So you wanted 39MP?

[George Riehm]

With a frame rate of 35 frames per minute the 39MP Phase One back is
not what you would call a sports shooter, but with file sizes approaching 500MB this is the ideal solution for your medium format bodies.

Sorry no pricing yet...

...but I'm betting around $40K.

Makes that D2X or 1Ds MKII look downright bargain basement. ;)

For your reading pleasure:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-7883-7927

[Bluedog]

LMAO ... you'd have to attach a 120 gig HD to that thing. I didn't read the whole article though.

[TheObiJuan]

That is silly. :D
How often does one blow up to billboard size.
And they ar at what, 44dpi?

I saw an upsized pic from a 1D, it was around 9' on it's longest side. The pic was clean and looked :eek:

[Rhys]

That is silly. :D
How often does one blow up to billboard size.
And they ar at what, 44dpi?

I saw an upsized pic from a 1D, it was around 9' on it's longest side. The pic was clean and looked :eek:

hmm... 39 megapixels... Assuming 144dpi and a 4:3 format, this would produce an image 50 inches by 37. Of course, at optimal quality (300 dpi), the image would be 18 inches by 24 inches which would be a high-quality poster - not a billboard.

[erichlund]

For a billboard, you use a very low DPI and interpolate. Nobody stands 6" from a billboard and counts pixels. You're lucky if you get within 75 feet as you're speeding past in your car.

[Warin]

LMAO ... you'd have to attach a 120 gig HD to that thing. I didn't read the whole article though.

Obviously you didnt read the bit that explained that they all use compact flash ;) With new 8 gig compact flash, that means a measly 16 pictures :eek: per card!! Crap!

Good news is that it looks like they will add a WiFi solution that will allow you to stream the photos to a notebook, increasing capacity significantly.

[Cold Snail]

I'll think I'll pass and just use Large Format instead.

[gstafleu]

This is probably aimed at the glossy-magazine-double-page-high-res-spread-crowd. Do you need it? Accourding to this article on luminous landscape (http://38320cwww.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/shootout.shtml) a Canon 1DS DSLR already produces results as good as medium format film. So this back just produces better. Whether that is visible in anything except a museum mural, I don't know.

[Rhys]

Obviously you didnt read the bit that explained that they all use compact flash ;) With new 8 gig compact flash, that means a measly 16 pictures :eek: per card!! Crap!

Good news is that it looks like they will add a WiFi solution that will allow you to stream the photos to a notebook, increasing capacity significantly.

It is a wee bit impractical when you realise that only 9 photos will fit on a DVD. The biggest common hard drive is about 200gb (enough for ooh 400 photos). I'd say that 39mb is well in advance of current storage media. Back to magnetic tape, guys...

[George Riehm]

It is a wee bit impractical when you realise that only 9 photos will fit on a DVD. The biggest common hard drive is about 200gb (enough for ooh 400 photos). I'd say that 39mb is well in advance of current storage media. Back to magnetic tape, guys...

Update:

The actual size of a single 39MP frame is about 200MB worse case.

These days the largest common hard drive is actually about 400GB (Fry's Electronics for about $189). That gives you about 2000 frames per hard drive, and about 23 per a standard DVD, and 46 on a dual layer DVD. Down the road Blue-ray will allow for about 30GB to 50GB per disk.

Considering the cost of these digital-backs, having a couple of TerraBytes and a high capacity DVD type drive, on a small server should be a minor expense and no big deal.

[Rhys]

Update:

The actual size of a single 39MP frame is about 200MB worse case.

These days the largest common hard drive is actually about 400GB (Fry's Electronics for about $189). That gives you about 2000 frames per hard drive, and about 23 per a standard DVD, and 46 on a dual layer DVD. Down the road Blue-ray will allow for about 30GB to 50GB per disk.

Considering the cost of these digital-backs, having a couple of TerraBytes and a high capacity DVD type drive, on a small server should be a minor expense and no big deal.

Yes but think of the cost. Terrabyte disks aren't that common and are thus a lot more expensive as are O/Ss capable of seeing a whole terrabyte. Windows can't see more than 400 GB and I doubt Macs are much better. Linux probably can though you'll havce to check on the eth0 filing system to check that.

[Warin]

You can order a G5 Powermac with 2x250gb hard drives, so I suspect no such 400gb limit exists on OSX. Personally, I think the person who can afford the ludicrously high price of a Phase One back wont blink at the WiFi option with a big disk array for storage.

[George Riehm]

Yes but think of the cost. Terrabyte disks aren't that common and are thus a lot more expensive as are O/Ss capable of seeing a whole terrabyte. Windows can't see more than 400 GB and I doubt Macs are much better. Linux probably can though you'll havce to check on the eth0 filing system to check that.

I wasn't talking about 1 TerraByte drives, but multiple 400GB drives. I currently am running 1.24 TerraBytes on my main system (4 x 250GB on a Promise Technology IDE expander plus 2 x 120GB drives on the primary motherboard IDE controller. Plus I have a 120GB USB2.0 drive for large file transfer. I could easily epand this setup as follows:

The Promise IDE expander allows you to run up to 4 - 400GB drives in addition to the motherboard IDE controllers 4 drive capacity. So it is possible to run 7 - 400GB hard drives plus a DVD burner on a standard Intel or AMD based system.

That's a 2.8 TerraByte system for about $1800 (!!!). you can also add portable 250GB drives via low cost (around $15) IDE to USB2.0HS converters.

So the possibilities are almost endless.

[TheObiJuan]

George, why so much space??
:confused:

[Bluedog]

George, why so much space??
:confused:

He either takes a lot of pictures or downloads them illegal movies ... :D

[Rhys]

He either takes a lot of pictures or downloads them illegal movies ... :D

Maybe he keeps running out of disk space, unaware that Warez is really what's taking up the space as opposed to his Mac OS :p

The theoretical maximum for a PC in terms of drives is 26. This can be any combination of card readers, disk drive, floppy drives, CD/DVD etc. Having said that, the real limitation will be the number of IDE ports for drives whether they're board-mounted or come via PCI conversion units. My PC at home has 6 PCI slots and two IDE. This give me a maximum of 4 IDE drives plus 24 PCI-IDE drives - except Windows can't count past 26.

I trust that George is backing up his data. Personally I recommend RAIDing the drives.

[George Riehm]

George, why so much space??
:confused:

Actually I have my entire DVD collection DivX'ed (MPEG4 compression) for travel. Before a long trip I download the movies I want onto my laptop hard drive or one of my 60GB external drives. I usually carry 20 or 30 movies for variety.

I can honestly say that I have never downloaded a movie. Every movie in my collection was compressed by me.

I also have a lot of old scanned images from my film days, and old family archives, as well as over 23,000 digital images from 9 years of digital camera usage.

And finally I have my entire collection of CD's in MP3 Archive quality ready for travel in an iPOD or on MP3 CD.

Also now that I have shifted 100% to RAW (and lovin' it) I use up a lot more storage space on both hard drive and DVD. Man I'll be glad when the cost of dual layer comes down. ;)

I can access all of this from my computer to my home entertainment center. It was actually relatively easy and inexpensive to do this whole thing.

All together I have about 1.7 TerraBytes of storage space and only about 200GB unused. It's easy and fairly cheap to add 120GB and 250GB drives to the library via $15 USB2.0HS adapters. I literally store them (the drives) on the bookshelf, like books, and keep an Excel record of the contents.

[Bluedog]

Now we know what your doin' with your retirement ... ;)

[George Riehm]

Now we know what your doin' with your retirement ... ;)

Probably not what you think...


http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/6222/beer27ot.gif

Thanks to Cold Snail for that one.