Petapixel photography and the limits of camera information capacity

The monochromatic single frame pixel count of a camera is limited by diffraction to the space-bandwidth product, roughly the aperture area divided by the square of the wavelength. We have recently shown that it is possible to approach this limit using multiscale lenses for cameras with space bandwidth product between 1 and 100 gigapixels. When color, polarization, coherence and time are included in the image data cube, camera information capacity may exceed 1 petapixel/second. This talk reviews progress in the construction of DARPA AWARE gigapixel cameras and describes compressive measurement strategies that may be used in combination with multiscale systems to push camera capacity to near physical limits. © 2013 SPIE-IS&T.