While photographers marvel at the 20 or 30 megapixels captured by the latest cameras, researchers at Duke laugh quietly and return to their lab to continue work on a system that could capture 50 gigapixels at the touch of a button.
For comparison, if your average point-and-shoot picture was the size of a word on this page, a 50-gigapixel shot would be around the size of your entire screen.
Gigapixels aren't new in and of themselves, of course: Enormous photos of the Milky Way or Obama's inauguration are both effective demonstrations of the power of huge images. But generally these giant pictures are created by one camera that takes hundreds (or thousands) of shots, which are then fitted together after the fact. Not a problem if you're taking pictures of stars, but no good if you wanted to capture a flock of birds taking off.
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