Phase One IQ180 80megapixel camera performs as well as it costs

The folks over at Wired managed to get their hands on Phase One’s IQ180 camera recently and posted up an interesting write up about the camera. For those of you curious about what it’s like to use a camera equipped with an 80megapixel sensor – it’s the “photographic equivalent of a Bentley-Ferrari pickup truck”.

Each photograph captured by the IQ180 is massive, with a file size of 500MB and above, though when printed out at full resolution would be about 34″ wide. Imagine the amount of detail you can capture with a photograph that large. Yeah, it’s definitely not a camera designed for you to bring out to social gatherings (you could – but you wouldn’t have a lot of photographs to choose from to upload onto Facebook at the end of the day, not to mention Facebook won’t even support pictures that size).

Even though it was designed for professional usage, the camera is touted as easy to use, powers on quickly and has a 3.2″ that’s as responsive as the one on the iPhone 4 – a pretty impressive feat. But if you’re paying $47,990 for a camera, I guess you get what you pay for. Head over to Wired to read the full review of the Phase One IQ180.