The idea of a scanner-made camera is nothing super new, but concocting one which snaps photos at 130-megapixels is pretty amazing. That's exactly what some Japanese dude with a touch of tech know-how accomplished.


Spyuge, the amateur photographer responsible for this DIY gem, says that he took a 1200 dpi Epson GT-S620 scanner, and an old Canon FD 50mm lens, fusing the two together to produce this. He said he chose that particular scanner because it has a CCD sensor, uses a camera-like lens of its own and uses LED lighting. In some of the shots, there's obviously noticeable noise even at 800 or 1024 res, but all things considered, these photos are more than respectable.


Bouncing Red Ball also has a close-up zoom to show what kind of detail the camera setup can produce (SPOILER: it's not shabby at all). For the few brave ones out there, you can also check out a full-resolution image for yourself. This is not for the faint of heart. In case you don't want to do the (relatively basic) math, a 130-megapixel image calculates out to roughly a 13,000x10,000 resolution image.

Meanwhile the rest of us can appreciate some of the shots found in Spyuge's Flickr stream. [Spyuge via Bouncing Red Ball via Boing Boing Gadgets]