VOY's Doctor and his bulky camera?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

You know how the EMH was always taking pictures of things. One question: Why is that camera so freaking HUGE? You'd think after centuries of progress, cameras wouldn't be quite that bulky. At the current rate, a camera in Trek's timeframe would probably be an inch or two square, if that. Probably smaller still - I'm sure it could be built directly into a contact lens!

I'm sure there are some things this camera can do (like take pictures in perfect 3-D) that ours can't. But I still doubt a 'real' one would be that huge.

 

[The Borg Queen]

Maybe the bulk is taken up with memory storage, as the camera can sample DNA structure, EM frequencies and transporter patterns, too? Maybe it's a Vidiian camera, as it doesn't look like particularly "Federation" style tech.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

You can reduce the size of the capture element, and of the control hardware, but it's a simple fact (based upon basic physics, not state-of-technology) that the behavior of optics is based entirely upon their size and their indexes of refraction.

Meaning... you may be able to get rid of everything but the lens assembly, but that that will always need to be the same as we're accustomed to in order to get the same image.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Cary L. Brown said:

Meaning... you may be able to get rid of everything but the lens assembly, but that that will always need to be the same as we're accustomed to in order to get the same image.

I'm still convinced that even that could change with 300 years of knowledge that we have yet to discover.

As for memory storage: Even that's not terribly bulky - *with current technology*. Look at HVDs for instance.

 

[Ronald Held]

If it is a holocamera, you need a minimum separation for the imaging elements?

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Ronald Held said:
If it is a holocamera, you need a minimum separation for the imaging elements?

It may be possible for sufficiently intelligent camera software to accurately infer 3D information from a 2D image (not unlike the "Esper Machine" in the film Blade Runner). After all, the human brain does pretty much the same thing when looking at a photograph.

TGT

 

[Squiggy]

Cary L. Brown said:
...but it's a simple fact (based upon basic physics, not state-of-technology)...

It's also a "simple fact" (based upon basic physics) that one can NOT travel faster than the speed of light.

Star Trek sorta ignored that one.

 

[USS Mariner]

Squiggyfm said:

Cary L. Brown said:
...but it's a simple fact (based upon basic physics, not state-of-technology)...

It's also a "simple fact" (based upon basic physics) that one can NOT travel faster than the speed of light.

Star Trek sorta ignored that one.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

"Magic" cameras don't move the story along, nor are they necessary to illustrate "Technology Unchained."

 

[USS Mariner]

Cary L. Brown said:
You can reduce the size of the capture element, and of the control hardware, but it's a simple fact (based upon basic physics, not state-of-technology) that the behavior of optics is based entirely upon their size and their indexes of refraction.

Meaning... you may be able to get rid of everything but the lens assembly, but that that will always need to be the same as we're accustomed to in order to get the same image.

The only possible way to work around this would be the "Light Field" concept by Adobe. Still, physics are still going to limit not only the size of this system, but it's image quality as well.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Mariner Class said:
"Magic" cameras don't move the story along, nor are they necessary to illustrate "Technology Unchained."

There's a difference between a 'magic' camera and a realistic one.

It does *not* seem particularly realistic to me, to assume that no progress has been made in reducing the size of cameras in 400 years. Cameras aren't that big *today*, why should they be like that then?

At least they got it right with the communicators. In TOS, they were about the size of today's cellphones. In TNG and further, they are properly miniaturized and efficient.

Although after watching "The Deadly Years" last night, I was reminded of something even funnier: The PADD that Kirk uses to sign his fuel consumption report. Isn't that one of those child's toys that you can write and then erase?

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Babaganoosh said:
At least they got it right with the communicators. In TOS, they were about the size of today's cellphones. In TNG and further, they are properly miniaturized and efficient.

The TOS communicators were hand-held devices. They would have been more difficult to use if manufactured any smaller.

The PADD that Kirk uses to sign his fuel consumption report. Isn't that one of those child's toys that you can write and then erase?

No, that is a 23rd century tablet computer that only happens to look somewhat like a 20th/21st century magic slate.

TGT

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Squiggyfm said:

Cary L. Brown said:...but it's a simple fact (based upon basic physics, not state-of-technology)...

It's also a "simple fact" (based upon basic physics) that one can NOT travel faster than the speed of light.

Star Trek sorta ignored that one.

Not true. It's THEORY that we can't travel faster than the speed of light.

I hate to keep harping on the same theme over and over... but there are things that we know, definitely. That we can prove, conclusively and repeatably through experiment. Optics is well-understood. The science is really a simple matter of geometry.

Interestingly, there's material in the study of optics that seems to imply that the speed of light, in fact, is NOT a constant, and that photons in fact have a finite mass.

All the theory we have now seems to IMPLY that the speed of light is an ultimate speed limit, because based upon our current models, to achieve the speed of light takes energy which asymptotically approaches infinity. In other words, you can approach C but never actually "hit it."

Here's the thing... our current understanding of this branch of physics is still VERY rudimentary. Our only observations of objects at or near the speed of light have been subatomic particles, and our measurements of them have been subject to a great deal of measurement error (Heisenberg and all that, ya know).

So, do we "know" that the speed of light cannot be exceeded? ABSOLUTELY NOT. At best, we "believe" this based upon some very early theory on the topic.

On the other hand, virtually every high-school science class involves basic optics. Every engineering course, and in particular the mechanical regimens, includes a lot of optics. It's all basic geometry combined with diffraction (which, it's worth pointing out, is the effect of differences in the speed of light through various materials). The value of "c" which we always talk about is the speed of light in a perfect vacuum. It's quite a bit closer going through air, and quite a bit slower than that going through water. That's why light rays seem to bend as they cross the transition between air and water.

No one has ever given a conclusive explanation of WHY this is the case, but the WHAT is well-understood.

We also only know the speed of light in our own local neighborhood... right around the Earth. Everything else is based upon observations with a great deal of inherent measurement error. So while we may be "consistent" with current theory, we don't know that the current theory is correct.

Who's to say, for instance, that the speed of light isn't directly affected by the presence of gravity. So the speed of light might be much different in deep interstellar space (ie, much faster, perhaps?). The truth is, WE DON'T KNOW.

My point is that it's VERY important to keep facts (things that can be observed, measured repeatably, and cannot be disproven) separate from theory (even theory that we're very confident of).

FTL travel isn't impossible, as far as we know. It's just improbably given our limited knowledge of that area of physics.

Optics is well-understood given our fairly well-developed knowledge of how it behaves (even if we don't really get the "whys" behind it).

I'm not saying that you can't have a decent picture with a TINY little pin-hole-sized camera "lens." Just that the image won't look the same as an image taken with a 35mm camera lens. Focal length, depth-of-field, all of that, it's all derived from well-understood real physics.

I'm not telling you that I'd necessarily have used a "bulky" camera in that situation, but on the other hand, I do think that the tendency to describe it as unreasonable is... off-base, I guess is the best way to phrase it.

Your mileage may vary, of course. But it's NOT reasonable to say that you can reduce the size of a camera and get the same image out of it, if you're working with real optics.

 

[USS Mariner]

Babaganoosh said:

Mariner Class said:
"Magic" cameras don't move the story along, nor are they necessary to illustrate "Technology Unchained."

There's a difference between a 'magic' camera and a realistic one.

I'm inferring that your understanding of photography is equivalent to "I push buttons and the camera makes noise and stuff?"

Snark aside, it's possible the size of Doc's Holo-imager is limited by the modifications he made to record images with sub-atomic information.

Think of the examples we're seen from Trek about holographic technology. The Holodeck requires an entire room to present 3D information, whether or not the object is taken out of the Holodeck.

Let's take a look at Barclay's Holocube from "Ship In A Bottle. In fact, let's look at the script.

PICARD
(gesturing to the cube)
The simulation is continuing even
now, inside that cube.

BEVERLY
A miniature Holodeck?

DATA
In a way, Doctor. However, it has
no physicality. The program is
continuing... but only within the
computer circuitry.

BARCLAY
As far as Moriarty and the
Countess know, they're half way to
Meles Two by now.

Barclay picks of the TECH cube and inserts it in a slot
inside a larger, briefcase sized piece of hardware with
BLINKIES on it.

BARCLAY
This enhancement module contains
enough active memory to provide
them with a lifetime of
experiences.

From this, the holocube can apparently run the program of Moriarty's life, but it still needs an enhancement module to give him a fulfilling life. That module doesn't actually add information, but allows both he and his wife to live a life whose experiences span a galaxy. With the level of miniaturization we've seen in TNG, that is an immense volume of information to require something the size of a "briefcase" to just store it.

Creating holographic images and them compiling them into a single holograhic object has already been done by the Holodeck, which we know encompasses the greater part of a deck. From "Ship," it appears as if memory and presentation are the most massive parts of the Holodeck as a whole.

Doc's holo-imager does everything except present this information. Even though the imager doesn't have to create holograms, it still has to hold the holographic data of over 150 people. The lens assembly doesn't look too much larger than the one on my Canon Powershot A710 IS.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Babaganoosh said:

Mariner Class said:"Magic" cameras don't move the story along, nor are they necessary to illustrate "Technology Unchained."

There's a difference between a 'magic' camera and a realistic one.

It does *not* seem particularly realistic to me, to assume that no progress has been made in reducing the size of cameras in 400 years. Cameras aren't that big *today*, why should they be like that then?

At least they got it right with the communicators. In TOS, they were about the size of today's cellphones. In TNG and further, they are properly miniaturized and efficient.

This is actually a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

Cell phones are very low-power devices. The actual broadcasting or reception range of a cell phone for decent signal quality is less than a mile with average "background noise."

I have no problem with assuming that all of the "control electronics" of a TOS communicator could be on the head of a pin. But the TRANSMITTER is going to be limited by physics, again... and the amount of power necessary to broadcast a signal which can reach to high-orbit is many orders of magnitude greater than that required to reach the next cell tower, with the size of a power supply also being limited by physics and material science.

Sure, these things will inevitably be optimized over time but we're still talking protons, electrons, and neutrons for all conventional matter (which makes up everything we've ever dealt with to date and seems to make up everything dealt with in Treknology as well).

So a communicator is far more like the big dishes in the "very large arrays" we have around the planet than it is like a cell phone.

I get very frustrated of people making this statement based upon, it seems, a lack of understanding of the real basics of what's being discussed.

All a cell phone is, is a TINY power pack and a very short-range transceiver, with a controller chip and a memory chip. A TOS communicator is far, far more.

 

[USS Mariner]

Cary L. Brown said:

All a cell phone is, is a TINY power pack and a very short-range transceiver, with a controller chip and a memory chip. A TOS communicator is far, far more.

Considering the thing can signal a ship in orbit, I'd rather have something the size of an iPhone that can't lose signal, rather than something that is more suited to send messages by tying paper to it and throwing it through a window.

 

[Mr. B]

...just be cause the technology exists to make something smaller doesn't mean it's practical. You stil have to hold it in your hands. The best immediate example I can think of is the Canon 1D series. It will always be that size because that's what feels comfortable in hand.

 

[Trekker4747]

That camera of his was absurd. Sure it's a complicated holo-device but it didn't need to be as big as a camera a reporter would carry in 1937.

Would it of been that big a deal if the damn thing was say the size of a typical Nikon camera?

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Mariner Class said:

Cary L. Brown said:

All a cell phone is, is a TINY power pack and a very short-range transceiver, with a controller chip and a memory chip. A TOS communicator is far, far more.

Considering the thing can signal a ship in orbit, I'd rather have something the size of an iPhone that can't lose signal, rather than something that is more suited to send messages by tying paper to it and throwing it through a window.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying. Are you agreeing with me (as it seems like) or disagreeing with me?

The TOS communicator was, in fact, very close to the size of an "iPhone," albeit slightly thicker.

It was actually designed to be nearly IDEALLY sized and shaped for a handheld device.


It's remarkably comfortable in the hand. It fits MY hand with my hand in a totally relaxed state. My cell phone, on the other hand, causes hand-cramping if I hold it for too long. It's just sized and shaped "wrong" even though it's pretty damned nice.

Of course, the Razr fits into my pocket better.

 

[Timo]

It would seem plausible to me to have a camera without any sort of "optics" to it: just a light-sensitive element that knows exactly where it sits in 3D space, and software that puts together a picture when the element is moved through a sufficient number of spots. Creating sharp imagery would be a matter of, say, creatively using interference.

In canon, a headset camera with a "payload" of at most penlight size was capable of recording everything needed for a good holosimulation in TNG "Identity Crisis". The capabilities of the similar-looking headsets in ST:GEN may have been comparable. Sure, most of that was probably thanks to the software of the E-D holodeck rather than anything built into the camera itself, but such a division of labor should work for the EMH's holocamera, too.

Perhaps a still holocamera needs to be bulkier than a film one? It must be much more difficult to extrapolate a 3D view from a still than from a bit of film that has been shot from multiple directions. So perhaps the still set needs a real, physical "baseline" for interferometry, rather than the virtual one afforded by a moving camera - and thus has to be of a certain minimum size? I can't fathom why anybody would want a still camera, though, when a film one would be so much simpler and more practical.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[USS Mariner]

Cary L. Brown said:

Mariner Class said:

Cary L. Brown said:

All a cell phone is, is a TINY power pack and a very short-range transceiver, with a controller chip and a memory chip. A TOS communicator is far, far more.

Considering the thing can signal a ship in orbit, I'd rather have something the size of an iPhone that can't lose signal, rather than something that is more suited to send messages by tying paper to it and throwing it through a window.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying. Are you agreeing with me (as it seems like) or disagreeing with me?

Considering that the iPhuck is best described as a "glass brick," I do agree.