Wondering about security cameras.

I saw some amazing pictures and footage taken from a very high resolution camera. I was told how many pixels it had but must not have been paying attention because I can not remember. It had to be a bunch!! This camera takes wide field shots every second. The video is a little bumpy but it is made for security and if it took the number of frames per second like normal video, it would fill up the biggest hard drive in short order. The subject came up while I was talking to the president and CEO of a company for whom I am doing a project, when I showed him a picture of my big telescope. He said he wanted to show me a picture he took of the moon with no telephoto zoom optics and one that he just held in his hand with no mount to steady it.



He took me into his office and brought the picture up on his computer. It was a very clear shot of an almost full moon. I was impressed. Then he started to zoom in on the moon picture and you could see individual creators, mountains, and rifts just like looking through a telescope. Impressed me to say the least. Then he showed me video of a project to clean up and rebuild an area after a flood. You could see little yellow specs moving along the road, which when he zoomed in on one of the specs you could see that it was a dump truck. He zoomed in on things that were 3 to 5 miles away and it showed barns and houses that I couldn’t tell where there on the full scale view. All this is done without telephoto lenses. The camera does not have any; it just takes extremely high resolution pictures.


He showed another view of a parking lot and building beside the ship channel. He could zoom in on a door, or a car, or a ship going down the channel. On the screen the software allowed you to have the one large view with multiple smaller views of the close-ups of areas of interest. All views were live or you could go back in time. Let me tell you, I was really impressed. It is too hard to tell you in words just how fantastic that camera was, you had to see the pictures. Of course the camera and software cost about ten grand, and the camera alone a few grand less. The camera would not be as good without the software. The CCD chip is probably similar to the ones that can be attached to telescopes for light gathering ability except that the ones on the telescopes are made for long exposures.


Well, got to get back to work. You all have a great day now, you hear.