Get a Closer Look at 400MP Photos Captured with the Fujifilm GFX100

Last year Fufjilm announced a firmware update that would bring pixel-shift multi-shot to the GFX100, allowing it to jump from 100-megapixel photos to capturing whopping 400-megapixel photos. In this 12-minute video, ZY Productions shows exactly what that looks like.

Thanks to the firmware update, the GFX100 can now capture images with a final dimension of 23,296 by 17,472 pixels, which is about 407 megapixels. While that’s really impressive, there is a downside to using the feature: the camera can’t move.

Just like with any pixel shift method from any manufacturer offering it (Sony and Panasonic both come to mind), the camera is making the larger image by combining multiple photo captures that are taken and combined in-camera. Because it’s shifting the pixels slightly between each of those captures and overlaps the pixels with each other, the resulting image isn’t just larger: it’s higher quality as well.

Curious if that was visible, ZY filmed the process with the sensor exposed. Unsurprisingly, the shift is not visible. This is because the microscopic shifts are happening at a sub-pixel level and that’s just too small of a change to see it with the naked eye.

The video above goes into much more detail on this matter, but suffice it to say that any movement at all either by the camera or the subject will result in a blurry image. That means the only subjects that are a viable use of the tech are those in a fully-controlled studio setting.

ZY uploaded the full resolution images he captured for this video for anyone to download here. Below are three images he shared followed by a 100% crop to show how much resolution a photo has.

In his video, ZY zooms in even further so that you can really see how insane the amount of resolution is. To get to the point where the individual pixels are visible, you have to zoom in to an incredibly small section of the image.

As he explains, the primary purpose of this technology is for cataloging art. This much detail is not really useful to most photographers, but for the sake of artistic historical backup or examination, the more data you have to work with, the better.

For more from ZY Productions, make sure you subscribe to his YouTube Channel.

(via Fstoppers)