The Sphere’s Big Sky Camera Introduced

Camera News

by Julian MitchellJune 16^th, 2023

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The display in the Sphere, the new fully immersive entertainment venue off the strip in Las Vegas, dwarfs the requirements of IMAX or Giant Screen 3D. It’s a wrap-around design for the 516 feet wide by 366 feet spherical building. The definition of 16k x 16k makes it the highest-resolution LED screen on the planet. Now there’s a new camera that can shoot native footage – Sphere’s Big Sky camera. Let’s look at the details.

The camera is called Big Sky, developed in-house at Sphere Studios in Burbank, California, and it features the most extensive single sensor available commercially. According to Sphere, you would need 10-15 cinema cameras to provide a similar performance.

The Sphere’s Big Sky big specs

The Sphere’s Big Sky camera sensor has 316 megapixels, is a square format at 3 inches x 3 inches across, and is natively HDR. Performance is capable of a 40X resolution increase over today’s 4K cameras. It can capture up to 120 frames per second in the 18K square format and higher speed frame rates at lower resolutions. Sphere has avoided camera array stitching problems such as near-distance limitations and post-production time.

Sphere Studios has also developed image processing software to manage the uncompressed 60 fps RAW footage at 30 GB/s or 120 fps at 50 GB/s to its custom 32 TB media mags. The network throughput can cope with 600 GB/s.

As for lenses for such a sensor, there are already a couple of focal lengths out with others in development, especially for different styles like underwater cinematography. The design is for a large single lens to cover the sensor.

Sphere Studios

Back in Burbank, Sphere Studios looks like a mini Sphere with its 28,000-square-foot, 100-foot high custom geodesic dome. It’s a quarter the size of its Las Vegas big brother. Big Dome, as they call it, is for post-production, screenings, and testing for haptic seats, immersive sound, and video.

Within its 68,000 square feet, the campus has more development, production space, and separate sound stages for mixing spatial audio.

What’s on at The Sphere

The Sphere will open this September to audiences of up to 20,000 for anything from music (with U2 already booked with a 25-date residency) to sport, E-sports, and original programming. The venue’s first content, Postcards From Earth, is described as a multi-sensory storytelling journey and has been produced just for the Sphere. The 60-minute film is in production now and premieres on October 6.

Please tell us what you think of the Sphere and its new Big Sky camera in the comments section below.