This 143-megapixel camera was created from an Epson scanner

[Shawn Knight]

As a photography enthusiast, I’ve seen cameras of all different sorts over the years but this one from computer aided designer and photographer Dario Morelli may be the most unique yet.

Essentially what he has done is take the guts from an Epson flatbed scanner and created a medium-format digital camera. Pretty cool, right?

After extracting the scanner’s main board, sensor board and stepper motor, Morelli had to create a custom internal light for the scanner’s auto-calibration system. Without it, the scanner won’t even turn on.

With everything set, he then created a custom enclosure that doesn’t look all that different from a camera from yesteryear. What is different, however, is how it operates.

The camera lacks modern conveniences like a screen / viewfinder to help frame shots and needs to be connected to both an external battery and a computer to use (after all, it is a scanner at heart). Once it comes time to take a shot, the process can take as little as 15 seconds to as long as five minutes depending on the conditions and whatnot.

The 143-megapixel output is quite spectacular – we're talking about a 16-bit TIFF that can be as large as 1.2GB.

I don’t think anyone would argue that this isn’t exactly the most practical method for taking photographs but the ability to repurpose technology in such a way is extremely neat, not to mention the super-high resolution.

Below are some samples images captured from the scanner camera.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/59271-143-megapixel-camera-created-epson-scanner.html

 

[Uncle Al]

I have been a large format photographer most of my life so I'm used to seeing fine detail in my own images, but this is one of the more unique applications I have seen and the quality looks as good as any 8x10 view negative/positive I have seen. I would love to see him adapt it for use on the back of a view camera; that would be nothing less than astounding!

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Maybe this is the kind of setup we'll see bolted on phablets soon, heavens knows there's enough area on the back of them for this contraption to comfortably fit and if they make phablets a wee bit bigger you could probably use this setup for a selfie camera as well.

 

[JakeT]

Would have been nice to see a full resolution image.

 

[Adhmuz]

Would have been nice to see a full resolution image.

Lol your funny, maybe as a link, but embedding a 1.2GB image might a tad tricky.

 

[nestorius]

My question is WHY! There are many very good cameras with high resolution that would do the same job! Maybe he just needs a super slow super hi res to get a great selfie.

I did see a camera that was fabricated from military surplus equipment that would give this contraption a real run for the money. It could identify the date on a dime at 1.2 miles..... If someone would care.

 

[Bao Nguyen]

My question is WHY! There are many very good cameras with high resolution that would do the same job! Maybe he just needs a super slow super hi res to get a great selfie.

I did see a camera that was fabricated from military surplus equipment that would give this contraption a real run for the money. It could identify the date on a dime at 1.2 miles..... If someone would care.

Such butt-hurt comment, perhaps the answer to your question is because he can. He's an enthusiast to begin with, and he did what most people couldn't. A better question would be HOW, not WHY!

 

[Arris]

Interesting contraption. I think I'll check out his flickr page and see if there are any full size files to be pixel peeped at. Although megapixels aren't the be all and end all of quality output.

 

[SNGX1275]

This was actually done at least 10 years ago. Not this exact one, but I remember reading about making a camera out of a scanner a long time ago...

Edit: Here is a guy that did it in 2001: http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/tech/scanner.html
Edit 2: One from 1999: http://people.rit.edu/andpph/text-demo-scanner-cam.html