Lockheed Martin's High Def IMAX camera

[Digigenic]

Lockheed Martin has developed a new High Def Prototype for ultra high quality acquisition for IMAX exhibition.
It has one main body unit, which appears to house the prism/light splitter. Then, off of three other mounts in the rear, branching off of the top corner upwards at 45 degrees, the back at 0 degrees, and the bottom corner downward at 45 degrees are 3 more similarly sized bodies. Each of the three bodies house individual full-frame IMAX sensors that hold 12 megapixels a piece. So the main body basically has 4 separate mounts on it, one for the lens, three for individual bodies housing sensors, which might be interchangeable as technology progresses? This is pretty phenomenal...even though it does look kind of scary, the thing looks like it would suck a small sub-division dry of power after one minute of shooting...it's a beast of a camera. I don't even want to know what kind of memory they'd need to store it all...

 

[MarkG]

Each of the three bodies house individual full-frame IMAX sensors that hold 12 megapixels a piece.

Sounds a bit small to claim to be IMAX resolution: at the IMAX seminar I went to a few years back they were arguing as to whether the effective resolution of IMAX was 6k or 12k across, but either is several times as big as a 12M pixel sensor.

(And if people believe that 35mm film has 4k effective resolution, then IMAX resolution would have to be more like 16k across).

 

[Digigenic]

With the introduction of this camera, and other HDcams, I'm not really concerned with how they currently lack in resolution, because what's most remarkable is the fact that LM protected the camera for future development. Panavision did this with the Genesis, and Kinetta's new HDcam prototype also allows for the replacement of the sensors and its' processing boards as technology improves.

By having three seperate bodies that house the sensors, you can replace the sensors within those bodies, or even the entire bodies themselves to transform the camera as technology advances.
So, if it is lacking today, then it would only be a matter of waiting for a better sensor to reach and/or exceed the levels of quality desired. As oppose to waiting for entirely new camera to be developed. I wonder if prosumer HDVCAMS will follow this example? Hell, I wonder if even regular SLR Digicams will do the same? This is one technological trend that I welcome with open eyes. 8)