How many different images can be taken with a 1 Mega-pixel camera?

Sunday, 27 June 2010 14:47 | Written by Administrator |

It occurred to me that there was an upper limit to how many images could be taken with any digital camera. I'm not talking about the limitations of memory, but the number of possible different images that can be displayed using a 1 Mega-pixel display.

Assumptions:

A 1 mega-pixel image consists of 1 million pixels
Each pixel consists of 3 channels, red, green and blue (RGB). Each of which have 256 different intensities.

Therefore the number of different colours that can be displayed with each pixel is:

256 x 256 x 256 or 256³= 16,777,216

Now, if each pixel can display 16,777,216 different colours and there are 1 million pixels, then the number of different images is equal to:

16,777,216 x 1,000,000 = A very long number, approximately 7.9 x 10^7224719

A number which is 7,224,719 digits long!

Now imagine that you could have a program which would allow you to view all of the different images in order, then you would be able to find every imaginable image of yourself ever taken, and billions of others, plus a hell of a lot of nonsensical noise images.

Just a thought :)