Last week we shared the beautiful first space photo to be taken with the OmegaCAM, a 268-megapixel, 1,700-lb camera operated by the European Southern Observatory. Here are some photographs of the camera itself, which uses an array of 32 separate CCD sensors for its incredible resolution.
Read more…
Amateur astronomy enthusiasts may be content with shooting the stars with a DSLR through a telescope, but what would a consortium of astronomy institutes use for photographing the night sky? The answer is the OmegaCam, a giant 1,700-lb camera found at the heart of the largest telescope designed for visible light surveying: the VST. It uses 32 separate CCD sensors that work together to form a giant 268-megapixel sensor, capturing 30 terabytes worth of photographs every year. The photograph seen above is the first released photo shot with this massive camera.
Update: We’ve posted some photographs of OmegaCAM here.
What you see above is the inside of the world’s largest pinhole camera measuring 45x160x80 feet. It’s an abandoned airplane hangar in Irvine, California that was converted over the course of two months into a gigantic pinhole camera. 24,000 square feet of plastic, 1,300 gallons of foam filler, 1.52 miles of tape, and 40 cans of spray paint went into darkening the hangar.
Read more…
Photographer Darren Samuelson spent seven months building a massive homemade large-format camera that’s about six-feet-long when fully extended. He shoots with 14×36-inch x-ray film that’s about 1/12th the cost of ordinary photographic film but much harder to develop.
Read more…
Having a coffee table that looks like a giant photo album is already pretty unique, but what about a coffee table that also functions as one? Remembrance is a coffee table designed by North Michigan University design student Mitch Steinmetz that opens up to reveal your photos like any good giant photo album should.
Read more…
Once your lenses get to a certain level of awesomeness, you have to start carrying them like bazookas. Can anyone identify the two lenses found in this photograph?
(via The Phoblographer)
John Chiara is a San Francisco-based photographer that uses an uber-large format camera the size of a trailer that he constructed himself. The camera is so dang big that setting up the thing requires a car jack and lots of yanking. After setting up the film inside the camera, Chiara climbs out of the camera through a long black garbage-bag style tube. To develop the prints, he uses an 18-inch diameter sewage pipe that he pours chemicals into and rolls around on the ground.
Read more…
If you have an extra $45,000 lying around, you might still be able to purchase the Canon 5200mm f/14 lens that was listed on eBay last month. It ended on December 14th with 0 bids (I wonder why…). Here’s a screenshot, in case the listing is removed:
Here’s an old advertisement that was displayed on the auction, demonstrating the power of the lens:
For an even better idea of how powerful the magnification of this lens is, here’s a video made with the lens attached to a video camera:
Some of the facts and figures listed in the auction and on the video page are pretty interesting… The lens has a minimum focusing distance of 393ft/120m. It weighs 220lb,100kg without its stand. In a flyer promoting the lens, Canon states that,
This is the only ultra-telephoto lens in the world capable of taking photographs of objects 18 to 32 miles away (30km to 52kms away). Having a focal length of 5200mm, Canon Mirror Lens 5200mm can obtain one hundred times as large an object image as that of a 50mm lens.
What’s even more interesting, is that if used with a DSLR with a crop factor (i.e. Canon 50D), the lens is effectively a 8320mm lens. Wowzers.
Obviously, this lens isn’t very practical for things aside from spying on someone across a city, or staring at some portion of the moon. It seems like the lens would primarily be used for astrophotography. Can you think of any other examples of where this focal length could be useful?
(via PDNPulse)
