New high-resolution camera nears virtual reality
When photographer Clifford Ross first saw Colorado's Mt. Sopris, he was so taken with the beauty of the mammoth formation that he jumped on the roof of his brother-in-law's car -- denting it -- to photograph the landscape.
But Ross found that his 35 mm photos didn't get anyone else excited. They simply didn't capture enough detail to convey the majesty of the white-capped mountain surrounded by grassy fields.
So he decided to make a camera that could create an image as awe-inspiring as the vista before him. The result was R1, a 110-pound, 6-foot film camera that produces what experts say are some of the highest-resolution landscape photographs ever made.
"Mountain I," a 5-foot-by-10-foot color photograph captured by that camera, is on display at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York through July 30.
Ross, 51, wanted to share a near-replica of reality, without any of the blurring visible in most large prints. "You can choose to go up to the picture and experience it intimately with a sense of unbroken reality," he says.
Details of the mountain's snowcapped peak -- 7 miles from the camera -- are in sharp focus, as are individual blades of grass only 100 feet away. When sections of the image are magnified nearly four times, other details are clearly visible: the shingles on a barn 4,000 feet from the camera, a red bird in the grass 150 feet away.
