How Spirit Takes Pictures 311
Some Clown writes "MSNBC has a great article on the details of the camera system on the Mars Rover titled How Sprit makes great photos. Apparently the high resolution images are all done with a 1-megapixel camera. All the money is in the CCD and Lens. The hardcore digital photographers in the crowd will probably find the article to be only a teaser on the technical specs, but the rest of us in the unwashed masses should find it interesting."
Unwashed Masses...? (Score:5, Funny)
What does having a six-digit Slashdot UID [slashdot.org] have to do with digital photography knowledge?
Re:Unwashed Masses...? (Score:2)
~Berj
Original (Score:5, Informative)
Specs (Score:5, Interesting)
It is also interesting to see how it produces color photos. Instead of using a 3 color sensor, it uses a B&W camera with 3 colour filters that recombine into a colour image. This is calibrated by a colour wheel on the rover itself.
Neat stuff
Assembled panorama (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not all- the images are clearly composited, which is why they look so stunning(yes, the huge, low-noise ccd helps, as does a great lens). The very first image released(the 8mpixel one) had a very very obvious stitching error right smack down the middle, which is pretty bad, considering that with a robotic rig and known lens
Re:Specs (Score:5, Informative)
This is how virtually all consumer digital cameras work (more or less). They paint a pattern of color filters over the CCD. Then they use interpolation, based on the relative intensities, to figure out the most likely color of each pixel.
Different vendors use different masks, and there is a lot of debate about the best approach. See DP Review's Glossary section [dpreview.com] for more information.
Re:Specs (Score:5, Informative)
Multi-layered sensors are in the works, however, one of which has been slashdotted. This would provide true image color with no interpolation, but failed to materialize in the year promised (last one).
If anyone has the slashdot link from a few years back, I'm sure it would be relevant to this discussion.
Re:Specs (Score:3, Interesting)
Color Russian "Photos" from before WW I (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.ummagurau.com/art/russia/
Hmm.. (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting, but.. (Score:5, Informative)
Hope that was useful.
$400,000,000? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:$400,000,000? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$400,000,000? (Score:3, Insightful)
-Erwos
Re:$400,000,000? (Score:5, Informative)
Quality is expensive, the survival rate of craft going to Mars is less than 1/3. They tried to cut costs, but that leads to failure. Build them with enough attention that you don't throw $3-400MM away after years of effort...
Re:$400,000,000? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$400,000,000? (Score:5, Funny)
No, it doesn't. NASA engineers saved up some frequent flyer miles accrued on the space shuttle and the space station, and got a free trip to mars. Next, they'll be saving up for a round-trip and I've heard that they are soliciting milage donations from the public.
Put another way, $400 million is about a dollar for each american. Have you gotten your dollar's worth of entertainment yet? (Or $2.30 if the price is $810 mil)
To compare, bush's little iraq war is going to cost 100-200 Billion dollars [peopledaily.com.cn] and over 500 coallition lives so far. Do you expect to get your $1400 worth of oil/entertainment from that?
Re:$400,000,000? (Score:2)
It also has to survive both the G-forces of launch and landing and radiation levels far above what is seen on Earth.
Re:$400,000,000? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$400,000,000? (Score:2, Interesting)
And the 400M (each) includes all of the research, developement, construction, launch costs, operations, radio telescope time, etc until the end of the mission.
Pictures (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pictures (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pictures (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Pictures (Score:2)
Re:Pictures (Score:3, Funny)
Humans to the moon... (Score:4, Funny)
Digital cameras to mars (2004)
Internet Fridges to pluto (2010)?
Is this progress?
Re:Humans to the moon... (Score:2)
Humans to the moon (eta 2015-2020)
Re:Humans to the moon... (Score:5, Funny)
All those IPv6 address have to be used for somthing!
Tang (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Tang (Score:2)
It's All About The Optics (Score:5, Informative)
Also, remember that the cameras in the rover had to go through a lot more testing than a typical consumer camera, so it's probably using three, four, or even five year old components in the imaging systems.
Re:It's All About The Optics (Score:2)
They are expensive, but they do have the quality.
Actually compared to any point and shoot camera, or entry/mid level digital cameras the consumer quality SLR lens is likely much better.
I was surprised how much more detail and contrast I got from my SLR, it made other pictures appear quite poor in comparison.
That being said, you only notice the quality when you compare, I love my digital for snapshots.
Re:It's All About The Optics (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's All About The Optics (Score:5, Informative)
They've talked about using it to take pictures of the hills a few kilometres away - even if the rover doesn't reach them, they should still get some very impressive images of them.
Re:It's All About The Optics (Score:2)
My question (Score:2)
If I were standing on the surface of Mars, what does it look like? Is the surface red to a human eye the way it looks in the most common pictures?
Actually (Score:5, Funny)
if (!ie){......} (Score:3, Informative)
@%**! MSnbc
Click on the "Interactive feature" if you don't know what I mean,
then curse microsoft,
then go straight to http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov [nasa.gov]to see the images without paying the microsoft tax. I vowed a long time ago to stop clicking on msnbc links.... sucker that I am to keep coming back for more...
Could be done much cheaper (Score:2)
One Megapixel Dimensions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this like hard drives using one GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes or is 1MP truely 1,000 x 1,000 and not 1,024 x 1,024?
Re:One Megapixel Dimensions? (Score:2)
Yea, those stupid extra i's are annoying.
Well ya (Score:3, Informative)
However, computer people hijacked the prefixes and started using them incorrectly. Since computers are base 2, base 10 numbers don't divide down nicely. 1,000,000 isn't remotely near a nice round number in b
Techno Zealots... (Score:2, Informative)
A great photographer can take an old Brownie and develop some GREAT photos...
Anyone can point and shoot a digital camera...but it really takes someone with talent to get a GOOD image using one.
The greatness of a digital camera is you can snap those 500 shots to get the 3 good ones and not worry about film and developing costs...
Professional wedding photographers shoot 300+ pics p
Re:Techno Zealots... (Score:2)
I don't know a single person who thinks that.
On the other hand, since my camera only has about 1/3 of the resolution of my dye-sub printer, I know that I'll get higher-quality prints if I get a camera with more pixels. My photographic skills will, of course, be unchanged.
steve
Re:Techno Zealots... (Score:2)
Well, there are photographers, and there are "photographers".
I know plenty in the "I'll shoot a bunch, and end up with 10% to 25% that are really good" category. On the other hand, I know a very few who take a few shots, and end up with 75%-90% that are really worth it.
Making a blanket statement like that about photographers is just silly. Of course, since you're t
Lens (Score:5, Insightful)
Every good photographer will tell you the same. It still amazes me that people are willing to drop Can$.5k for a digital camera, but think you are nuts for spending the same money in a lens.
Too bad the digital cameras all come with Zooms. At the same price, a zoom lens will tend to be worse than a fixed lens. An old camera, the yashica t4 super [photo.net] won a great reputation for its superb fixed lens (35 mm Carl Zeiss).
I have one, and I love it. It takes the best pics I have ever seen in a P&S.
Re: convinience of zooms (Score:2)
granted the primes are really sweet, but i would only use one under controlled conditions. The only prime i own is a 50mm for portraits (which works out to about 80+mm after the sensor conversion factor.) For everything else, zooms are just more practical.
Not to mention the big primes are REALLY expensive. My current price limit is about $1000 for a lens. If i can get a Lens that w
Tradeoffs for zoom... (Score:2)
You ain't seen interesting yet (Score:2)
Indeed. In fact, so interesting that the bulk of sweeping statements and wild generalization we masses will make, will be be made without ever reading the article!
Blue skies? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Blue skies? (Score:2, Informative)
Pretty neat. (Score:2)
The Article emntions the Sony 717, i've seen test shot between the Sony 5MP 717 and their 8MP 828. Their sensor size is the same, so the 828's individual sensors are smaller. After seeing them, i think i'd rather get a 717 then an 828.
Of course where we can get the quality are DSLRs. Most of these cam
One times Four is Five (Score:2)
>shock
And it runs Java (Score:4, Informative)
Brady
Re:And it runs Java (Score:2)
(C'mon, have a sense of humour, not everything is a troll!)
Here's what surprises me... (Score:2)
On the other hand, consider that (a) it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars just for the fuel to get the launch craft off of the ground, ignoring all of the personnel costs, cost of the rover, etc., and that (b) this thing was only designed to travel about 600 yards.
Given the enormous expense and extremely tiny travelling range, I would think that throwing an extra thousand bucks
Nonsense... (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed, the CCD has 1 million pixels, but look at the published pictures: they are assembled from a great number of small 1 megapixels squares!! Simply have a look at the raw pictures on marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov: some of them are not fully transmitted yet, consequently parts of the pictures are black.
To make a "normal" picture, like one you would naturally do with your 5M pixels camera, the pancam needs to take shots from, say, 20 different angles. And it is even worse than that: each pictures must be taken 4 times with each filters to get colors. Do not even dream of taking photographs of moving subjects!
There is another drawback: there is two cameras, for stereo. But if you look at the tech specifications on Cornell website, you'll see that each camera has filters that can cover only one half of the color spectrum. Hence, to get color pictures, you have to combine the photographs taken by both the left and right cameras. That's why there is some weird colored patterns on big objects: to put it simply, the left camera sees the red, the right one sees the blue! But both cameras do not see exactly the same thing!
And nonetheless, there was a hint: do you really expect 1M pixels raw pictures to weight 7MB? Huuh?
1 megapixel camera != 1 megapixel images (Score:3, Informative)
*No, I am not refering to 3 shots it takes to get red, green and blue data for each pixel.
Thermal Noise (Score:2, Interesting)
is there a microphone on the Spirit Rover? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:is there a microphone on the Spirit Rover? (Score:3, Interesting)
not this mission but in 2007 their will be 4 of them, its a joint project between the Planetary Society and SSL berkley [berkeley.edu][project sites]
In 2007 the French NetLander mission is scheduled to deploy a network of 4 identical landers to study the atmosphere and interior structure of Mars. Onboard each NetLander craft will be upgraded versions of the Mars Microphone sensors placed on the panoramic camera head, enabling stereo recordings of the Martian sounds from a height of about 1 meter above the surface
Spirit camera in effect 3+ megapixel (Score:3, Insightful)
So, adding the images together, 1 megapixel green + 1 mp red + 1 mp blue = 3 megapixels.
Re:Spirit camera in effect 3+ megapixel (Score:2)
No, that's not the way digital cameras are sold. My 2 megapixel camera makes images with about 2 million pixels, each of which include a red, blue, and green component.
Interpolation (Score:3, Informative)
RGRGRGRG
GBGBGBGB
so your 2mp sensor is capturing 500k pixels of red tones, 500k of blue tones, and 1M of green tones.then software will interpolate this pattern into a 2mp image with all three colour elements.
Re:Spirit camera in effect 3+ megapixel (Score:2)
It's really just a 1 MP image with more information per pixel. The top left pixel in each image is really imaging the same thing, just a different aspect (wavelength) of it.
Optimized for still pictures? (Score:3, Funny)
This is why my 2.7mp digital SLR is still great. (Score:5, Interesting)
Near all my pictures at www.gavincato.com in the photography section are with the Nikon D1h.
The Nikon D1h has only a 2.7mp sensor, but the output is fantastic. The pixels are large, and the noise is pretty low. It's pretty much noiseless until you hit 800 ISO, and even at 1600 ISO it's significantly better than 1600 speed film.
NASA is very correct in saying the lens & sensor are important, for example most of my lenses are ludicrously expensive (often more than the camera body) and the majority of them are fixed length lenses and thus have incredible optics.
I've previously owned a Nikon D100 which had 6mp, but I found to my surprise that I preferred the output & prints from the D1h. I originally bought the D1h to complement the D100 (the D1h is a crazy fast camera designed for sports), not replace it, but after a while I ended up selling the D100.
The guys in the Canon camp have said the same thing, they much prefer the output of the 4mp Canon 1D vs the 6mp Canon 10D.
Re:This is why my 2.7mp digital SLR is still great (Score:4, Interesting)
i'm one of those int he canon camp and i do have to concur with you on those findings. my canon has an APS sized sensor and can take very noise free iamges upto 400 ISO, at 800, it's still useable.. and i've done 1600 ISO shots, but i only use it if i have no other choice.
one thing people don't understand is the extra MPs only matter if you want to blow up your images. most people rarely print bigger than 4x6" and at the largest 8x10" 3MP resolution is more than good enough for an 8x10" print. after that, you want the best out of those MPs... NOT more MPs.
Keep in mind... (Score:3, Insightful)
you don't need gazillion megapixels ... (Score:3, Insightful)
OTOH, the high quality lenses and high quality post-processing of captured image are important factors in getting decent digital pictures. Yet 'unwashed masses' only understand one thing - the magic pixel number.
What is the REAL color of the sky on Mars? (Score:3, Interesting)
What color was it before the picture was edited and if it wasn't "peach", why does NASA think we need to see a pink Martian sky? What happened to the blue sky that Viking showed us? Just wondering if anyone else has noticed this.
Multiple exposure explained (Score:4, Informative)
For those not familiar with it, the multiple exposure they talk about in the article has been long used in the darkroom and can be done easily with modern scanners with good software. It brings out extreme details in parts of images that are normally burnt out.
Take a single slide that you scan. With a program like VueScan [hamrick.com], you can set the exposure of the scanner, so you can do a dark scan (thus exposing properly the light part of the image), a normal scan and a light scan (exposing the dark part of the image).
Import all 3 into a graphic program, superimpose them and cancel the parts that you don't like (which is the creative part and not as easy as it seems).
Note that you can also do that taking 3 pictures with various exposure with the camera on a tripod, and it's the way the Mars rover does it.
That article makes no sense at all (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sure there is some reasoning behing NASA's decision but that article doesn't say what it is!
But the funny thing is that NASA don't even have decent software for tiling those images so they have seams everywhere (and I don't just mean from the color variance).
move along--nothing new here (Score:3, Informative)
Bigger pixels at lower resolution are not necessarily a good tradeoff: you can do almost as well in terms of noise and sensitivity by using more smaller sensors and performing the averaging in software.
Compositing lots of low resolution images into a single high resolution image is also completely standard: you can get both free and commercial software to do it.
Altogether, I suspect that if you take something like the new Sony 8Mpixel camera and take raw pictures with it, and reduce it to 1024x768 using good software, you are going to be pretty close to the measured quality and sensitivity of Spirit's sensor (in practice, you'll see little or no difference under normal circumstances, however). Then, you can use compositing software to composit multiple images for panoramas.
The Spirit tradeoffs make sense for a Mars rover, also taking into account power and weight requirements, but they do not result in a level of picture quality that you couldn't achieve with the digital cameras you can buy at the local store.
More Info on Pancam and other instruments here. (Score:3, Interesting)
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History [axonchisel.net].
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:2, Flamebait)
If you had RTFA, you would know that you can't.
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone can acheive a similar effect with their digital camera by taking enough pictures and stitching them together with software.
To get an idea of what the raw ccd images look like from the panoramic cam, check out the raw image gallery from JPL:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spir i t_ p011.html
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing I've been wondering, and maybe someone out there knows more. What kind of image compression are they using?
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:3, Insightful)
As for the actual encoding -- considering the article states that the cameras don't work like normal cameras and instead red, green, blue components are built up separately -- I'd say it's something NASA cooked up just for these probes.
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:3, Interesting)
Most other formats are 'good enough', so why work with something new?
jpeg2000 is SLOW too. Even on high-end machines, it feels like jpg on a 386. It is impressive though. I have a highres picture I took which I took with a friends EOS Digital Rebel, I compressed with with jpeg2000 to under 200K and then visually compared them zoomed in. Was amazing, there were few noticable differences even when zoomed way in. (obviously wasn't using lossless
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
They mentioned that the design process of the Huble's CCDs at a resolution of 800 x 800 contributed to the current mass production of consumer CCD cameras, so I don't think they are afraid of pushing the envelope if it is needed to meet mission requirements.
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:3, Informative)
Tim
It's not the size of your pixels... (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not surprised at all, and I am glad to see that NASA didn't fall for the marketing hype that the number of megapixels is the determining factor in the quality of a photographic image. Personally, I would prefer a 1 megapixel camera with an SLR (single reflex lens) to 5 megapixel camera.
I believe the secret to art is the process used in filtering down to the information that you really need in a picture.
The two areas that you miss with sma
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:5, Informative)
They also have a nice lens and a large sensor which helps as well.
Tim
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:5, Interesting)
The NASA guys had to start somewhere. Their biggest advantage will be the sensors, but there's no reason we can't replicate the rest. If one wanted to go all-out, it might even be feasable to use an array from a high-mp camera and configure it to use multiple sensors to produce 1px.
Damon,
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:5, Informative)
If your camera can take several pix in a row, use that, and simply move the camera laterally during the shooting (assumes you have fast shutter time).
Lastly, no. As I understand it, a CMOS sensor cut into 1000x1000 pixels will give you "better" pixels than the same die at 2000x2000 pixels, and coupling the pixels 2x2. This has several causes:
1) you can only average your combined pixels after sampling: thus you get quantisation noise (and hypothetically phase interferernce, although I've never heard anyone comment on this)
2) if you couple 2x2 pixels, you will get 1xR + 2xG + 1B pixels. Most pixels will be predominantly one of these colors, removing the other 3(2 for G) from the picture. This also means that a blue photon heading towards the 2x2 metapixel must hit the 1/4 area which can see it, else it is lost.
3) (I don't quite get this one. As close as I understand it:) The size of the sensor feature size is coming close to the wavelength of light: Sony's new 8mp sensor is 0.008 m long, with 3000 pixels. That makes each pixel 2.6e-6 m. Compare with Red light, at a wavelength of 0.7e-7 m. Each sensor is three wavelengths wide(!). This apparently means that you can't usefully use an fstop higher than 11ish on the new sony f828. Search photo.net for a technical discussion.
4) I guess that we also get effects from the fact that each pixel sensor is basically in a well, and the smaller the pixel becomes, the harder it becomes for a photon to hit the sensor, rather than the well wall. I never hear this discussed either
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:3, Interesting)
Consumer 1MP have the same number of pixles buy each pixle has only 1 filter. The image is then interpolated to get a true color image.
Even if your optics and ccd were the same quality as Nasa's you would still only have 1/3 the resolution.
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:5, Funny)
You're going to send your old Sony Mavica to Mars?!?!?!?!?!
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:2)
I want to see you send your old 1MP camera to Mars, too! Can I come to the launch?
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:2)
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:2)
pixels mean nothing when your optics are junk.
This is how a Canon XL-1 NTSC camcorder shoots better video than the current HD camcorders.... the lens makes all the difference.
Re:I was honestly surprised. (Score:2)
Anyway, putting a really high quality lens on a consumer 1 Megapixel CCD would work for certain focal lengths, but it's not the solution people are looking for.
Re:Other spectra (Score:2)
Damon,
Re:Digital Photography On Mars (Score:2)
Check it out!
adpowers
Re:Artifical Stuff On Mars (Score:2, Funny)
DON'T LOOK! (Score:5, Funny)