Friday, June 22, 2012: This one goes out to avid photographers! What is the highest resolution that you have dreamt ever of- a resolution that would highlight the smallest detail in the picture- like a sky shot that captures a man walking way beneath or a tear drop waiting to hit the ground- everything so deep and accurate to satiate your photography needs. Here comes a gigapixel camera with a billion pixels each - about one thousand times larger than images taken by conventional cameras.
With funding from the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, David Brady, an engineer at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, along with his colleagues is developing the AWARE-2 camera. Initially, the camera will be used in automated military surveillance systems, but the developers hope to make it available to researchers, media companies and consumers.

AWARE-2 sidesteps the size issue by using 98 micro cameras, each with a 14-megapixel sensor, grouped around a shared spherical lens. Together, they take in a field of view 120 degrees wide and 50 degrees tall. With all the packaging, data-processing electronics and cooling systems, the entire camera is about 0.75 by 0.75 by 0.5 metres in volume, Nature reports.

A wide view from the camera of Pungo Lake, which is a part of the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina shows the detailing work. In its compressed form, there are no animals visible. But once the picture is zoomed, it reveals a group of swans, infact a closer view even makes it possible to count every bird on and above the lake.