Professional digital cameras snap shots with a resolution of 20 or 30 megapixels. Electrical engineer David Brady at Duke University has created a camera that takes one-gigapixel pictures.
He and his team arranged 98 microcameras in a dome. A unique computing system knits the 98 snapshots into a billion-pixel image, so detailed that viewers can read a license plate shot from a third of a mile away. The tech could eventually find its way into personal cameras. Meanwhile, Brady and his colleagues started building a five-gigapixel commercial version this past fall.