spooks dreaming of massive face profiles databases without being in sight when taking them, but perhaps the Chocolate factory also wet its pants at the thought of really detailed images of peoples backyards, living rooms, bedrooms, malls

  7. David Gosnell
    Coat

    Can I be the first to say ....

    ... photos, or it never happened?

    1. Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Can I be the first to say ....

      Well played, sir. 100 Internet points to Gryffindor.

  8. Tom 7

    All school exams

    now to be taken in underground sheilded rooms.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ordnance Survey

    Ordnance Survey in the UK already have 196 megapixels cameras doing aerial surveys.

    "Five of our field surveyors work in the Flying Unit on a rotation basis as air camera operators, working with the incredible 196 megapixels cameras on board the planes, which allow us to take high resolution images from the skies. "

    http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/2015/06/britain-from-above-with-the-oseye/#more-19416

    The recent BBC "Timeshift" documentary on the evolution of OS maps was fascinating.

    The BBC iPlayer has err.. geographical constraints.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06b36q3/timeshift-series-15-2-a-very-british-map-the-ordnance-survey-story

    1. Cynic_999

      Re: Ordnance Survey

      I recall reading about a method of taking air recon images that uses a 1D CCD array that streams continuous lines of pixels to a HDD. The CCD read rate is synchronised to the aircraft's GPS derived groundspeed and thus provides a continuous strip photograph. One-dimensional optics and CCD sensors can be made more accurately and cheaper than their 2D equivalent. In practice two such strip-cameras are mounted, one angled slightly forward and one slightly aft so that when the two resulting strips are aligned they will create a stereoscopic image pair (necessary to determine ground contours and heights of objects).

  10. Pete 2 Silver badge

    New year's resolution

    The abilty to read small stuff a long way away is a function of the pixel size and focal length (magnification, to the layman) of the lens. Not the number of pixels on the sensor. That will increase your field of view, but not your resolution.

    It's still an impressive chip. Gimme call when I can get the colour version in my DSLR for < (a grand).

  11. thomas k

    “specialized surveillance and crime prevention tools”

    Funny how they conflate those two, as if the one somehow justifies the other.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I seem to remember..

    A certain telescope having a massive array of CCD's to capture the sky. I wonder if this is would be an improvement over what they are using or perhaps they are already using it? Anyway, forget being scared of CCTV or drone applications. When it finally does become a consumer product you'll want to be careful of the old lady. She'll be able to snap photo's so detailed she'll be able to zoom in and discover the tell tale outline of the lipstick you thought you had washed off...

    Joking aside, wouldn't this have practical applications for things like Intel's realsense cameras and google's project whatever that creates 3D models from pics? Though I forget what they use for depth sensing so all it would probably mean is really detailed textures for the resulting meshes generated. I wonder if they could generate bump maps of the photo's on the fly to give the illusion of better wireframes?

  13. thesykes

    pfft

    CSI have been pulling that sort of info using traffic cameras, at night, reflected in the retina of a stray cat in a dark alley, for years. I've seen it on TV, it must be true.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmm

    What a shame the world is round. Imagine the pron.

  15. Pete4000uk

    Put it on a satellite and point it into space

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Think of the perv value!

  17. phil dude
    Thumb Up

    medical imaging....

    and microscopes.

    Would you like to know if a tumour has changed?

    A pattern of blood vessels predict a heart attack?

    Detect stroke from a photograph?

    As with all amazing tech, it can be used for the benefit of all...

    P.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Meanwhile, a prototype of a 120MP camera...

    ... is shown at the Canon Expo 2015 in New York.

    It also announced "Material Appearance Image-Processing Technology" - it looks an hybrid between 2D and 3D printing...

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    and this is us at the airport

    and this is our cat

    and this is the coffee we had at starbucks

    and this is the lunch we had afterwards

    .... all coming to you (relatively) soon in 250Mp

    I can't wait

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