Samsung Electronics image sensor engineers have taken on a big challenge: printing an image that was taken with Samsung’s 200-megapixel (MP) mobile image sensor on a huge 616-square-meter canvas.
Read on to find out how the 28-meter-wide, 22-meter-tall photograph came out (about one and a half times the size of a basketball court).
“Our desire to truly test the limits of the high-performance 200 MP image sensor and its image quality is what led to this challenge,” said Changwan Kim, Global Team Project Manager. from Marcom’s Samsung Electronics Device Solutions Division.
“I’ve always wondered how much you could increase when it comes to printing a 200 MP image,” said Minhyuk Lee, a sensor solution engineer for Samsung’s System LSI business. “As exciting as it was, the challenge was demanding, as it was the first time we showed the quality of an image sensor that has yet to be adopted in smartphones.”
Taking a photo with an image sensor still under development, for a camera module that is not yet fully optimized, is a very complicated task. However, the team decided to push themselves by working with a living, moving subject instead of going with an inanimate object.
“Choosing a cat as a subject was a difficult decision. It gave us a lot of obstacles to overcome, such as capturing such an active topic with a test board, “said Minhyuk Lee.” However, the team concluded that the topic should be something that shows a high level. detail and at the same time was a subject of popular photography “.
The team calculated several variables as it prepared to fire in an unstable environment. They even built a custom adapter to allow them to connect multiple DSLR camera lenses to a test board. “In the end, we thought it was most important to capture the scene in the same conditions that smartphone users would be in,” said Kaeul Lee of the sensor solutions team. “That’s why we went with a camera module for smartphones without any other help. The results were very satisfactory.”
Since the photo was taken with a test board, the photographer first checked the screen and adjusted the composition. Engineers then modified the settings to optimize exposure and focus. After observing the cat’s movements, the film crew used different methods to take a series of photographs. Photographer Hyunjoong Kim was curious to see the result, as the 200MP resolution is not easy to achieve, even on DSLR cameras. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the raw image magnified 100%,” Hyunjoong Kim said. “I was really surprised by the degree of detail. At the time, I knew that my previous prejudices about smartphone photography had turned out to be wrong.”
The printing process was not easy, as obviously an image of 616 square meters cannot be printed all at once. The image was to be printed on twelve pieces of fabric 2.3 meters long apart and then sewn together. The print was then transported in a truck and installed on the wall of a building with a crane.
“When the image unfolded for the big revelation, the real enormity struck me, and not just because of its actual size,” Changwan Kim said. “By the time I witnessed the 200 million pixels that represented the stunning detail of the cat’s eyes and skin, I was overwhelmed by all the efforts that had been made to develop this final product.”
For the team, the challenge of truly visualizing the capabilities of the next level of 200MP technology was exciting. In the future, Samsung will continue to expand its leadership in the high-resolution market.
“The ultimate benefit of the 200 MP image sensor is that it allows users to capture an image that can be enlarged and cropped without compromising image quality,” Kaeul Lee and Minhyuk Lee said in a final comment. “The 200 MP image sensor will soon become the optimal solution for 8K video recording.”
In the future, stay tuned for the new experiences that the miniature size ISOCELL mobile image sensor will offer below following Samsung Newsroom.